[Newspoetry] technical notes etc.

[Joe Futrelle]

Hi Newspoets,

I've been tinkering with the site over the weekend and I'd like to
fill you in on some of the changes, and ask for comments:

1. new slogan: "all the newspoems fit to download". I made up this
variation on Dirk's suggestion; I welcome others.  I'd like to have it
randomly select a slogan out of a pool of alternatives every time the
site is loaded.

2. I added a "A Year Ago" link so you can see what the newspoem was on
this day in 1999.

3. I changed the URLs of the 1999 newspoems and changed the naming
scheme for 2000, and updated all the links accordingly.  So now all
newspoems from 1999 -- not just the ones starting in July -- have the
following URL format:

    /1999/YYMMDD.html

and 2000's have the following one:

    /2000/MMDD.html

4. I moved all audio files off of duracef.  Unknown fokes, this
includes the altx interview; the audio files are all being served off
of newspoetry.ncsa.uiuc.edu which means that the altx interview audio
now streams instead of having to be downloaded.  Less audio files on
duracef means we have a huge amount of space for text, so start
sending in those newsnovels!

5. I changed the titles.  They use the actual NYT font, swiped from
nytimes.com.  The new titles are darker and the "Newspoem" one is
fuzzy because of having to scale up a small image.  I want to go back
to William's old, brighter color scheme but first I have to get a
larger image of the NYT logo, probably by scanning the paper NYT
itself.  This probably violates copyrights, patents, and the ten
commandments, but hey.

6. I messed with the calendar script so that you can navigate back to
old years and forward to new ones.

7. I'm not updating the author and title indexes because I'm writing
scripts to handle all of that, so for 2000 so far the only index
available at the moment is by date.  The management apologizes for any
inconvenience this might cause.

P.S. Thanks to those of you all you have sent in newspoems for 2000.
Keep 'em coming!

Joe Futrelle
Your Faithful Newspoetry Editor