I'm currently experiencing some network issues preventing me from receiving email and causing a few other problems, hence no recent updates on KernelTrap. Additionally, the server is unable to send email, preventing new user accounts from receiving their passwords, etc. I hope to have these issues resolved soon.

For a limited time, KernelTrap t-shirts and other goodies are available for purchase. After a two week wait I finally received my samples in the mail, and I'm happy with the results. It's not as good as if I'd had it silk screened, not by a long shot, but it still looks nice.

You can help KernelTrap continue to grow by joining our volunteer moderation team. KernelTrap moderators are responsible for monitoring the site's content, helping to properly rate the usefulness of new comments and ensuring that new stories end up in the appropriate area of the site. They're also encouraged to submit new content at least once a week.

As a member of the KernelTrap moderation team, you will join the behind-the scenes mailing list on which site-related topics are discussed. On this list you will get previews of new interviews and feature articles before they're publicly posted, and be able to help guide the direction KernelTrap is taking. If this sounds interesting to you, read on for more information.

Inspired by Jeff Waugh's Planet Gnome and a suggestion by Robert Love [interview], KernelTrap is now offering a feed of multiple kernel hacker journals. Thus, it's now possible to view the latest journals from several kernel hackers with one click: http://kerneltrap.org/hackers/linux

Journals currently included are from the following hackers: Robert Love, David Woodhouse, David Miller, John Levon, William Lee Irwin III, Arnaldo Melo, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Pete Zaitcev, Zwane Mwaikambo, and Patrick Mochel. I am very interested in adding additional journals, though for this to be possible it must be exported through an RSS feed. If you are aware of actively updated kernel hacker journals with RSS-feeds that I've not included, please let me know.

Step two of our upgrade path is more-or-less complete. I've added navigation tabs in place of the chaotic list of links in the header. I've only tested them heavily in Galeon & Mozilla, but verified they also work in Konqueror (which seems to be quite IE-like). Opera, on the other hand, doesn't like my CSS tabs at all, ignoring them and just displaying a list... For now I suggest Opera users login and select a different theme.

I implemented my new 'taxnav module' on top of Drupal 4.3, so I've also had to upgrade the site. For the most part, I hope this upgrade will be transparent... But please let me know of any regressions. BTW: for those that prefer to see all site content, try this link.

I'm in the process of updating the KernelTrap theme. So far the biggest difference is that the actual layout/presentation is now fully handled by CSS [blog]. Beyond that, I'm hoping to have time tomorrow to update the overall structure (explained below).

Please let me know if the new theme is intolerable on your browser. I've only tested with a couple of Linux browsers, and it seems fine there. This theme should at least be more respectful of your own font preferences and hopefully easier to read... I'm still learning CSS, and I'm fully open to suggestions...

Around Christmas of last year, I noted that I was toying with the idea of adding advertisements to KernelTrap [story]. Now the time is approaching quickly, as I've finally gotten around to finishing up the necessary code. This begs the question, what reaction will readers have to seeing text ads and/or banner ads on what up to now has always been advertisement-free pages?

The idea is to display a text ad toward the top of either side column, and banner ads at the top of each page. I will personally verify all banner content, attempting to keep the ads as topical and non-distracting as possible. For example, I have no intention of displaying flash ads or animated gifs.

I'm very interested in feedback from regular readers. Please leave your reflections below.

I've applied a small patch I wrote this weekend that should now allow everyone to login from multiple browsers and/or multiple servers. Consider this the "test phase" -- let me know if you run into any problems.

Note that I'm aware of one issue in which you log in, then going back to the front page suddenly you no longer appear to be logged in. If this happens to you, before logging back in try to simply "shift-reload" to force your browser to load a current copy of the page. That should reveal that you're actually still logged in.

Danube Technologies has announced a strategic partnership with KernelTrap. From the announcement:

"August 2003--Danube Technologies, Inc (DTI) and world renowned UNIX Kernel forum, http://www.kerneltrap.org (KT) negotiate strategic partnership.

I'm in the process of upgrading the site from Drupal 4.0 to the recently released Drupal 4.2. You can expect many changes over the next few days, as I continue to tweak configurations and install new modules.