There have been so many new membership requests this year, the time to process them all has pretty much taken up all my Mac Guild time. Therefore, I made the decision to pull the Mac Guild link off of the Apple specials page for Lockheed Martin. I will not try to catch up with reviews, and maybe even get a contest going. This will also give me some time to get acquainted with the many new users we have received.

The Mac Guild wishes to welcome new members:

• Angel A. Moncada
  
• Chance Hudson
  
• Craig Talley
  
• Daryl Avery
  
• David Arenson
  
• David Blastic
  
• Dewayne Buller
  
• Dorothy Burns
  
• Ed Solarz
  
• Erica R Siirila
  
• Gemma Easterling
  
• Jadon Groothuis
  
• Jay Clark
  
• Jonathan Kim
  
• Lindsey Kircher
  
• Michael Goldmann
  
• Ryan Wood
  
• Samuel B. Gatson Jr.
  
• Stephanie Boyden
  
• Stephanie Williams
  
• Steve Bailey
  
• William Michaels
  
• David Linder
  
• Lance Rahn
  
• Sean Tierney
  
• Betty Bender
  
• Jesse Highsmith
  
• Sherrie Branigan
  
• Scott Perkins
  
• Randy Schum
  
• Clark Hart
  
• Kevin Do
  
• George Hornung
  
• Candice Buckner
  
• Jonathan Chang
  
• Tom Gray
  
• Curtis Flanigan
  
• Desiree Gordy
  
• Patrick Bossio
  
• Richard Goldring
  
• William Maynard
  
• Scott McKee
  
• Kathy Isley
  
• Christopher Yatrakis
  
• Roger Gabin
  
• George Kaszynski
  
• Mike Hoffa
  
• Dennis Hrehor
  

The Mac Guild wishes to welcome new members:

• Phyllis Gunderson
  
• Nikiah Dawson
  
• Scott Wolter
  
• Frances Taylor
  
• Thomas O'Connor
  
• Michael Ross
  
• Barbara M Williams
  
• James Miller
  
• Mark Terakedis
  
• Mariangela Green
  
• Jeremie Lott
  
• Jeffrey Stokes
  
• Kevin Mulhall
  
• Ed Nipper
  
• Michael Mendoza
  
• Jarred Miller
  
• Richard Margason
  
• Kevin Marshall
  
• Meredith Bocek
  
• Sheldon Townsend
  
• Christine Rejdovjan
  
• John Couturier
  
• Phillips Peter
  
• George Meier
  

The new Mac Guild website quietly went live today. I'll make a more formal announcement in 2010 after the New Year. There will be a follow-on point earning task to help ensure the website is working well.

The Mac Guild wishes to welcome new members:

• Robin Dhillon
  
• Carlos Cardona
  
• Peg Green
  
• Gary Reeves
  
• Lee Mendoza
  
• Jeffrey James DeLong
  
• Jason Richmond
  

The Battle Macintosh 2009 contest has begun! On a similar note, I have made some decent progress into the design of the new Mac Guild contest pages. It's a lot of work, and I keep hearing these voices in the back of my head:

"Are we there yet?"
"Pull over, I'm getting sick."

The main Mailing List page and it's siblings are now complete.

Finished the Membership pages, including the Benefits Detail page, and 4 form pages for Sign Up, Upgrade (PayPal), POP account, and Deactivate (Unsubscribe). Yay! On to the mailing list pages....

If you cannot get people to come to the mountain, bring the mountain to the people! I have started an email campaign today to disseminate the information I am putting together on the new Mac Guild web site to the Mac Guild mailing list. This will help members understand what the Mac Guild is all about, and hopefully warrant some feedback. We'll see how it goes.

I am using Rapidweaver to start the refurbishing of the Mac Guild web site. First I created a unique RW theme for the Mac Guild, and I have been enhancing it constantly over the last few days. I'm learning an incredible amount of new stuff related to CSS (as well as figuring out a few work-arounds implementing some customizations that RW doesn't seem to incorporate in its toolbox). When I start trying to pull over all the old articles and reviews, that's when things are going to get really hairy. I may end up using a combination of RW along with a stand-alone site for reviews, but without frames (which are going bye-bye altogether), I'll have to figure out a way to get navigation working without having to edit every single review. At this point, I'm not sure that will be possible.

I've begun the arduous task of migrating the entire Mac Guild website to a new CSS structure. With over 10 years of material, I have to ask, "Am I nuts?"