News on the new Web design, or, Lex spends the third paragraph putting a metaphor on the rack and stretching it until the screams become too much even for him
Barring further complications (and I certainly wish I could, but that's a wish, not a command), our Web redesign will be getting what's called a "soft launch" within the next couple of weeks.
That means that one day we'll just put up the new design for you to see. It inevitably will have problems, glitches, rough edges that need smoothing, and so forth. (For you geeks, think of it as still in beta testing.) We welcome your bringing any and all of these to our attention -- indeed, we're counting on it.
Many of our problems up to this point have had to do with the shotgun marriage of our new Web-publishing system with our existing print-publishing system. As in any shotgun wedding, there are certain incompatibilities, reservations and hesitancies. But every shotgun wedding also features someone with a shotgun, at least metaphorically speaking, and JR wields a mean one. This wedding will be going off, hitches (so to speak) and all. (Just don't ask me which system is the pregnant one. I don't even know which one's the boy and which one's the girl.)
And once we get the kinks ironed out, we'll have a big "public" launch. I'm not involved in promotions, but I think it would be nice if the public launch included a party of some sort. We, and you, have certainly earned it.
