Dear Verandah Members and Guests:

To help celebrate our upcoming first anniversary, and to address the number one concern that you've voiced to us (slow reload time): We're pleased to announce that we will begin serving the Verandah on two servers; one in Melbourne, Australia and one in Philadelphia, USA.

Several persons have already noted a slightly zippier reload time in some rooms as we have begun porting over portions of the site to the North American machine. As part of the load is shifted from the Australian server that server is better able to process chat requests without also having to serve other data. Over the next four weeks that migration will be completed.

By the end of June we will have moved ALL of the static areas of the site (directories, graphics, Member home pages, backgrounds, icons, etc.) to the US and we will maintain our chat software in Australia. Once that move is completed many of the internal URLs for the Verandah will change. There will be two front pages to the site that will NOT change and you are encouraged to bookmark them so that you can more easily make the transition with us.

Those URLs are:
http://www.workingnet.com/Verandah/
and
http://dragon.minopher.net.au/interaction$/chat/

The Philadelphia server is Unix-based and is configured with high-speed, fiber optic connections linked directly to two Internet "backbones." This configuration will allow us to begin providing additional services other than chat (such as on-line gaming or contests). In the short-term we'll provide links to other sites that provide those services and, once all of the new Verandah changes are in place, we'll begin bringing some of them on-site.

The primary visual change that you'll notice during our rebuild is that chat order will be reversed. The "Say it!" box will be moved to the top of the page and posted comments will proceed downward from it. This redesign will enable us to cut reload time at least in half by allowing the current conversation, and your opportunity to participate in it, to appear as soon as your refreshed page begins to load. It will allow us to implement several other features that the current configuration does not allow (such as a longer "look back" for past posts, graphical icons in addition to Member names, etc.).

We're excited about the future of Verandah Chat and the changes that are in store. Keep us posted regarding these changes and your other site-related concerns and we'll keep working on making the Verandah a place where you want to visit to meet with old friends and make new ones.

Chris and Pat