Welcome, everyone, to the new FBTB. While the dust settles from the reconstruction, I’d like to take a short moment to thank you for your patience during these times. To the fans that keep coming back: thank you! You are what makes this site as great as it is. To the staff here at FBTB: thank you! Without your patience and understanding and unwavering support, this transition would never have happened.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ve got some great things to show you guys. First up is the new design. I like to affectionately refer to this incarnation of the site as FBTB 3.0. I decided to go with a much darker look and feel to shake things up a bit. I have Mike to thank for that gorgeous header art. We initially thought up that scene to be drawn up in cartoon form, but he ended up constructing the scene and photographing it intending to trace over it. But I loved the photo so much we decided to just go with that instead. One of the endeavors of our staff is to involve more community members to build, and this new header art would serve as a perfect example of that.
FBTB 3.o will also have a new direction in terms of news coverage. We will be expanding our coverage to include all licensed lines, not just Star Wars. We haven’t forgotten where we come from, hence the name still being From Bricks To Bothans. We debated about changing it, From Bricks to Broomsticks, From Bricks to Brands, but in the end, we decided to stay true to our roots and stick with the Bothan moniker.
Next is a new and improved forums. We’ve done away with the “no free email” rule so those of you who have had troubles registering before shouldn’t have a problem now. There are a few other policy changes in place, so I encourage you to read up on those in the Info forum. Our forum is now integrated fully into the site, which was a long time coming. The old forums are still at www.fbtbforums.net for archival purposes, but the boards will live at www.fbtb.net/forums from now on.
Our chat room has survived the transition, for better or for worse. But now there’s a permanent link on the top navigation bar.
Probably the biggest new feature is that (almost) all of our news is now properly archived, dating back to 2002. There were a few casualties during the import process but most of it made it in. And it’s searchable!
I realize that there are still quite a few holes to fill up with content, such as reviews. During the transition, one of the things we had to sacrifice for the time being was our set index and reviews that were done. We’ll be working hard over the next few days and weeks to set up a new set database to browse and if available have a review about the set. A few of the other secondary pages will be updated in the coming weeks as well, so watch this space.
It’s 4:30 am as I write this, and I have to contact my registrar to flip the switch now. I can’t think of much more to say at this point, but I welcome your comments and criticisms. Post your feedback; I’d love to hear them.
Again, thank you for your patience. We hope you enjoy the new site.
