Notes from the Editor

W. Eric Martin edits Boardgame News, pulling together news, reviews, previews, and interviews from the five corners of the gaming world to keep readers up-to-date on play possibilities. Eric has been playing games of all sorts for decades and can almost always be found with a game in his pocket, ready to play at a moment's notice.

Before he took over as editor of Boardgame News, Eric was a full-time freelance writer, working for such magazines as GAMES, Knucklebones, Psychology Today, Woman's Day, Indian Gaming Business, and dozens of incredibly obscure publications. He is also the co-author of two books: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee Bar and Tools of Timekeeping: A Kid's Guide to the History and Science of Telling Time. He continues to write on a part-time basis, primarily to promote awareness of games in mainstream publications and to enable him to eat and have shelter.

This section contains infrequent notes from the editor about the internal workings of Boardgame News.

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Headlines May 1, 2008 - From the Editor: Another Convention Preview March 18, 2008 - From the Editor: Pop-Up Pieces & Notes from Soldiers February 11, 2008 - From the Editor: [OT] Any Creative Types for Animal Welfare? February 3, 2008 - From the Editor: Nuremberg Preview Links January 1, 2008 - From the Editor: New Year, New Writers, New Other Stuff December 10, 2007 - From the Editor: New Look November 28, 2007 - From the Editor: Games for Soldiers, and BGN Mark III November 26, 2007 - From the Editor: Server Downtime November 11, 2007 - From the Editor: Changes to Gone Cardboard October 29, 2007 - From the Editor: Almost Back to Business October 2, 2007 - From the Editor: Asking Questions on the Run September 25, 2007 - From the Editor: Contest Reminders - Caylus Premium Edition & I’m Your Mule

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Articles

From the Editor: Another Convention Preview

The UK Games Expo 2008 takes place May 31-June 1, and since a number of publishers are pegging new releases to the event, I decided to compile them in a small preview for easy browsing. This list in no way compares to the Spiel or Nuremberg previews in the number of titles covered – heck, the initial file has only five games listed – but these titles (Monastery from the Ragnars, Confucius, Ice Flow, Huang Di, and Athene) are covered in some detail. I’ll add a few more titles before the show’s opening at the end of May and note those additions in Convention Preview News.

Head to the UK Games Expo 2008 preview for an early look at these new games!

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From the Editor: Pop-Up Pieces & Notes from Soldiers

Two items on today’s agenda:

1. I’ve switched Board 2 Pieces to a JavaScript-based pop-up format. After playing with CSS for a few hours, I couldn’t achieve the hover effect that I wanted – everything seemed to be in place, but nothing hovered – so I went with this instead. If anyone knows CSS and wants to lend a hand, write me. Write also if the pop-up doesn’t work for you.

Read more...

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From the Editor: [OT] Any Creative Types for Animal Welfare?

My wife Linda and I volunteer at our local SPCA, and despite the great work that they do, they seem to be caught on a daily treadmill that ignores larger issues: marketing, fund-raising, community education and PR efforts. While cleaning cages, for example, we noticed one cat whose fur was terribly matted. We asked whether the cat could be sent to a groomer (another volunteer) to improve its odds for being adopted. We were told that the rabies fund didn’t have enough money to give the cat the shot it needed in order to be groomed.

What’s the cost of a rabies shot? $9.

Read more...

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From the Editor: Nuremberg Preview Links

When I first posted the Nuremberg 2008 preview, I placed it in the categories used for the Essen 2007 preview, which meant that links to the Essen preview (of which there are many) now led to the new Nuremberg one. Why I broke one of the Internet’s oldest rules—Keep all links permanent—I can’t even recall.

In any case, I’ve fixed up my mix-up, and the Essen preview is back in its old URLs (Publishers A-M & Publishers N-Z, while the Nuremberg 2008 preview can now be found elsewhere (Publishers A-M & Publishers N-Z). I believe that all links to the Nuremberg preview will now point to the correct location, so if you find one that doesn’t, please let me know!

