Well, that's it, then! The site has officially changed names and domains. The Demented Chicken Network is dead, long live Altered Origin. The domain change was uneventful and took a matter of a few moments, as expected; thankfully there was no downtime. You can continue browsing the site as usual. That notice up there will stay at the top of every page for a week or so just to remind people to update any links/bookmarks/references they have. I'll also be emailing my affiliates to inform them of the change.

There are obviously still a lot of references to the old name everywhere, and it may take me a little while to find and destroy all of them. Give me a few days to clean up what I can, in addition to fixing any links I need to. If you still see a mention of the old name somewhere and it's been about a week, though, I probably missed it and I'd appreciate it if you could bring it to my attention via email or whatever.

I don't have that new stuff quite ready yet, but I'll try to get to it this weekend. I also got an interesting idea that fits in nicely with that project thing I'm being so obtuse and vague about; it'll still be a while before you see either of those things because I have quite a bit to read up on before I can start, but they should be fun when they're ready. Will probably also have some layout updates and things to go along with whatever I finish this weekend, and hopefully a styleswitcher fix shortly afterward.

EDIT: Derp, forgot two pretty important things! First of all, I'm changing my primary email address to phoenixsong@alteredorigin.net to reflect the name change. The old address will automatically forward emails to the new one just in case, but please use the new one from now on if you need to get in touch with me; I'll only be replying from that one. Second, while I'm in the mood to get rid of stupid names, the "Inane Nonsense" section has been renamed "Miscellany", which is not quite as interesting but makes me feel less like a five-year-old. (A five-year-old that knows the meaning of the word "inane" for some inexplicable reason, but a five-year-old nonetheless.) Cheerio.

Turns out I didn't have as much school to deal with as I thought! Hooray for snow days, I guess.

Anyway, down to business. I'd like to get started on the domain change as soon as possible, meaning probably this weekend. It may be done as early as tomorrow (Saturday), or it may be as late as Monday depending on how things go, but I'd really like it to be done no later than then. Consider this the official name change and potential downtime warning—I don't anticipate any problems, but just in case, the site may be inaccessible for parts of this weekend/Monday, and there may be some broken links both here and probably on some forums for a while until I fix what I can and alert other people to the change. I apologize in advance if this inconveniences anyone, but hopefully any problems that arise shouldn't take long to sort out.

That additional content won't be ready by the time the change goes down, but I'll try and find something else to add instead and will get to that other thing when I can.

649 and the Phoenixdex, as mentioned earlier, won't be changing over (and therefore have no reason to go down; if Altered Origin is borked you can still go to those sites to entertain yourselves) until a little later when I have more time to look at the process involved with moving them. The new blog thing won't be affected or changing at all because it's not hosted on my server and I have no control over the domain unless I spend unnecessary money. All three of those have been updated recently, by the way—it has been suggested that I find some way to announce updates to my subprojects on this site, but I'd rather not waste entire news updates doing that if I update one of those and don't have anything to say relevant to AO itself. After the domain switch I'll probably spend a few hours figuring out a way to do that, probably just an additional content area at the top of this page or something.

Last update I mentioned the possibility of changing the site's name and domain/URL. I've spent some time considering names that I thought best fit the site and that were still available as domain names (do you have any idea how rare that is these days? Quite frankly I'm amazed that three of the ones I really liked weren't taken yet), and after going back and forth I have finally reached a decision. Yes, the site will be changing internets homes. dcNET isn't going to see February. Taking its place will be Altered Origin, which will be accessible at alteredorigin.net. Just in case you missed it last time, this is not a change in direction or content for the site. All that is changing is the name and domain. Everything else will remain exactly as it is; it will just be available at a slightly less childish URL from this point on.

It will still be a little while before the change takes place because I have a lot to check into to make sure there are as few broken links on any of my sites as possible in the aftermath, but I am going to be gradually rolling out changes every few days or so. There may be snatches of downtime or a few temporary 404s here and there while this happens, but hopefully these will be minimal. I'd like the main site's changes to be finalized no later than January 29th; it will probably happen well before that depending on how quickly I can work. Again, I will alert you guys when I'm getting ready to switch domains proper just in case something goes south and the site is unavailable for a while, and so you're able to start updating any bookmarks, etc.. dementedchicken.net will also be set up to redirect to alteredorigin.net, at least for a month or two. I'll change 649 and the Phoenixdex over a little bit later, just because I still haven't even looked at what's involved in getting their systems to change URLs–probably not too hard, but I don't yet know. Ideally I'd like to have some sort of substantial content update to go with the name change; it might or might not be one of the obvious things on the to-do list, as there's an additional secretish project I'd like to start sometime soon, but if I can swing it I'll try to get more done along with that. Or instead of that, depending on how tricky it is. We'll see.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to take the time to mention that seriously really this time I'm pretty sure I've fixed the Wargle layout for IE6/7. I was finally able to get to some working test browsers, and while it's sort of ugly the navigation does in fact work and is perfectly usable. Hell, it even works in IE5 (please tell me none of you are using IE5. Please.), though there are other awkward problems with the layout in that one. I would still recommend that you avoid Warbird if you're using IE6/7, but if you're dying for moar Wargle then it is at least navigable now. My life would be easier if a) IE9 is really as great as Microsoft claims it is and everyone who possibly could would upgrade to it, or b) people would just switch browsers to anything else, but as neither of those will ever really be feasible for everyone... well, there you go. It should be fixed. (I would love to get some confirmation on that from someone else with IE6/7, if possible.)

