• Welcome, one and all, to the new face of News Askew. It’s been almost 7 years since this site was created, and to celebrate that upcoming milestone, we’ve been working behind the scenes tirelessly for almost an entire year, evaluating the site, what worked, what didn’t, what we wanted to change, and the like. The result: A new face, a new community, and a brand new News Askew. We’ve tried to take the elements that were well-like with the site and work it into an even more efficient, friendly design.

Some features have been in the planning stages for quite some time, and a couple of the bigger ones involve a new sense of interactivity. We’re hoping to make News Askew not only a place to come read the news, but a place to discuss it as well. Thus, a better, faster talkback system. And a new forum. And more on the way. Let’s take a look at what’s up and running, as we speak:

• Entire news database completely converted into new, faster software.
• Brand new TalkBack system.
• New artwork designed by Matt Sullivan.
• Grand Opening of News Askew Forums, powered by phpBB.
• Flash Ad Console (no more top of site clutter!).
• Automatic RSS Headline syndication.

And here’s what’s in the works:

• Improved, high speed news archive search engine.
• Live, 24/7 chat area featuring scheduled, moderated chats with VIP guests.
• More new Sullivan artwork!
• And whatever else we can think up…

From past experience, we know that some of you will love this new design, and some of you will hate it. By nature, some of us fear change. All we can advise you is to please stick with it, and give it a chance. Of course, if there are any huge bugs preventing you from reading the site now, we’d like to know. We have tested the site in all the popular browsers at various screen resolutions, and believe that it’ll work out of the box for the majority of you. However, if there’s a problem with something, feel free to let us know.

Speed: As we work the bugs out and your browsers get all of our new graphics cached, expect slower loadtimes than you’re used to. This will speed up over the next few days. The site will also experience some heavy traffic as folks try out the new features, too. So we want you to expect some slight lag, as that’s what normally happens during a big change like this.

Alright, we’ve got a lot more to announce with the new design, so let’s get down to some details…Neeeext!