Also, you can now comment on the Nuremberg preview as I’ve jerry-rigged a news item at the end of each page. Let me know whether you miss the Overview, the simple list of titles and publishers that linked to the detailed descriptions, or even noticed its absence. Creating the Overview took a lot of time and didn’t seem to add much value. I’m also curious about your response to the larger images and the new link format. What else would you like to see in the preview, either now or for Spiel 2008?

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From the Editor: New Year, New Writers, New Other Stuff

In the final weeks of 2007, Frank Branham, Alfred Wallace and Larry Levy all mentioned that they needed to switch to “at large” status instead of writing columns on a weekly or biweekly basis. That’s a huge chunk of the BGN columnist pool to replace!

In a search for possible replacements, I checked my bookmarked game sites and quickly discovered that the current writing staff of Gone Gaming would fit perfectly in the open slots on BGN—synchronicity in action.

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From the Editor: New Look

When I covered the 2007 Spiel game convention in October, I redesigned the front page so that the convention report appeared above the news headlines, making it the first thing that readers saw when visiting BGN.

Once Spiel shrank to a dot in the rearview mirror and I reverted BGN to its former look, I realized that I needed to overhaul the site design because it hid so much information. A new article or column appeared almost every day, but none of it was visible from the landing screen. Game previews, reviews, and Gone Cardboard updates showed up as a single line in a long list of links and were easily overlooked. News was also lost in a list of headlines.

Read more...

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From the Editor: Games for Soldiers, and BGN Mark III

As Liga noted in an item published today, Boardgame News is celebrating its second birthday. Thanks to Rick Thornquist for starting this site, and thanks to me for continuing to run it. Oh, I kid!

Today is also the final day to contribute to the 2nd Annual Games for Soldiers drive. More than $400 has been raised so far, and any donations made today will drive that total higher. Register for or renew BGN Membership, and I’ll add $10 of the annual $25 fee to the drive.

After completing a bunch of non-game-related writing assignments (snooze), I’m finally catching up on all things BGN. I’ve notified the winners of the October game giveaway, and once I hear from all of them, I’ll announce their names. The games to be given away in December will be posted soon. Once I get through a couple of other items (*cough* Caylus contest *cough*), I’ll be able to get cracking on super secret projects that will rock the BGN world from box to board. Hmm, maybe I’m promising too much. Let me instead just say that I’m doing stuff and will present said stuff when it’s finished. Sound good? Good!

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From the Editor: Server Downtime

The Boardgame News server has been mucho slow for the past few days, but the host has fixed everything now, and the site should be downloading smoothly once again.

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From the Editor: Changes to Gone Cardboard

While BGN’s Gone Cardboard provides a useful and enormous list of newly released and upcoming titles from game publishers in North America, I’ve been bothered by the drab “More Info” link that appears after most titles. What does that mean, “More Info”? And why limit myself to only one link?

So I asked Knut-Michael Wolf at Spielbox whether I could adopt the icons that Spielbox uses in its Essen preview, and he graciously said yes. As I add new titles to Gone Cardboard in the months to come, you’ll start seeing for a link to a publisher’s game page, for a preview on BGN, for the game page on BoardGameGeek.com, for an English rules download, and more. I’ll also incorporate these icons in the Nuremberg 2008 Preview, which will start by January 1, 2008.

I’m also making small changes in how the dates read, such as eliminating all references to seasons—since they don’t work for readers on the southern side of the equator.

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From the Editor: Almost Back to Business

The Essen buzz has faded, my Essen sickness has done the same, and I’m getting back into the swing of things at BGN. I have a juicy column for tomorrow on the Mayfair Games discount policy change, along with several reviews from others lined up for this week. The Memoir’44 Air Pack preview should be up on Friday. I’ll be back in the U.S. on November 1 and will return to regular news coverage by next Monday at the latest. Ask the Publisher will return as irregular columns rather than a daily feature due to a dearth of questions; if you have something to ask the publisher of your choice, please write to askthepublisher@gmail.com.

