Kappa Beta Serving the transgendered community since 1988

I've been pretty quiet lately and you probably haven't noticed many changes on the web site. Some of you may be wondering what's up.

Well, to start with, let me explain a little about the web site. After our previous host decided to express their personal bigotry, not only did I move the web site to a new host, but did so using what is known as a "content management system" (CMS). The CMS is known as Drupal, if you've ever heard of it. There were several reasons for doing this, but the main ones were to be able to open up the ability for more people to contribute content, and to make it easier for someone to take over the site should something happen to me.

At any rate, there is a new version of Drupal that allows even more flexibility and extensibility. I have been working to move our current site to this new version. At the same time, I've been adding some new functionality – some will be immediately obvious, some won't. But it is all designed to increase the value of the web site to KB.

One example of this new functionality is that this will probably be the last Pink Slip to be placed on the Yahoo groups. It will be moved onto the web site. Why?

Well, for two main reasons. The first is that you, the member, will be able to contribute your article directly without the hassle of email.

"Gosh, I think I remember that Diana wrote something about labels a few months ago, but I don't want to go back and read all the issues trying to find it!" You won't have to! With the "new and improved" Pink Slip on the web site, you will be able to pull up all the articles that Diana has written, or all the articles concerning labels. Plus, you'll see the first few paragraphs (called a teaser) to determine if that's the one you want; then you pull up the full article.

I'm pretty excited by this feature, both because it should make The Pink Slip more useful to you, and because I wrote the program.

The recipe feature is still there, and I would love to see more members contributing to that. Right now, any one can sign in and create a recipe for everyone to see – and use.

With some luck, the classified ads feature will return in a new form that is better integrated with the rest of the site.

And, I'm hoping to open the calendar up so that you can publish your own dates on it. (There was a bug on the current site that prevented me from doing this.)

I am also moving a few more things to the members' only area. That means you will have to log in to see them – and that includes The Pink Slip.