On a slightly related note, apparently that problem where the styleswitcher forgets the style you've chosen is still happening, at least for me. Damn it. *sigh* I'll keep working on it. I might be able to figure out a way to go back to the more reliable styleswitcher I had in 2008-2009, though it's going to take some fiddling and is technically not a priority until after the domain change. Knowing me I'll probably procrastinate on some homework (school starts again on Tuesday D: ) and look into it sooner than that anyway, though. Meh.

good god three updates in seventy-two hours, what devilry is this

I didn't add too much today, though. I tweaked one more problem with the styleswitcher that was preventing it from remembering your style properly, a problem I suspect has been happening ever since I added the switcher and I simply never noticed because I was always using the current default style anyway. You may have to restart your browser for the fix to take effect. I am hoping to high heaven that I don't have to touch that thing again for a good, long while. (I could still use a heads-up from IE6/7 users as to whether the Wargle layout is working now, by the way). I added a Kecleon render to the Free Goodies page, and I fixed up the slightly older Pikachu render so that it was more "cute" and less "staring into your soul". I've temporarily de-affiliated with AobaruNet, as the webmaster is taking a little time to work on some stuff, but they should be back on track soon.

While we're on the subject of webmasters working on stuff, I have a small announcement to make: I may be changing the website's name and URL (and subsequently the URLs of any projects hosted on subdomains of this domain, like the Phoenixdex and 649). No, dcNET is not closing; no, I'm not "changing the website's focus" (bahahaha like dcNET ever had a proper focus in the first place) and turning it into another graphic design website with free video game site layouts. There will be no silly hiatus, though there may be just a little bit of downtime while things change over and some broken links until I can update them all. The current content/projects and all future content/projects will remain the same "whatever fancrap I'm currently interested in with more Pokémon/ASB stuff than I'd originally intended". I'll save the gory details for a later update, or perhaps for a revision of the About page somewhere down the line, but in short I've outgrown the name and it implies a focus/mascot/direction that the site never took. It was okay for three years, but now it's time for a slightly different image, methinks.

I don't know when this will happen; I don't know for a fact that it will happen at all. I'm still deciding on potential new names and domains. (I've actually liked the word "Insubstantiality" for a long time—part of why it's the current temporary title of the new fanstuff blog—and the domain is still available, but it might be a headache for people to type or remember and I can't think of a cool short name like dcNET.) I pay for my hosting out of pocket and don't currently have a steady income, so I also need to consider whether I can really spare the extra ~$9 a year. If this change does go down, however, then rest assured you will all be given ample warning and a heads-up about the potential for downtime and broken links, and I'll have a redirect set up for a while just in case you forget about the switch. I may still do something with dementedchicken.net down the road, as it came free with the hosting package and it'd be a shame to waste it, but it may not be the internets home of this site for too much longer.

I was able to get help fixing the styleswitcher, so it should work now! Yay! (The styleswitcher links for the Wargle layout are just above the footer, fyi.) I also think I fixed the reported problems with the Wargle layout's navigation; I don't have access to functional copies of IE6 and IE7 at the moment, though (damn you Wine Internet Explorer, why do you lie to me), so I am unable to verify this on my own. If you have either of those browsers, can you switch to the Warbird style (on any page; no need to stick to the test page anymore) and let me know if you can use the navigation? If not, and if I still can't fix it, well... at least now you have the other two layouts to choose from, so you can still browse the site normally. Sorry for the inconvenience (and also for the brief instances of downtime today that resulted from my tinkering). Now I can finally get started on the alternate version of this layout that I really wanted to do before, sheesh.

I also got some help with the comment system I'm using, so you should actually be able to use double quotes in your comments without them looking funny later.

EDIT: HOWEVER, somehow I have magically managed to break the fanart gallery again. The images are still there, the descriptions are still there if you hover the mouse over a thumbnail, but the lightbox effect no longer works and they're all displayed in an ungodly long list running down the page. What the hell, man. I'll try and fix that soonish, I guess grumble Crisis averted. Styleswitcher broke the gallery, but I found a workaround that'll do for now.