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From the Editor: Asking Questions on the Run

Two topics:

1. Questions have been tapering off for Ask the Publisher—despite adding more publishers to the roster. Here’s the complete list of publishers involved:

• Czech Games Edition
• daVinci Games
• Days of Wonder
• Face 2 Face Games
• Fantasy Flight
• Nexus Games
• Red Glove
• Rio Grande Games
• Stratelibri
• Tenkigames
• Valley Games
• Z-Man Games

Publishers are standing by, so act now and send your questions to askthepublisher@gmail.com.

2. I’m traveling throughout the month of October, with a trip to Essen, Germany for four days of Spiel (which will be covered on a daily basis during the event) and side trips that are also game-related. More on them as they happen. The BGN Essen Preview will continue to be updated during this time, and over the next two weeks I’ll be posting first impressions and reviews of a number of games that will be shown at Spiel.

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From the Editor: Contest Reminders - Caylus Premium Edition & I’m Your Mule

Two contests are ending soon on Boardgame News, one that requires BGN Membership and one that requires nothing more than time, effort, and exacting precision with your cube management.

For the first contest—I’m Your Mule—I’ll randomly draw the name of one BGN Member who has posted a comment in the post of the original contest announcement and arrange to pick up five games at Spiel for that person. The winner pays for the games and shipping costs; I pay with my precious time at Spiel.

The second contest asked you to determine the largest possible score that one player can obtain in a two-player game of Caylus. Visit the original contest post for details on the game set-up and how to enter. The entry with the highest score wins a copy of Ystari Games’ Caylus Premium Limited edition, which retails for €65.

The original deadline for these contests was September 25th, but I’m on the road until Thursday, Sept. 27th and am extending the deadline to midnight, U.S. east coast time on September 27th since I won’t be able to check Caylus scores until that time anyway. If you haven’t done so already, start moving those cubes!

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From the Editor: Site Outages Anyone?

Is anyone getting errors while trying to access BGN? I’ve encountered micro-outages recently where I click on a page and get an error message, but when I click on the page one second later, I reach the desired page. Just wondering whether others are experiencing the same thing. I do a lot more clicking in the admin section of BGN than any ten people on the open pages, but if there’s a need for more server space, I want to know sooner rather than later.

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From the Editor: New Additions to Ask the Publisher

Larry Whalen at Face 2 Face Games, Roberto di Meglio of Nexus Games, Luca Pansecchi of Tenkigames, and Silvano Sorentino of daVinci Games have all agreed to join BGN’s Ask the Publisher. I’ve been limiting the posts to one or two related questions per day in order to spread out the material I have and keep new material going up every day. With more publishers involved, future posts will likely cover more topics—assuming readers submit questions, that is!

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From the Editor: RSS Feed Trouble?

A couple of readers have contacted me today, Sept. 13, saying that the RSS feeds aren’t working. If you’ve experienced trouble today, please leave a note with the reader that you use so that I can get a sense of where to look for a solution. I’ve made no changes to the feed, and Google Reader, which I use, is carrying the feed just fine, so I’m not sure what’s changed in the past 24 hours that might have caused the drops. You can also send me a note by email.

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From the Editor: Past and Future Travel

I’ve spent the last few days communing with the parental units and taking a breather from posting anything on the site. Now my inbox is jam-packed, so expect to see many updates over the next couple of days.

If anyone reading this note lives in Munich/München and knows about available temporary housing in the city, please write me as my wife and I are visiting the city in October and our previously scheduled housing plans just fell through. Any assistance is appreciated!

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From the Editor: Ask the Publisher - A New Daily Feature

After much fiddling with the site layout, I think I’ve found a decent way to present Ask the Publisher—a daily question and answer section with participation from Days of Wonder, Z-Man Games, Fantasy Flight Games, Valley Games, Red Glove, and Rio Grande Games. (Hopefully you saw the new section at the top of the screen. If not, then the layout solution might not be as good as I think it is!)

In Ask the Publisher, one or more questions will be posted daily along with the publisher’s response, and those responses will be catalogued under an umbrella category as well as separate subcategories for each publisher.

