First: 2008 is now reflected on the Features page. I really need to change the way that works. It’s the last thing on the site that has to be done by hand other than actually writing content. I’ll look into it.

Second: The forum. For various reasons, the forum has died to the point of needing life support. There are a few issues that have brought us to this terrible crossroads. First is the fact that that the Jux 3.0 redesign we adopted a year ago de-emphasizes the forum. Massive crossposting of content creates more exposure for Jux, but it also allows a wider variety of methods for people to comment on the content rather than use our forum.

Kenny’s back, but he doesn’t post there much yet either. Perhaps because it’s been mostly dead since he got back.

Naturally we all know that I had to upgrade to a more attractive girlfriend with increased mental competence, but I’ve not introduced her to the forum to replace Vivian yet. Nor did Kelley come back with Kenny.

So what should we do? I’m thinking that I’m going to make a thread a day to attempt to bring some life back into the forum. Should this effort fail, then work will begin on Jux 3.5, which will bring several changes. First are the long-talked about visual changes to the main page that will emphasize the three core Jux members equally. More relevant to the current discussion, if the forum does not revive itself Jux 3.5 will archive it (not delete it) and replace it with a per-post comment system that is more blog-like but also more prominent. Hopefully Replacing the separate forum page will be a page incorporating a list-view of all posts sorted by most recent comment activity, a semi-forum. That last idea depends on just how much work it requires.

Naturally changing to this method of gathering comments limits the number of people who can participate slightly. Although anyone would be able to create an account, just as they can currently, on people with Jux main page access would be able to post new ‘topics’ as they would appear as news posts. Currently this means that only myself, Travis, Kenny, and Hannah would be able to post entirely new concepts. Samantha and Laurie could conceivably come back at any time they wanted and regain publication rights assuming no one on the Security Council vetoes it. Another issue: post counts would be reset from the current forum, as those numbers can’t be ported over, unless I do some hard-coded trickery. Which I might.

As today’s new thread this will be posted directly into the Forum. Now’s your first chance to save it or contribute to its demise.