Seems just a week ago, I was looking at re-designing the site for the umpteenth time and I was rather discouraged. I had like the way it turned out each and every time, but it wasn't right just yet. I don't know what made me think this, all I know is that it was the truth. I worked constantly to improve the site and I rarely had the chance to focus just on the content, because I was spending so much time just working on getting the site looking good. I can't say that time is over but...look around. This site has a pretty decent look about it now, I think. I finally actually tried drawing a banner in Photoshop, rather than MSPaint (stop laughing!!!). Turned out good enough for me.

What's the point? Well, I wanted to say that I haven't gotten here alone. There have been plenty of people who've given me advice, tips, fixed my code or just general encouragemnet on the project, and I have to say that without this, the site might never have even gotten close to being finished. A big thanks go out to Almagil, Kefkah, Owen-Lars and all the guys over at swgrangers.com who've given me advice, feedback, criticism, and just been there to encourage me when I was willing to give up on this project. It's a big deal to me to have so many people there to help without reservation and without asking for anything in return. I'd also like to say thank you to the guys who run PSDTuts, A List Apart, and Dynamic Drive for all their newbie guides. While they might not have personally been there to help, their articles are what made this site possible.

Basically, in my last post, I warned that in the short term, there wouldn't be much here. Well, barring any trajedy, that short term should be even shorter that I expected. Me and Raven are both working on this site here and we want to make it as awesome for you as possible.

There's a lot to be said for the constant re-magining of something. It takes a lot of time to completely start from scratch so many, many times and to keep coming back with new ideas, new looks, and new concepts. I blame myself for this. I chose the moniker Phenix becasue I viewd myself as a person who needed constant change in his own life, a rebirth, if you will, over and over again throughout my life. This isn't a problem in my own life. However, it has become a problem with the website. I've spend so much time trying to get the look right that we've done next to nothing content wise. All that is coming to an end very soon here. I really, really like the way the site is turning out.

We have some issues that are getting under my skin a bit in Firefox, but on the whole, the site is coming together well enough, so that I feel like I'm able to say that this is pretty damned good. I'm likely going to be less available over the next couple of weeks as far as internet access goes, so this is a perfect opportunity for me to actually come up with some content to be set on all the pages and get this done. I'm really hoping that this is the last time I need to completely redo what we've already done so far. The layout works for me, the colorscheme and personalized images are working (except in Firefox), and all in all, I'm pleased to say that this is my website. Sure, we want to get that banner changed soon, but in the end, it's coming along rather well.

In the short term, you're not going to see much here. Know, however, that a lot of stuff is happening as far as getting our site compliant with all major browsers. In addition, we're bringing new software to the game as far as editorials and forums go. With any luck, we'll have a community blogging spot so that all of our Original Gamesters can have their works published. We don't have a timeframe for you on this, but we're hoping that by the begining of April, you'll have a fully-functioning site with plenty of content, both from the staff and from other users.

Everything old is new again. It's an old expression, and fairly appropriate for this site, as well as lives in general. Those of you who've stuck with us will quickly recognize that we've already gotten back into our old habit of not updating on time. So, at least there hasn't been a huge change, right? But hey, as always, we're learning from our mistakes and we actually have started moving forward. More work's been going on recently than has for a long time. Which is good.

So what are we doing? Well, while the content isn't up yet, the visuals have finally gotten fairly solid. The site is actually working for both IE and Firefox, which is always a good benchmark. We're also working behind the scenes (that does seem to be a fairly frequent event) to come up with new things. Such as the potential of a store. It's nothing we're ready to actually announce as official, but things have been moving forward and ideas are being tossed around. Stay tuned.

For now, take a look around and we'll keep plugging away on our end.