Of course this section won’t work unless you submit questions, so hop to it! Send your questions to askthepublisher@gmail.com and you might end up seeing them on Boardgame News. Please send questions to different publishers in separate emails, and include the publisher’s name in the subject line. Want to grill a publisher that isn’t participating? Send your question anyway, and I’ll see whether I can draw out an answer or three.

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From the Editor: Belated Video Reviews from Ted Cheatham

Ted Cheatham sent me a few video reviews of games back in May 2007, and although I intended to figure out how to post them, it became one of those to-do list items that keeps sliding from list to list as I wasn’t sure how to proceed. The project grew in mind whenever I thought about it, so I pushed it off.

Turns out that the process really isn’t so hard after all. Last week, I posted Ted’s new review of Gnome Crystals, which he picked up at Origins 2007. Today and for the next two Wednesdays, I’ll post the other video reviews lined up in the queue. My apologies to Ted for taking so long!

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From the Editor: New Feature - Ask the Publisher

Since March 2007, Boardgame News has been publishing a (generally) weekly column called “Ask Jay” in which gamers can ask Rio Grande Games head honcho Jay Tummelson questions about his products and policies. Last week, I announced that “Ask Zev” would be added to the site, with Zev Shlasinger from Z-Man Games answering questions as well.

Three more publishers have now signed up for a grilling from BGN readers:

• Days of Wonder, with Eric Hautemont and Mark Kaufmann
• Fantasy Flight Games, with Jeremy Stomberg
• Valley Games, with Kevin Nesbitt

The format for “Ask the Publisher” is still in the works, but before I can publish anything, I’ll need questions from you. You can post questions in the comment section of this post, but a better method would be to write to AskthePublisher@gmail.com and include something in the subject line to help me direct the query.

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From the Editor: “Ask Zev” Debuts Soon

BGN readers have asked for more feedback from publishers along the lines of “Ask Jay,” the (mostly) weekly column of Q&As with Rio Grande’s Jay Tummelson. Starting just as soon as I receive enough questions to make it feasible, Boardgame News will debut “Ask Zev” with Z-Man Games’ Zev Shlasinger taking your questions and dispensing words of wisdom.

I’m trying to rope other publishers into participating as well, and if more of them sign on, I’ll likely change the format to something other than a dozen separate columns from various publishers that all need coordination on six different schedules. Again, that’s a matter for the future. Right now, you just need to send your Z-Man related questions to editor@boardgamenews.com…

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From the Editor: RSS Future Update

Last week, a few of the BGN columns showed up on the RSS feed earlier than they should have. I’ve looked at the coding for the feed (which I hadn’t changed) and scheduled a number of future postings myself with none of them appearing on the RSS feed, so I’m thinking that each of those columnists (who shall remain nameless) accidentally posted their columns without setting the date and time of publication, then realized their mistake and fixed the date. The RSS feed cares only for first publication, however, so the column headers (without the body) were sent out anyway. Alas, no one from the future has succeeded in contacting us…

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From the Editor: RSS Oddities from the Future

Alert readers have pointed out entries in the RSS feed that don’t link to articles on Boardgame News when you click on them. All of those RSS entries link to articles and columns that are scheduled to be published within the next week. I haven’t changed anything in the feed, so I’m not sure why this is happening, but I’ll see whether I can adjust it so that articles appear in the feed when they’re actually published on the site. After all, not only do you have the annoying problem on not finding a column you want to finish—the feed won’t include a fresh link to the article once it actually appears on the site!

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From the Editor: The Essen 2007 Preview and a New Look

So this is what Rick meant.

It’s only July 1, and the BGN Essen 2007 Preview already includes more than 90 items. Sure, a number of them are duplicates—such as Chicago Poker, which appears under both Mayfair and Phalanx—but that’s still a huge number of titles considering that Spiel doesn’t take place for another three-and-a-half months. The Essen 2006 Preview topped out at just under 400 listings including dupes, so it’s safe to say this year might have 450-500 listings by the opening of the Messe doors on October 18th.

Read more...

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From the Editor: Hey, Whassup?

