Phew, what a week! On Tuesday sexyloops.co.uk went down and the board was deleted. Contrary to popular opinion and most unusually it wasn't my fault either. I had thought about installing a new board two weeks ago, when I was trying to move it to the Sexyloops Vserver. I just didn't expect to have to do it.

One thing that's surprised me is that in the 24 hours of making the new one live, 43 members have joined. Hell we never had that many people posting in the first place, even with the hundreds of board members. Of course joining the board has its advantages, not only in the ability to post, but also in tracking topics, the messenger service and cookies. But I'm surprised all the same. And pleasantly of course.

The Board

The “New” Board is the most recent Ikonboard available and has various bells and whistles, such as a notepad, a considerably more powerful messenger, and a calendar. I've enabled the calendar (accessible through announcements) to see if it's useful. Let me know what you think; I can always disable it again.

If you have any suggestions regarding the board and it's layout, then now would be a good time to pass them on.

I'll be editing and reusing the content from the old board within the rest of Sexyloops as HTML pages. I've wanted to do this for a while (almost a year actually) but hadn't found the time. It will be an on-going task and I'll begin this week. It's not ideal – is anything? – but it is strangely enough for the best. Funny how these things happen.

Anyway, now I have total control over the site. Both sexyloops.com and sexyloops.co.uk are hosted on the Sexyloops server and each has their own virtual server. This should make for a faster board and site. Whenever something like this happens I find myself on a steep rollercoaster learning curve. In fact my whole life is a bit like this.

Hell a little more action and soon I'll be able to run a website.

Of course this all meant that there was a distinct lack of new content last week – some people even emailed me to complain (give me money – then complain!) – which is no bad thing at the moment. I'm working through the entire site, rewriting parts and sorting out layout inconsistencies. It's a big job, but only I can do it. After this I'm going to rebuild Sexyloops as a database in preparation for various future plans. Not that I actually plan anything you understand. It just sort of happens, and really quickly.

Google

Last week saw Google begin indexing sexyloops.com, enabling us (that's me and you) to experiment with their internal search capabilities. Google is fantastic – we (me, mainly) take about 400 uniques each day through Google, mostly looking for porn. I asked the Sexyloops readers (that's you) how useful they (you again) found the new search, and I've (me) had lots of positive feedback. So much so that I've (me again) placed a search box off the frontpage. So far Google (neither you nor I, but a robot) has indexed about 10% of the site. So it can only get better.

Following a request last week, I've returned to one of the previous ideas and made the last 7 frontpages available instead of the “The Regulars”. This makes sense since Mike is fishing for non-existent seatrout, Lars is moving castle and Sean is tinselling; so I've changed the lh column on the frontpage.

So big changes in the delivery – are more are following; I'm tightening up the site :)

Fishing

This has been a week of fishing for me, despite the site problems, and I've been out every day. The catching has been pretty slow, but the company has been great. For the last four days, I've been visiting Mike from the Board and Metre. We've been seatrouting, although we may as well have been Mugwai Hunting, and in fact on Saturday I was very tempted, so elusive have they become.

Unfortunately Denmark didn't happen for us, due to both the Board and a lack of caravans, however we did fish Mike's local rivers and drank all his whisky. Funny how often that happens. He also taught me that wonderful guitar song “My dog has flees”. It may have been a hit somewhere, although not here as it so happens.

It's been interesting meeting Mike. He thought I was older, and after drinking half the whisky bottle he pointed this out to me, and said he was surprised that I was only 34 and not 40. I pointed out that I was in fact only 32 and getting younger. Mike almost fell off his chair, although whether this was due to shock or inebriation he couldn't say exactly. I have my suspicions it was the latter.

Mike lives in a very odd house by the way, and you need a map just to find your bedroom.

Idaho

I'll be leaving Germany fairly soon (Thursday I think it is) in time to catch the most expensive flight in the world: from Gatwick to Salt Lake City. I'll be attending the FFF Conclave and looking forward to meeting many of the Sexyloops Board members. I hope to learn from each and every one, even Ian Walker, who reckons he may be able to make it over for one day of shorts wearing and detonation.

I'll hang out for a week or so afterwards, assuming I survive, because I haven't been this far inland before and I'd like to see it. It's a hell of a long way to go for only the week, and Sexyloops will be run from either there or else Sean's pad in London – not that he knows it yet, although following the recent and most informative PoD series involving him, two sheep and grandma, I'm sure Sean is itching to run Sexyloops again for a couple of days ;)

While over I'll take the FFF Basic and Master exams. It will be a nice bunch to be a member of I think. I've learned a tremendous amount through my online interactions and made a number of friends. Apart from which I expect to learn a great deal more – isn't that what it's all about: learning and connecting?

Paul