Couple of updates


The news comments are turned off until I have time to fix the hole that allowed a sleezy spammer to post using an html injection technique, yesterday. I've a major change in the works... More on that later.

We've managed to block the referrer spam so the statistics, although correct technically, are actually much more useful, as they reflect actual people, rather than people, bots, and spammers. We don't block all bots (Googlebot, Slurp (yahoo), and the MSN bots, among others are passed through) but we don't count them in the statisticals.

On the plus side, the site is running faster than it has in a couple of weeks.... Due to some code optimazations and the traffic blocking.

We did a slab pour a hidden River resort last week, to add an outdoor kitchen to the food pavillion. There are pictures from the pour and a couple of shots from the newly expanded Ritual circle.

You have to be logged in to view the picts, and you can find them in the "Hidden River" picture gallery.

We have also added a Birthday module that does all sorts of fun things; you can get a daily Horoscope, send Birthday emails to fellow Phamly members, see what the distributon of Phamily is By Sign, Age, Gender, and such.... It's a lot of fun.

I'm compiling a list of moon names Here is the current list. I Pulled these from a variety of sources mostly online: Additional Suggestions are welcome and appreciated - leave a comment..... or send me a weblink

I am working on a lot of calendar and calculation events to fill a request made on the eGroups. Unfortunately, to fulfill this request, I have to make some assumptions about a calender and the Year.

The first and most important was "When Does the year start?" the Julian (Gregorian) calendar is the one we use day to day separately from the Pagan world. It starts on January 1st. - okay - that is a no-brainer... buit when does the PAGAN New year occur?

For Some it's Samhain - October 31st that more or less is based on a year and a day principal. (29 lunar months per Solar year, plus the day that is not a day - Samahin itself.) The problem with this usage is it's sort of arbitrary.... Why The end of October? Why not a new or Full moon after harvest, or a Solar event? What's more tat Day that is not a day makes it hard to decide if Samhain Ends the Year, or Begins it. So I decided a different way:

Thanks to all of you for participating in the User Points Contest - the winner for July is Missy with over 300 points (and a lot of really good recipies!) is Missy! She wins her choice of any tee shirt in our collection.

The website is handling record traffic loads now (averaging around 2000 Pageviews a day) and over 720 users (more than 50% of which are regular users (meaning they stop by the website at least once every 2 weeks) and doing it quickly, the new hardware is quite capable.

Our Newsletter has been published weekly for the last two months, and is working very well, It's been a manual system (I send manually) but I think we will be on an automatic system within the next two weeks, so it will be a hands free system at that point.

With the traffic loads as high as they now are (and climbing, we average around 200 pageviews a day more than last month) I want to point out that this is a great opportunity for exposure for you and your interests, Company, Coven or Cause. Feel free to submit an article and or a web link. Articles are not only read on the website, they are sent out in the weekly newsletter. And our community is very responsive.

You might also consider starting a thread in outr online forums to discus topics that are of interest to you.


That's it for now,
blessings,

--Wade

The Contest starts on July 1st - The winner will be announced on August 2nd, 2003 - and recieves a Phoenix Festivals teeshirt (Your Choice from our Stock).

Points are accured at the following rate:

How points are distributed
For each Article : 10 points.
For each comment on Article : 1 points.
For each comment on Polls : 1 points.
For each Web Link submitted : 10 points.
For each Vote on Web Links : 1 points.
For each Reviews : 20 points.
For each comment on Reviews : 1 points.
For each Post in Forums : 5 points.


Have fun! (and again, Dianne and I are not eligible for the contest)

the site upgrades are completed, we're on the faster stronger, harder (Uhhh) hardware, and I for one am astounded by the difference in speed. we've done a week of stress testing and are very happy with the results: We are in the 7x faster range, and it feels good!

Thank you all for your understanding during this transistion.

We also have finalized the registration package, and sent it off to the printer - we'll have the registration system online this weekend, so you 'net users wil have the opportunity to register before the registration packages are even maield out (which will occur next week, beginning on monday.

--Again, Thank you all!

--Wade

We've added a new feature to the website - a user points system. Beginning on July 1st we are starting a running contest.

The user who scores the highest will win a prize. Scores are based on contributions to this website. you scrore points for submitting articles, writing reviews, commenting to articles, reviewing a website, commenting on reviews or websites, and participation in the forums. the system scores based on the last 30 days of usage, so on August 1st, we will announce the July winner. and we will do that each month. Our July contest is for a Phoenix Festivals Teeshirt (Your choice of size and design from our inventory)

Also, we are going to have a end of the year contest, with the winner and three runners up recieving prizes for there top contributions for the year.

The scoring system, and current scores, including a breakdown on details of everyones score, can be had through the "see more" link on the top right column of the home page (the user ratings window)

Or you can click "user Ratings" in the site menu on the left side of the site.Note that the current stats are meaningless for the monthly contest, the system will only rate what has happened in the last 30 days, when the contest ends.

The Server we host Phoenixfestivals on will be experiencing some sporatic outages for 24 hours (once it starts)- We are upgrading the hardware on the server to provide Phamily a faster more robust site.

The new server migration schedule is in - We will be off line for three hours begenning Wed @ 3:00am edt and concluding at 6:00am 3 hours later.

Assuming that every thing goes smoothly, we will be back online @ 6:00am wed, and smookin fast!

thanks, Wade

Thanks to Cephlian - We identified a problem uploading images to the gallery, It's fixed now, so if you tried over the last two weeks to upload an image and it failed, try again.... it should work fine now.

Sorry for the delay.

--Wade

Added Forums-A bulletin Board Service to the site (Link to the left)

Rebuilt the Purple and XP themes

Added a "Who's Online" feature to the homepage

Teaked the layout a bit more

And added a cool new featurre making it much easier to cut and paste a document:

http://www.phoenixfestivals.com/displayarticle199.html

gives you document #199 - much easier to cut and paste to freinds...

Well. the website upgrade turned into a major overhaul, BUT it's worth it.

New Stuff:

I added a few new themes.
We nao have a categories link on the right, that will give you quick access to the articles you want to read, sorted by category. The last date an article was posted in that category is also listed.
In the top right corner of the page I added a quick link so, if you are logged in, you would be able to change themes regularly, should you choose.
I've also been adding articles from the egroup periodically, and adding them under the apropriate category, there is a link at the left (under the Menu) that will allow you to write and post your own words of wisdom, humor, or whatever. I encourage you to do so!

I also ask that you feel free to comment on articles, Polls, rate websites, and generally just add your energy to what we do here! It is our intention to make this a festival community resource!