HackThisSite.org News: Big Changes in the Works

HackThisSite.org has been doing a bit of restructuring. First off, if you used to be a moderator or a developer and find yourself without access, don’t be alarmed, you’ve been temporarily removed until we can sort out who is who and who will be an active developer or moderator. If you’d please catch Wyrmkill on IRC, let him know what position you held and you and he can schedule a reinterview for your position to determine your current skill and availibility.

Speaking of Wyrmkill, HackThisSite.org has gone under a major restructuring. Those of you who haven’t been on IRC or HackThisSite.org as of late may not be aware of this, so allow us to inform the masses. The first thing that happened is that Wyrmkill took over as the head HackThisSite Admin under the role of Lead Developer. ScrAm has been named HackThisSite IRC Admin. wired remains the RootThisBox Admin. Kage and wired will remain Systems Administrators (maintaining the servers and maintaining their own projects). Other staff, including HackThisSite and sub-project developers, moderators, and operators are being assigned as interviews progress, thus a final list has not yet been determined.

As you may have noticed, we have no forums. We are currently looking for a new forums system, and since most major solutions (IPB, vBB, etc.) are expensive and thus not affordable given the current costs of HackThisSite and its sub-projects, we may be coding our own. Look for forums in the future, which will assuredly be better than our ex-sister site.

The biggest part of the news is we are holding a contest for a new layout on HackThisSite.org. After submissions close (which is undecided right now), the senior developers and admins of HackThisSite will review and choose three top designs. The best one will be used as the new HackThisSite.org default layout, and the other two will also be availible for use by users.

As another perk, the best submission will also be awarded a cash prize from Wyrmkill's pocket (we will NOT be using HackThisSite funds whatsoever, so don't worry). Criteria for the submissions are:
* Must comply with W3C standards for HTML and CSS compliance
* Must use common web-design standards (accessibility standards, etc.)
* Must use as little bandwidth as posible
* Must use as little scripting as possible
* Must be designed to work well with existing HTS content (including id and class names)

E-Mail your submissions to Wyrmkill (at) hackthissite [dot] org (preferrably a link to your uploaded final submission, however, if you do not have a way of hosting your submisson, E-Mail Wyrmkill and we can work out a solution).