Latest News for ThePoeticLink.com

To Write to me, simply send mail to: Webmaster@ThePoeticLink.com I read all of your comments and suggestions... don't be shy!

News Entry Date: 5/30/2001 6:16pm

Hi Guys, Sorry for the long delay between newsletters, but I have been very busy lately. As most of you probably already know, I have begun making some very large changes to the site. Mainly the Forum. I tried a certain software package for about 2 weeks and ended up hating it. That package was replaced by another one that is now much more powerful. As soon as I get a bit more time, I will further customize it to perfectly fit our needs on TPL :) I have also added a new menu to the Main Page. This new menu replaces the old style that took up 2 big blocks of space before. I have however, received about 10 complaints concerning this new menu not working for some of you. To temporarily fix this problem, I am providing a link at the top of the main page. This link will lead you to the old page format. Feel free to bookmark the old page for ease of access if you can NOT use the new menu system that I have installed. I will continue to work with the new system so that (hopefully) all of you will be able to use it shortly. I would also like to announce that I will be installing a new RANDOM prize Give-Away at the end of each month. This prize will start out as $100 and it will go to a Critiquer who meets the Random Prize requirements. If you think this sounds great... it is! The requirements will be very easy. For this month the requirement will be that you critique 20 or more different poets during the judging period! Anyone can do that! PLEASE NOTE: Since this month is so close to the end (just 9 days left) I will ONLY award this prize if at least 100 of you meet this requirement. To put it simply, if 100 of you critique at least 20 different poets each, in the next 9 days... ALL who have met this requirement will be eligible for the $100 Random Prize Drawing! This prize can stack on top of another prize if you are already in line to receive one. I will be creating a special way for you to see how you are doing as the month progresses. For now... just keep track of the Different Poets that you critique until you know you have done at least 20 DIFFERENT ones. I hope that this encourages you guys to give it a try ...anyone can do 20 critiques ...even me! :) One last thing. The system will stop you from critiquing if you fall below a certain critiquer rating. So if you intend on trying for this prize, please give good critiques so that your score does not fall too low and prevent you from meeting the requirements. Take Care!

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OK guys! Tonight I have added something awesome to The Poetic Link. Due to popular request, I am pleased to announce that we now have ThePoeticLink.com Forums! The URL is http://ThePoeticLink.com/phpBB These forums will provide instant access to help and peer assistance with many things that defaulted to me. With my busy schedule, it was becoming increasingly clear that a forum would improve things enormously! Many of the e-mails that I received, were items that could easily be answered by other members and forum moderators. I will still be available to answer anything that no one else can... but this should help a LOT! If there is anything that I hate, it is keeping people waiting, when they need a simple answer. My work schedule was starting to prevent me from providing appropriate support to all of you, so this should make all of our lives better. These forums will allow me to now focus much more on improving the site. Time that I used to spend answering e-mails, can now be utilized on upgrades and new features. This should make everyone happy! The Forum Database is separate from the Main Database. If you wish to have access to all of the available forums, simply click the register link once you are at the Forums. The URL to the new Forums is: http://ThePoeticLink.com/phpBB I am going to start changing screens on the main page to link to the forums for assistance, rather than having the system e-mail me with your question. This will, in most cases, give you much FASTER access to the answers you are looking for. Look for a landslide of great changes and additions to continue coming throughout the next few months! -Enjoy :)

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Hello everyone! I wanted to let you all know that things are still moving along; slowly, but moving along nonetheless. I am starting to get things more and more organized every day. The only downside to this whole situation is the long commute that I have to work each day. If anyone is in need of a full time programmer with excellent php, database and e-commerce skills... please let me know :) I am still working on some wonderful new updates and I wanted to assure everyone that things are moving forward. I have a LINUX box running a duplicate of The Poetic Link here at home. It is where I am able to now do all of my testing so that I do not affect the real site with any buggy code. This takes a lot of pressure off of me in many ways, since I can now take my time updating things. I am no longer rushed and I can be sure to properly test anything new that I introduce. If you have sent e-mail recently, you may have noticed that I was delayed in replying. For that I do apologize. I always try to answer EVERY piece of e-mail that I receive, but sometimes I am busy and it slows things down. The March Awards have all been sent out and April is soon coming to a close (about 10 days from now). Please get some critiques in if you can. We are hurting badly for critiques this month!

