Yes, we're back!

The old version of Michael Shanks Online, a relic from the days of hand-coding, tables and CSS1!

As the saying goes, all good things come to those who wait. For Michael Shanks Online, make that “..who wait. And wait. And wait. And wait some more.” 😁

All humor aside - it might have been easy to re-launch MSOL without saying a word about the delay in updates, but that would be akin to ignoring the elephant in the room. Or maybe more aptly, the Stargate in the control room. 😉

MSOL was established in 2004, in the heady days of hand-coding HTML with CSS1 and tables. (* shudder *) On December 18, 2007, Michael kindly bestowed ‘official” status on the site, and for many years it was updated very regularly - every day or every second day. It was a point of pride that neither rain, sleet, snow or a shitty internet connection got in the way of an update being completed.

In 2014, I stopped editing the existing site with plans to change it to a sparkly, new, more responsive and mobile-friendly version. The best laid plans of mice and men, eh?

For various life and technical reasons, the upgrade of MSOL has taken a lot longer than expected. A LOT longer. News kept flowing on the Facebook page, but the site itself was unchanged. But finally, with some help from a friend, and some updates in webdesign technology that have made it a little easier, the changeover has been done.

So now MSOL has a new server location and a new look. We also have a slightly new domain name - though we’re retaining the old one, too for sentimental reasons. 😊 A lot of the content from the original site has been moved across. Some stuff is yet to be moved. Some won’t be moved at all. But I felt enough had been transferredto make re-launching the site before the end of 2019 possible. (And yes, it was tempting to wait until New Year’s day, but frankly after all this time, I thought ‘fuck it, let’s do it now’.)

So… welcome back to the now-active Michael Shanks Online website.

My thanks to Katherine for working with me over the last few weeks in getting the new site set up (the last of a few attempts over the years 😉) Thank you to Carol for helping me keep news updates going on the MSOL Facebook page on occasion when life was kicking me in the shins a bit. Thank you to Dana for being my partner in MSOL-crime in the early years. And, of course, thank you to Michael for the unwavering support, patience and understanding. You are, as ever, a gentle man among gentlemen.

MSOL is back, folks!

~ Monica