Four score and several years ago, I set out to... ah... you know what? Fuck the formal speech.

Listen up people, I've got some friggin' awesome news. We've just completed the task of converting every page on I-Mockery.com and transferring the site to a powerful new server. What does this mean for you? Well for one thing, no more slow load times. For years we've been plagued with really slow-loading pages due to our bandwidth constantly being maxed out from high incoming traffic, but we've moved to a new host that can easily handle the load and then some. We've also switched over from .ASP pages to .PHP and improved on a lot of backend things that make this site tick... or twitch... or whatever.

Before I get any further into the details of what's new here, I want to take this chance to thank one guy who has been an enormous help during this extremely lengthy site conversion process. Scott Jablow was nice enough to handle 99% of the backend database work for this site while I was busy converting all of the articles to PHP. It's because of him that we were able to salvage all of the review site reviews, the blog, the polls... everything. So my pickle hat off to him for the amazing work he's done. Keep in mind he has a very busy schedule at work like myself, and he's been helping out this entire time after hours when he could be just sitting at home and relaxing. So again, many, many thanks to Scott for his help. And Scott, now that you're done with all of that hard programming work, have a Gamecube, X-Box, or PS2 on me... it's high time you get to get to go have a nice long break!

Alrighty, now that I'm done thanking the guy who helped me through the absurdly daunting task of converting the entire site, lemme tell you about some of the new features you'll see here on I-Mockery:

Improved speed - As I stated before, bandwidth should no longer be an issue here, so you're gonna notice that pages load at a lightning fast pace (pending you have a decent connection).

Shorts - One of the things about working on I-Mockery pieces that a lot of people don't realize is how much time it takes to do them. We try to set ourselves apart from a lot of the other sites out there by creating massive articles with all sorts of in-depth details, photos, and animations. These things take a lot of time to do. For example, a single minimock can sometimes take 2 weeks or more to complete. Still, I put a lot of pressure on myself to crank out new material constantly, so I've just launched a brand new section called SHORTS. No, it's not about what kind of boxers I'm wearing (Invader Zim ones if you're really curious), it's amusing little pieces that we can create within 1 day or less. What this means is that while we're working on our big pieces such as minimocks (which really aren't so "mini"), we'll still be able to put up new Shorts on a regular basis. So yeah, check out the new SHORTS section and expect much more frequent updates!

Review Comments - For those of you who don't already know, we have 3 review sites in which you the reader can submit your own reviews - Classic Game Reviews, Music Reviews, and Movie Reviews. While I myself and the other staff members may not agree with the opinions expressed in those reviews, we never wanted to prevent someone from submitting it. Still, when I see someone expressing their true love for a movie like Crossroads, it was pretty hard to swallow. That being said, we've now added the ability for you people to post your comments about anyone's review! In other words, if you don't like what someone wrote in their review, you can post a comment directly underneath their review and mock the hell out of them publicly! Of course, the opposite is true too. If you think somebody did an awesome job on their review or you simply agree with it strongly, let 'em know about it by posting a compliment underneath their review! You don't have to be registered to post comments or anything like that, simply check out any review of your choice and you'll find the "Post A Comment" box directly underneath them. I'm sure this new feature will start some great discussions along with some amusing flamewars. And while we're on the subject of the review sites, please start submitting reviews of your favorite (and least favorite) classic games, movies, and albums. We've just re-opened the review submission form now that we're up and running on the new server... so it's time to breathe life back into those 3 sites that have been in limbo for the duration of the site conversion. Get crackin'!

I-Mockery's Big Q&A - I've been running this site for a loooong time now, and I often get asked a lot of the same questions about it. With that in mind, I made a big I-Mockery Q&A which you can find on our Info Page underneath the staff members section. I answer all sorts of questions that may or may not have been on your minds. The staff section itself has also been updated.

Cynical Greeting Cards - We revamped the Cynical Greeting Cards site completely. In the past, it was a really ugly, clunky looking page and it loaded every single card graphic all at once. This caused a lot of slowdown and was probably utter hell for dial-up users. But with the renovated site, we have it setup so that you can choose cards by category. Not only does this spare you from loading every card image at once, but it organizes things much better. Plus, with the way we have things setup, we'll be able to add new cards to the site quite easily. So if there's something you'd like to see in there, by all means let us know!

Suggest to a Friend - In the past, we only had the "suggest this piece to a friend" script on a few large pieces, but now we have a new script and it can be easily added to any piece on the site in a heartbeat. While it's not on many pages yet, I'll be going through a lot of them and adding the script to it. So if there's a piece you really enjoy here on I-Mockery, please don't hesitate to share it with your pals!

Old URLs Still Work - A lot of you had specific pieces on this site bookmarked and expressed worries about losing the links to them. Believe me, I know this is a really large site and you shouldn't have to go hunting for an old article that you had bookmarked (not that you couldn't find it quickly with Google, but still). So, we setup a script on our server that makes all of your old bookmarked pages automatically redirect to their new PHP-equivalent pages. For example, if you had a page called garbagepailkidsrule.asp bookmarked, when you go to that link it would automatically redirect you to the new version garbagepailkidsrule.php. Pretty schnazzy eh?

There's all sorts of other little improvements that we've made to various sections of the site, but I won't bore you with those details. I just wanted to let all of you know that I-Mockery is now set to become bigger than ever before and it's mainly thanks to those of you who've continued to support the site all these years. I'm really excited about where we'll be taking the site next. And for those of you wondering about the status of my zombie movie, I'm still planning on doing it. I'm just trying to raise cash for it, which is one of the reasons I'm working a full-time job. Cool thing is, I've already purchased a really nice prosumer digital camcorder and I'm hoping to do some short films this year which I'll be putting up on the site. That's one of the things I love about working on I-Mockery - I never really set any kind of boundaries for what type of material can go up on this site. There's no one single focus that it has. And while that might seem a bit chaotic, that's pretty much how I've always been. I have far too many interests to just settle down and work on one type of project constantly. I'm always looking to try out new things, so doing some film work seems only natural. Expect a lot of good things to come to I-Mockery in the future, I'm really excited about where we're taking it. And please, shoot me and email and let me know what you guys think about the new site. I always enjoy hearing from the viewers.

-RoG-

p.s. : In celebration of launching the site on the new server, myself and PoX have just put up our first issue of PickleMan since last xmas, so be sure to check it out. It's a whopping 30+ pages of pickled goodness!!!!!!