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Hello everyone! It has been some time since our last newsletter. I apologize for that long delay, but we moved! We are no longer located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Our current address is in Mount Joy, PA ...a small town in Lancaster county. -You may recognize the area because it is well known for the Amish who live here. At any rate, I want to assure you all that I am working hard to get things back in good order. I no longer have a cable modem, so things are much, much slower. I am praying that we get broadband in this area by Summer. I have purchased a new software package to re-design the website. I am very excited about the power and versatility of this program (Macromedia Dreamweaver) so we can all expect some wonderful improvements soon. I will be adding a lot of nice pull-down menus and some easy navigation frames. Colors will likely change and overall user-friendliness should improve greatly. I have been slow at replying to some of my e-mails but please know that I am doing my best to answer each and every one of you. Life here is getting back to a normal pace. "Box Village," as I like to call it... is dwindling, so please do not become discouraged. We are here to stay! :) I thank you all for your support and for your understanding, in this challenging time. In the near future, I will be looking for volunteers to head a committee for direct influence and feedback regarding the development of this site. If you are interested in being on this committee, please send me an e-mail. I am looking for my die-hard members. Those of you who have been here for a year or so... you know who you are. If you think you have what it takes to be a part of the creative process behind this site... please let me know. For now, I will sign off. Remember that there are only a few days left in the March contest... so please get your final critiques in!

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Hello everyone. I just finished sending out the e-mail notifications for the February Winners Awards. Congratulations to all of our February Winners! This month was the first time that we were able to award top prizes of $200.00 each. I wanted to let all of you know that we will be moving this weekend. If you write me an e-mail, you may not get a response immediately. I apologize for this, but some things can not be helped. I will do my best to check my e-mail as much as possible over the weekend, but I know that I will have some delays. Once our move is complete, I will be posting the new phone number and mailing address on the site. Until that time, you may continue using the ones provided, they will be forwarded to our new address and phone number anyway. Lastly, I wanted to let everyone know that I am going to be working hard at some new updates and features for the site. Once the move is complete, I should have more time on my hands. I hope to use this time to improve things here even further. I will keep you posted as to what updates and features I am working on.

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I wanted to inform everyone that the server migration went smoothly. I would imagine that some of you didn't even notice that we moved to a new server :) Now that I have migrated the site to this new server, I am able to do offline testing of the website. This was my main reason for the move in the first place. Before the move, the site was running older software than my local copy of the database. This was bad because I could never test things properly. Now the website is perfectly in sync with my local copy of the website so I can finally test updates and fixes 100% before I publish the changes to the actual website. I am not saying that there will never be any more problems, I'm not perfect you know :) But it should make my job a lot easier. I can break up my programming into days or weeks for long projects now and once it is tested properly on my local system, I can push the update out to the real site. I wanted to inform you of the next big update I will be working on. It will be the ability for you to pick favorite authors on the site. This will allow people to mark authors that they love to read so that when critiquing they can be assured they are getting one of their favorites... even with the 100% critique feature. I have some details to work out, but I have been wanting to add this for a long time now so I am happy to say work on this will begin immediately. I will also be working on some LARGE updates such as forums. I have wanted to introduce forums for 8 months now, but never had the ability because I never had a proper "testbed." Now I finally do so it should prove an invaluable tool to the site.

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Hi Guys, I wanted to let everyone know that we will be migrating to a new server this evening. The move will cause The Poetic Link to be down for a little while, but afterwards, things should be running smoothly again. You do not need to change anything and you don't have to worry about any of your information being lost. Everything will be back to normal after the migration is done. I am sorry for the inconvenience that this will cause, but I will try to make it as quick and painless as possible.