Someone mentioned to me recently that the editor’s note is at the top of the BGN front page, yet it’s one of the least updated elements on the site. Anyone running across the site for the first time might think it’s been abandoned—or at least neglected. So I thought I should post a message to bring the editor’s section into the present.

Hi.

On another topic, I’m redesigning the site and will debut the new look on July 1 when the Essen Preview goes live. Nothing too drastic—just an attempt to bring more color to the look and to use the space in more efficient ways.

Finally, I know that Rick encountered a certain problem in the past, and with the increased number of previews on BGN I’m now seeing it as well. The problem? Images are migrating from this site onto BoardGameGeek without permission or acknowledgement. I’ll start adding watermarks to the images in the near future to deter the sticky fingers.

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From the Editor: A New Columnist or Three

I’d like to welcome a new columnist to the Boardgame News crew today: Steve Bennett, who will write about party games on a roughly monthly basis. Steve tells you everything you’d ever want to know about him in his introductory column. Steve’s first review will appear on Friday, May 25th. Another writer will likely alternate party game coverage with Steve on a biweekly basis, but more details about that in the weeks ahead.

A third new columnist is waiting in the wings, and I’m excited to have him appear on BGN, even if it’s only on a monthly basis.

I’m trying to broaden the range of game coverage and opinion on the site, so anyone else who’s interested in writing for BGN, whether on a one-time basis or more frequently, is welcome to write me through the Contacts link at the top of this page.

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From the Editor: A Look Ahead to the Essen 2007 Preview

More than a week has passed on BGN’s new Internet host and its bigger, beefier server, and everything seems to be working fine with the site outside of the gamestore database wiki, which lost its theme file in the move and is currently a grand mess of ugliness. I’m trying to recover that file from the previous host instead of recreating it as I’d hate to spend the time doing that again.

A steady server will be essential since I plan to launch the Essen 2007 Preview by July 1. Taking a cue from Rick, I’ll post the Preview in two pieces in order to ease the updating process and downloading time. The Preview already has more than two dozen games on it, a few of which have been announced previously on BGN and many more that have to date only been hinted at by their publishers.

One change from previous previews is that the Essen 2007 Preview (and all future convention previews) will be a members-only feature. BGN membership costs $25 annually. Members (and columnists) will be eligible to win games every month, receive the occasional discount from game publishers, and access the convention previews.

I’ll likely post items about Essen releases of special interest, such as the new Fragor and Richard Breese titles, in the main news section, but the bulk of the Essen-related material will be posted straight into the Preview to reduce the duplication of effort that I went through with the Nuremberg titles.

Coverage of titles due for release in the U.S.—along with the columns, Gone Cardboard, Board 2 Pieces, game reviews, and all the rest—will remain available for all readers.

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From the Editor: Now Serving…

Months after I had hoped to move BoardgameNews.com to a new server, I’ve finally made the transition. Take that, you dastardly out-of-date MySQL! On your knees, cowardly CPU limits!

I apologize for taking so long to make the move, but ideally the site will now be able to handle the influx of new readers and overall higher volume of traffic. This will be especially important once summer rolls around, as the current plan is to unveil the Essen Preview on July 1—and the massive bolus of February’s Nuremberg Preview was what sparked the site outages in the first place. Following Rick’s lead, the Essen Preview will be split in two parts to ease your download time and make it easier for me to update. Heck, I already have close to twenty titles on the list—maybe it should be split in thirds.

While the database and files are all at the new server, the behind-the-scenes activity to point readers in the right direction will take 24 hours or so from the time of this posting. If you’re reading these words, then the Internet gods in your part of the world have done their thing.

If anything on the site seems askew—images missing, files absent, links broken—please write me so that I can fix the problem. In the week ahead, I’ll be posting news from the past couple of days (Extrablatt anyone?), spending more time on the Gamestore Wiki (starting with a link in the header), and cleaning up behind the scenes. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome…

(Bumped from Thursday, April 26th)

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From the Editor: Announcing the BGN International Game Store Wiki

While talking to publishers at New York Toy Fair, I heard suggestions as to which games to cover, trends to track, and features to add on Boardgame News. One of the common requests was for a comprehensive game store directory.

