New Stuff, and a Look Back.

You may have noticed some new stuff here on VR since your last visit…

Perhaps biggest thing to happen is the inclusion of all the posts from VR 1.0 on Yahoo Groups. That's over 100,000 messages that have been converted and uploaded for your viewing pleasure. On a similar note, the entire Megazine Letters group has been uploaded and added to our existing archive of letters. The inclusion of these posts takes us over half a million posts!.

We have acheived this in a little over 5 years. VR on Yahoo was started March 13th 2001 by the very cool Broccoli The Evil One (aka Fee). The group quickly grew and became the biggest group in the 'weirdos' category on Yahoo, a distinction we still hold. After a year of intense posting it became clear that Yahoo was unreliable and unsuited to such a large movement. I took over the technical side of things, and created the http://webplus.pandora.abelgratis.com/]beginnings of the current VR[/url] on my own personal webspace. After another year we realised that we had to expand again. We became VR.com on Christmas Day 2002.. Since that time we have expanded bit by bit, added a photo gallery here, a shoutbox there, and we have grown and grown as a community.

It's a great acheivement, VR has changed so many lives and I'm sure it will continue to do so. Here's hoping we hit a million before 2011 .



You may also have noticed there has been a bit of a changeround on the forum. We think the new arrangement better fits the current generation of VRers. I have also archived off a lot of old posts (pre August 2003) into an archive board. This keeps the forum speedy and relevant.

I've also added a few more colour schemes and cleaned up the existing ones a little. Expect more schemes to be added over the course of today.

Finally, you may have noticed this spiffy new front page. Since we upgraded VR a few months ago we have been without a front page, well it's back - and better than before. Welcome the return of the recent posts box, MIA for at least a year. It also conforms to the colour scheme you specifiy in your profile.


The problem we had with the front page before was that I never had anything interesting to write! Since we have so many talented writers on here, I thought it would be a good idea to open the front page up to people who actually have talent. As of now, every member has the ability to post to the front page. When you post, it will go into a queue to be moderated - if the mods think that your post is worthwhile, then it will be approved for the front page. Otherwise it will be moved to an appropriate board. Eventually we hope to set up a crack team of talented writers that can help mod this board. The new front page has replaced all exisiting personal columns, I hope the authors of said columns will become contributors to the front page. I've moved a few posts from the columns to the front page to give an idea of how it all looks.

If you have talent and want the exposure of being on the front page, give it a shot. You'll be helping yourself get exposure and you'll help keep VR fresh.


As always, if you have any questions, comments or criticisms feel free to post them in this thread.

I don't see the "it's"?

But I've added the capitals to the Megazine boards. Don't worry about being petty, if its a problem, its a problem

Quote: Colin

Does anyone know why my Ten Most Recent Posts shows stuff from 2001?

Technical explanation is that posts from 2001 have a timestamp that is 9 digits long. These come before posts with a timestamp of 10 digits because of the way I was sorting them into the correct order.

I've changed the sorting method now, and it works as expected


And I've got rid of the errant it's

i tried to look at the Mega-zine Letters link, but i got Access Denied.

I'm accessing from a library computer. It's a pity I can't look, but it's not your fault. It's the same with Ian's site. I can't look at that either, but at least I've seen it once.

Thanks. I just tried it. It did
Access Denied.

Oooh violet!!

Excellent work Mr Andy

Sure, those posts never went anywhere - they were just moved into the convo board / spam board as appropriate. So they will be in there somewhere

[quote=im just sitting in my car and waiting link=1155462731/15#22 date=1155831258]you say you want people to possibly contribute , but what woule you like people to try and avoid posting.  

do you want just "newsworthy" writing's or can people post creative or funny works , or dayly / weekly things.  Say like four part specials on a subject, or weekly funnies (comics/jokes)

This way it'll lesson the amount of work on the moderation side if less people try to post if they know its innapropreate....[/quote]

Stop being stupid and asking stupid questions Rob.

Has the polls board been scrapped? Maybe Im just too tired to find it.

Doesnt seem to be used as much nowadays, anyway. Just curious.