• In the past, when we’ve rolled out new versions of the site, we’ve been concentrating on the visuals, but not much more. This time, we’re going about ten steps further — Let’s run down just some of the new stuff you’ll see starting this Saturday.

Most importantly, we’re moving into a brand new content management system called WordPress. This impressive system allows us the ability to fully manage our news database, as well as a lot of other aspects of the site, in one simple interface. For the first time, we’ve got the ability to categorize stories in more specific ways. Wanna see stories just relating to “Chasing Amy”? We can do that. However, going back through the news database is going to take some time, there’s a LOT of stories out there in our new database. But we’re making progress every day.

What are you here for every day? Why the news, of course. So we’ve been giving the MOST care to the actual news, past and present. That includes spelling fixes, link corrections, formatting, optimizing, categorizing, and the like. We’re still NEWS Askew, after all — So we’re going to go out on a limb here and say this is the best news database we’ve ever offered you. In fact, we’ve got some cool stats to share with you later this week, just to demonstrate how far we’ve come in the last 10 years.

So what else? A new events system is being built, which will offer up a calendar that allows you easy access to all View Askew related events, past and present. Heck, we’re even working on building some iCalendar integration into it for you Mac users out there.

A highly improved archive search will be available on launch day. You’ll have a much zippier interface letting you jump right into any month, any year, and any category. Headlines available in a very readable format with the click of your mouse.

Restored news — A chunk of our database was lost in a crash last year. All that news has been restored thanks to our backups as well as the fine folks over at the Wayback archives.

Polls – Polls will be back, functional, and regularly updated with new stuff for you to vote on. We’ve also entered several years of past polls into our new poll system, and hope to have every single poll available for viewing by launch or soon after. Yep, not only will we give you new stuff to vote on, but we’re also going to let you look at our incredible poll history.

Interactive comments – We’ve always encouraged user comments here at News Askew — The new site is no different. In addition to offering up a free, open registration for commenting on each and every story we post, our new comment system supports the OpenID platform (allowing you to use one ID and password on a large network of sites). We’ve got a lot more in store for the comment system, including the potential to add your own avatars, like you do at the forums.

And finally, interface — News Askew will look a LOT different for you this weekend, and at first it’ll be a bit of a shock. We’re developing this new site using the “Web 2.0″ style of design — Fairly minimal, colorful, simple. The test site’s looking a lot different than our current production site, and we’re currently working on adding some of those elements back. The key for us will be finding a balance between bland and overload. We’re also striving for a site that looks and works exactly the same regardless of your device and platform — Yep, that means regardless of if you’re surfing us on Mac or PC, iphone or big screen monitor, News Askew should look and work the same. As developers, it’s a challenge — But it’s one that we welcome and we feel will bring News Askew up to today’s technology, and beyond.

Are we tired? Yep. Are we excited? Even more so. More news on what’s coming this weekend with the next update. We’re working overtime to get things as pretty as we can. Stick around for an exciting week, and a milestone weekend.