Yes, many publishers maintain a list of game stores on their websites, but these lists typically include only those stores that carry the publisher’s products. This arrangement makes sense as those publishers want to sell their own titles, not to mention that they might not communicate with stores that don’t carry their games. At the same time publishers know that the designer game industry at large benefits from people visiting any game store.

Read more...

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From the Editor: Be Our Guest! Be Our Guest! Open Membership on Boardgame News

One of the most frequent requests that I receive from readers is for me to open the site to allow comments from everyone instead of restricting that ability to BGN members. I’ve denied this request to date, as did Rick before me, for several reasons:

1. I don’t want to police comments. From all the evidence I’ve seen, BGN members respect one another’s opinions, and while they may disagree, they’re not disagreeable. They don’t toss insults and dismiss someone for holding a contrary opinion. The same cannot be said for everyone in the gaming community.
2. I want to keep the comment section meaningful. Whenever people post comments, they almost always say something worthwhile. They’re not simply adding a “me too,” “thumbs up,” or “you got that right.”
3. Most important of all, I want readers to become members. Running Boardgame News takes a lot of work, and the only pay I receive is from advertising and annual membership fees. The ability to post comments is a small way for me to say “thanks for thinking I do something worthwhile.”

This final reason might have been the most important one. I had high hopes of cutting down my freelance writing assignments and devoting myself to BGN full-time, but the numbers aren’t there to justify spending as much time as I do on the site, much less attend every convention and trade show. Moreover, I don’t see anything changing in the months ahead that will encourage readers to sign up.

Therefore, I thought I’d experiment with opening the door to everyone to see whether this somehow makes Boardgame News a more valuable experience for those currently unwilling to pay for the site. Instead of starting threads on BoardGameGeek along the lines of “I just saw on Boardgame News that Reiner Knizia is designing a game based on the Communist Manifesto and here’s what I think,” all readers will be able to immediately offer their thoughts on BGN itself as to whether Dr. K will do justice to the Marxist worldview. Ideally traffic will increase on the site, which will attract more advertisers, and everyone’s teeth will be whiter and brighter.

Note that this change is an experiment, and if the site is flooded with personal insults, then I’ll pull those individuals’ accounts. If the situation really deteriorates, I’ll return to the members-only system. I don’t have admins helping me police the site, so my tolerance for bad behavior will be non-existent.

Anyone who signs up without paying the $25 membership fee will receive a guest account; only members will be eligible for the monthly game giveaways and any other benefit I can devise. To sign up, click on the Donate link in the left-hand column, then click on “Register.” (If you want to stop and click on Donate on the way, I won’t hold it against you.) Note that you must use your real name for your screen name; if you don’t, I will reject the sign-up request.

I wholeheartedly thank each and every current BGN member. Your support is extremely encouraging, and I hope this experiment will work out well for all of us. If not, I’ll try something else…

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From the Editor: More on BGN Downtime and Possible Solutions

Alas, Boardgame News is blinking in and out of use faster than I ever thought possible. I’ve received suggestions from numerous people, and everything they recommend either has already been taken care of or doesn’t eliminate the problem. Page caching is on, template caching is on, the blacklist for spammers is in place, the referral pages aren’t being hit by spammers, and the framistan is freshly lubed.

I’ve tweaked the RSS feed to reduce the number of items going out at one time to try to reduce the load, but that still seems to be the cause of the downtime, given what I see in the “CPU exceeded error log” that the host so generously provides. As I mentioned in my column, the “problem” primarily seems to be one of too much traffic, a good problem to have—as long as I can find the right solution. I’m going with either distributed servers (harder to set up for the tech-challenged) or a dedicated server (more expensive) to solve the problem, but that’s not going to happen until I return from Toy Fair in the middle of next week.

Much as I’d like to make BGN my full-time job, I’m still writing for various magazines, which has left me little time this week to solve the downtime dilemma. I appreciate the suggestions from everyone, and I’m far more frustrated about the outages than you are. As soon as I can make it happen, they will stop.

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