The times they are a changing. FG has undergone some major changes in order to hopefully spawn more of a community. If you want to find out what is up, well then you will have to "read more"

Well you may have noticed some changes. That is because FG is now powered by Drupal, one of the premier open source Content management systems.

YES its ugly right now.

But bear with me for the time being, I promise you its only going to get better for here on in folks. Drupal is very flexible and is designed around building interactive web communities. When I started FG years and years ago this was my dream, now with each passing day it is becoming more of a reality.

If you had an account before it should remain.

Well as I type this I am 4 hours in and I have already imported all my content and coments from my old wordpress site, re-integrated the gallery application so all my photo galleries(see /photos/) and posts remain.

Yep all the content should be here exactly as before

Right now I am adding and configuring modules andbasically trying to iron out the billion or so settings drupal gives you. Drupal giveth options but taketh time to figure them out!
And oh yea, to reitterate, I have not tried to make the site look cool yet. But have no fear, it will be smoking cool, soon enough. Until then, enjoy the mess.

Things that may come about because of the change

The drupal community is very active and there are lots of modules available so that you can make your site rock. Here is a list of some things I am planning to install:

• Blogs and Journals- Each user can have a blog (if I *grant* you the user privilege- just ask), we can combine authors together into a "journal" if we wish... think location specific or group specific journals, like the "Hey Fixie" group in Vancouver
• Events- an integrated calendar. I sort of had that before but it was a separate feature.
• Forums - a first for me.
• Groups - users can create and maintain their own groups, have your own calendars
• Books- think "How to" primers

Why now?

This is all in an attempt to open up FG to the masses of fixed gear riders that are burgeoning in Vancouver right now. This tale starts a couple weeks ago I went to Jackie's birthday. If you don't know Jackie, she recently appeared on the CBC-TV with JT and yours truly on a fixed gear piece. She rocks the bike. Anyway, I was talking to Nik cee, simon and friends about how I was learning drupal and was thinking of switching FG over to it then opening it up to the fixed gear riders in Vancouver.

I got a lot of enthusiasm over the idea and when I talked to Nik Cee again at the bicycle bee he was asking about it again, so here I am late at night working my magic for all uz guys. Well I have now got drupal installed, and I was able to import all my content from Wordpress (my orginal blogging app), now its up to you guys to play!

Wease, are you leaving?

In short... HELL NO. Don't worry, I ain''t going anywhere. I put too many hours into this whole fiasco to get up and walk away. Especially, after my recent spurt of meeting people have been reading my pontifications for the last while. Its crazy. You will be at an event and some one will talk about something I wrote like it happened in *real* life and not cyber space. That shit is just too cool to give up.

Hey Wease, I signed up and I want to post an article

This is still in development so I am working out the bugs. When you first register you will be given some privileges but not tons. Its not that I don't trust uz all, its just that you gotta be smart about it. By default, you will be allowed to submit and edit your own stories. Stories will appear on the front page. If you write well and ask nicely (hell if you just fucking ask) I will bump you up so that you have your own blog. If you like editing ask I can make you an editor so that you can correct other peoples posts and make editorial decisions.

I hope this jives will all you hip fixed riders.