It was exactly a year ago today that SFSite announced the launch of Bright Weavings on its front page, and started the ball rolling. I'd had the site up for about a week before that, fixing minor tweaks, after six months of intensive work, designing, collecting essays and interviews and reviews and art... but that was the day that it made it properly into the public domain.

A year later, and the site has metamorphasized into what I'm happy to call a community on the web. Very active forums, where people discuss all things GGK (and more!), a newsletter going out to nearly 300 people (yes, that's you!) and upwards of 38,000 page views a month and climbing. It takes up far more of my time than it should, but I can't help it. In the year since it's been live, I've also improved my web and graphic skills, to the point where I decided that obviously I didn't have enough to do already and I should redesign the site to make it - well - a nicer place to hang out. So if you go and visit the site you'll see it's got a new look 'n feel, with a new logo, and a more integrated navigation. I've put the sub-section navigation onto a right-hand bar to match the left-hand bar that was already there. I've used style sheets, so the text and headings etc are more consistent. And the ubiquitous javascript mouseovers add to the interactive fun.

All the content is still there, in the same place. Well, almost the same place. The newsletter has a section of its own now. And I wouldn't be emailing in the middle of the month just to tell you about a redesign. Well, maybe I would. But I can tell you that there is some more stuff on the site as well.

For your convenience, I've added a search engine, so that you can search for something particular you remember reading but can't remember where you saw it. And I've also added a sitemap, so you can go to one page and see where everything is on the site, including subsections and what's in them.

In terms of new content, just a little for now... but I've added some more books to my book recommendations page, and more importantly, I've added an FAQ to the site. There are a few questions that I get asked again and again, so I thought I'd answer them for the record, and put them on the site. So if you want to know about things like copyright issues, whether GGK is going to revisit Fionavar, whether I know what the next book is going to be or how you can find out more about the background to the books, then check out the faq. I'm not going to give you a direct link to it; it'll be pretty obvious once you visit the site...

So - if you want to read the faq, leave a message in the forums, or just see the redesign... click through to

http://www.brightweavings.com

Have a good weekend all!

Until later,

Deborah