Something has to be done!

No sweat! It's being done already! All over the world, night and day! The bad guys are at it in particular, with their illimited extorted stolen means, the good guys are sacrificing themselves in trying to stand up to them. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about something more modest, my portal site and its home page.

Last month, April 2005, the number of unique visitors per month to my site fell from 25,860 to 18,214. This is still good, but my hope and reasonable expectancy both are rather for further increases... So something has to be done indeed!

There are a number of reasons for the brakes having been applied to the further expansion. First of all, for 9 days out of a month of only 30 (extrapolated to 31 days, the figure would have been somewhat better, namely 18,821), my home page had been replaced by a black page mourning Terri Schiavo. This was my decision. And I am still fully standing by my decision ["Stand By Your Man", as the recommendation in Tammy Wynette's famous song, interpreted.among others by Elton John, goes... ;-)], even if, I am sure, a good deal of my audience has a different view on the matter.

No one summed the case up better than Christopher G. Adamo in his article America's system of justice is broken on Rational Review:

In Florida, based on the testimony of one man, a defenseless woman is starved to death. His "evidence" was so flimsy that it normally would be insufficient to uphold even a parking ticket. The judge who nonetheless concurred and ordered her starvation is so mired in conflicts of interest that he should have been automatically recused from the case.

Yet the Governor of the state, whose job it ostensibly is to protect citizens from being deprived of life, liberty, or property absent due process of law, stands impotently by and allows the travesty to proceed to its malevolent end, claiming that intervention on her behalf would be contrary to "the rule of law."

The second reason for a drop of visitors was that on February 8, 2005, I had lost all my data (and very little is recovered so far), including the opt-in lists of my newsletters, so that I cannot announce new content but to a small number among my audience.

Finally, less content had indeed been added, though it was at hand, because I had not enough time for that, didn't feel like it at all, having had to deal with an exceptional lot of red tape imposed by those bad extortionist guys (if you don't know whom I mean, write me a letter), having had some Spring feelings leading to some entanglements (don't ask), having had to deal with my health, my household and my holdings. As nobody is laughing here, they all have to be punished and need to go to this page to get redemption.

I forgot a main reason: I absolutely spend the largest part of my days and my nights with correspondence, with e-mail. Not that I dislike it. A lot of the very best texts I write myself and of the very best texts the prestigious authors I stay in contact with write, are in that correspondence, and not on my websites. A pity, but they can always be used later, so that's not the problem, the problem is: it's simply too much for the time of one man alone who has no help whatsoever with anything, except the generosity [and, ahem, the self-interest ;-)] of the authors who send me their great essays.

So, something radical will be done:

My very successful blog "CB's notewok" will be moved to its own page, with just links to it on the home page. It will also become more lively again with more frequent posts.
Two new cooperative blogs will be added to replace the defunct "CB's fireplace".
The home page will be improved in several steps to make it more useful and maybe a bit better looking, the main concern being though to take away anything that slows down the loading of that most important page (with the occasional exception maybe of some beautiful pictures, should they be required). Some has already disappeared, like the newsticker (now on its own page) or the establishing of a secure encrypted SSL connection for the PayPal button [this is now on the donation page ~~~ ever heard of that one? ;-)], but just this morning I had noticed again that the Cost of War iframe causes problems, preventing the page from opening quickly enough. All this messing about will be taboo on the home page.
Although my sites are more than a hobby of a pensioner exercizing, as a private person, his freedom of opinion, of speech and of the press, and offering, beyond the more personal part, a service to the public by spreading knowledge on many subjects, this is certainly not done for profit. But His Supreme Arrogance the First Criminal and Ruffles Creator par excellence, the despotic State, has deigned to force me to become again a dealer (I am dealing with the most dangerous, addictive and lethal drug, rare knowledge!), a businessman, with all the disadvantages and impossibilities this entails for a single individual in our fake market system. Never taking in any money to be kept for myself as a reward for my work, but all going to the robbers, with advance taxes and fees even before I would have started to "earn" anything. No thank you, dear Socialists! To save myself as far as possible from this slave work and red tape ordeal (more forms to fill per month than I use sheets of toilet paper rolls), I decided to do away with all paid advertisements on my sites (Google ads, Affilinet ones, etc.), even before I really started to avail myself of them fully. This is a very bitter decision, as suddenly there is a real potential. No ads, wow, you might say. Don't rejoice too early. You will not only lose some valuable information and services (the Whois search service, for instance, if I cannot find another arrangement), but you will maybe have to make contributions to prevent the sites from simply disappearing, when I cannot bear the high cost anymore.
"CB's notewok" for news ~ comments ~ editorials, a weblog, as the main feature of the home page so far, will be replaced by a longer essay or other text, thus starting a new tradition of having a particularly striking, unique and important text as main fare on that home page, where it would stay a rather long time, to be later moved to another spot and replaced by the next text of the sort. Such a fundamental text you will not find every day.
You will be in for several surprises regarding the first one. A friend had recommended it to me with the following words: "Here is a well thought out and, it seems to me, rational position. [The author] is one of the few politically active people who makes sense. Please pay careful attention."

What else is new? [will be added a bit later, as I want the above to be posted on May 1 local time by all means]