Flow my blog tears, THE JO-TEL said

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

-Winston Churchill

The Jo-tel is not selling out. By no means did we feel like we were too big for our editme britches. To the contrary, we liked the freedom that the astoundingly flawed editme software provided. However, in the end, we wanted two main things that editme could not provide: (1) Jo-tel.com as opposed to Jo-tel.editme.com; and (2) Freedom from spammers in the comments section.

The first speaks for itself really. I’m no sociologist, but the Jo-tel has always been more about “The Jo-tel” than about “editing me”. But the second reason is really big for us. When the Jo-tel was at its best, it was largely as a result of the comments section and the community of feedback that that venue fostered. Our posts are our posts and while they’re nice and all, my favorite part of the Jo-tel has always been the community that it attracted in the comments section. I began to even see the main page as a mere vessel for the bounty of observations, links, and zings in the comments section. But as many of you know, the second half of 2006 was marred by unwelcome influx of spam comments: big fat blocks of links to online gambling and pharaceuticals that utterly suffocated people’s ability to comment. At that point, even though our content continued at its normal pace and quality, I felt like a was the captain of a viking ship, masts drawn (did viking ships have masts?), wind at my back, but no one else on the ship, and no particular destination in mind.

It was at that point when the then-defunct, Jo-tel.com page was put decidedly back on the front burner. We started working on this new page back in November of 2006. All the thanks for getting things rolling go to Chris Jaskot, whose html acumen helped us to create our platform. So, a few months passed, some work was done, and here it is: the new Jo-tel.

One key difference: comments are on a post-by-post basis. Back in November, we had a fireside chat about what we wanted the new Jo-tel to look like. The online enchange began thusly:

SHARK: Hail ants!
PETE: I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

And then quickly turned into a heated bitch-fest, with various parties advocating a comments section for each post and others advocating a no-holds-barred, editme-style, war-on-the-shore, steel-cage comments arena at the bottom of the page. In the end, we are going with the post-by-post comments section. The reason: it’s much easier to program. So, okay, we’re lazy and relatively unsavvy at html, but let’s see how it goes.

Finally, thanks to everyone who visits this site. Please continue to visit us and the others in our little network (see the Friends and Fambly links).

Blogs are the new talking.

Cold allies of steel
Couldn’t buy the way it feels
Rusty and divided steel
The race is yet to come

-Guided by Voices, “You Are Not an Airplane”

-Shark