While it might look like there’s not much happening on the site, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes.

This past year has been hellishly busy for both Amy and myself and I regret that updates on The Temple have suffered for it. There’s been no shortage of stuff coming in from Sue W, Denise, Joan, Pat and Co. – I just haven’t been able to put most of it up. In short I needed to have a whole re-think on the Temple situation.

Some of you might not realise that all of the work on the site is done voluntarily and without pay. This whole site started out as a tiny little fan site started by Dominique way back in December 1998. I started working on it sometime in late 1999 and, around about that time, REG gave his blessing and, before you knew it, that same little site bacame Richard E. Grant’s official website.

Since that time the site has grown phenomonally due, primarilly, to the efforts of many people. It’s been a huge job to get it there, and one which I’ve loved doing for the past seven or so years (Gee, this sounds like a retirement speech. Don’t worry, it’s not). Likewise all that have contributed to the site have done so for the love of it, and the knowledge that they are making a great site even better!

With this in mind I’ve decided to step aside – slightly – and allow others to contribute more directly themselves. What this basically means is that the news will be updated more regularly, new articles, pictures, sightings and interviews “uploaded” almost as soon as they’re discovered, scanned or written etc. etc. This will be done by implementing a CMS (Content Management System) style site, where all of the articles will be stored in the one database and each one can be updated, whenever necessary, by a team of volunteers through a web browser – kinda like what they do on Wikipedia and similar sites (though with a smaller team and better security).

While this can’t happen immediately – due to the construction of the site as it stands – I’m well on the way to converting all of the existing pages. This has been made a little easier by the fact that we had a major overhaul of the site in 2005 and I don’t have to do much “stripping” or editing of what’s already there. It’s just a lot of “copy and paste” work. This will still take some time, mind you, but it’ll be well worth it in the end.

I’m undecided as to how I want new site to eventually look like, but I’m not that concerned about it at this time. It’s more important to do “the conversion” right now. Besides, the look of the site can be changed rather easily with the new system.

Once again I’ll be doing things section by section, and deleting the old pages from the server as I go. Having said that, if you land on a page that is radically different from the rest of the site, don’t panic! It just means that you’ve landed on one of the new pages. I can’t promise that everything on the new pages will work in the same way as they do on the “old” pages, but I’ll try to make sure that the major links all go to the right place at least. However, you might find yourself getting lost from time to time and I apologise in advance for that. If that happens just go back to the front page – as in the page we have now, not the new one – to get your bearings again.

As always, stay tuned!