First of all, I would like to thank all of you who have made Tar Heel Fan a daily stop during the course of your daily web surfing. I also appreciate the extent to which many of your have assisted in forming a community of readers via discussions in the comments section. The site has grown tremendously since it came online two years ago, so much so it will necessitate a complete overhaul to accomodate more features and better control over the increasingly annoying troll population.
With this in mind I am presently working to move THF to a new web host running an independent version of Wordpress. At present I am running a free blog on the Wordpress.com domain which has been great but I also am restricited in areas of customization as well as the ability to advertise. There is also some limitations to what degree I can block trolls from commenting and it has always been my intention to keep this narrowly focused on intellectually honest discussion and without other fans flaming the site.
Some of the features I hope to have in place on the new site are:
- User accounts for comments. All commenters will be required to log in to comment and subject to approval for their first comments. For many of you this is not a big deal since I recognize your email addresses and you will be approve right away. Any trolls will find life more difficult since I can cut them off before they get into the public comments section.
- Comment editing. On the new site you will be able to edit comments you have already left and correct any typos or what not.
- Advertising. This is not so much a feature as it is my attempt to cover some of the costs of running on an independent web host.
I am still going through the process of testing various plugins and getting everything moved over from the current site. As a result of this work, blogging might be a tad light since I am spending a great deal of time at night(when I normally would be writing) working on moving the site.
Thank you again for your readership, the comments and lively discussion and also your patience as I continue to work and make THF better.