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Hello Everyone! I wanted to draw your attention to the increase in the prize money offered this month. I am pleased to announce that February's top Poet and Critiquer prizes will both be $200.00! --Yes folks you heard correctly. As long as the submissions keep increasing, you will keep seeing higher and higher prizes offered each month. I also wanted to let everyone know that I found a mathematical error in my total prize amounts over the past 4 months. Since October I have been stating that we were offering $57 less than what I was really awarding as prizes. I have corrected the stats to now reflect the proper amounts that were awarded since October 2000. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Several people have asked me about The Poetic Link convention. So far 40 people have responded to the Voting Question saying that they would like to attend in May. I am definitely planning on doing something but am asking that the rest of you who have not yet voted... please cast your vote. You can find the voting booth in your User Tools once you log into the system. I need to have as accurate a count as possible, if I am to plan something for us. At this time, I would also like to ask that anyone interested in helping in any way, please contact me. I will likely need as much help as I can get. Please indicate in your e-mail, if you have a specific area you would like to assist with.

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Hi guys. I have a very sad announcement to make this evening. Late in January I was notified of the death of one of our members. To my knowledge this is the first time that we have lost somebody in death. I wanted to share with you, the letter that I received that evening: "I wish to inform you of the death of LadyKate. She died of cancer. But in doing this, I must tell you how important your site was to her. She found great pleasure in writing and posting here. I think the brightness of her last few months was making Rachell top ten pick. She always seem to smile when talking about her poetry . It was the one thing that kept her going. She lived through hell in her lifetime but it ended with the joy of sharing with all of you. And for that I want TO thank you. There is not a lot of happiness when you know your going to die and your site and all these wonderful people gave her much happiness. Our family wish to thank you and yours for that. I think you all deserve a big hand for all you have accomplished and i can only hope that you have received as much as you gave. In this time of our family sorrow it is great knowing that her words meant something to someone else other than us.. Thanks again" LadyKate, may you find that everlasting peace that only the end can provide for us. It pleases me to know that our little "home" here was able to provide a measure of comfort for her during her last days. ----------------------------------------------------------- The main page has a new shortcut. For our Registered Members... try clicking the Main Title Image "ThePoeticLink.com" you will find that it is now a short-cut to log into the site :) Thanks to Regina Heller for that suggestion. Look for more shortcuts and easier navigation in the near future. ----------------------------------------------------------- In response to some people who were offended by my bashing of certain poetry scam sites, I have revised that page to now provide a more informational approach. I have removed most all of my personal feelings and am now merely trying to present the evidence for all to view. You may be interested to know that I am now showing the actual scan of my award letter as part of this evidence. The link to view it, if you are interested is: http://ThePoeticLink.com/scams ----------------------------------------------------------- Lastly, some of you have enquired as to why you have received so few critiques on your February submissions. That was mainly my fault for installing a poorly planned fix. It has been addressed and should not happen next month. As far as your February poems are concerned, you will start getting a bunch of critiques on them after the 8th of the month. I apologize for any confusion or problems I caused. It will not affect scoring or the amount of critiques you are going to receive for February so please do not worry.

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Hi Guys, it's been a little while since our last News update. I have been very busy making some major improvements to the poem submission / critiquing process. The rules are now clarified and should be easy to understand for both critiquers and for people submitting poetry to us. I would like to know your opinions on the rules pages and the changes so please feel free to write me about them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume #1 Anthologies have all been shipped! Each of you who ordered Volume #1 of The Poetic Link Poetry Anthology, should have received it by now. Please let me know what you think of it. I am currently editing Volume #2 and #3. They will be going to the bookbinder at the same time, so please place your orders now if you would like either of these new volumes. I am rather surprised that I have not heard anything from anyone regarding the Anthologies they received. Please let me know your feelings on them.

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