To help defray out-of-pocket expenses for the site, we've signed up  a few sponsors and are now running banner ads. I'm not here to sell you anything, but if  any of the products appeal to you, click on the links and the site will receive a small percentage of the sale. Occasionally there's some really good deals  (Newegg is the best run electronics store on the web), and anything left over after costs are met will be donated to the Disabled American Veterans organization.

I am also in the process of building  Facebook integration with the Dooferbook. Facebook is the largest social network out there and tying in with the Facebook API should help with our traffic count and make it easy to keep your information and profile current on both sites. For now, the only thing up and running is the "Facebook Share" function (right side above your mailbox) which allows you to post a link to Dooferbook articles on your Facebook profile. A popup box will appear allowing you to sign into your Facebook account and select how you'd like to share the link.

Clicking Facebook Share from the homepage will send a link to the Dooferbook homepage; if you want to send a specific article over there make sure you click on the article title to pull up the unique URL of the page, then click on the 'Share' button.

I also put in a Twitter plugin for those of you who are into posting 'tweets'. Clicking on the 'Tweets' button in an article will bring up a login page for Twitter and allow you to share the article with all your fans. Next on the agenda is getting Facebook Comments up and running. Have a good weekend!

I've added a couple of more 'community oriented' features to the site which you can access on member profile pages. The Guestbook tab is a way to drop someone a public message that will become part of his profile. The Wall tab is similar to what you might find on other social networking sites and allows people to post links, images and videos to your profile using BB Code. (If you don't like what someone puts on either of these tabs,  you can always delete them.) These two new add-ons compliment the existing PMS (private messaging system) and hopefully you'll find them useful.

The underlying purpose of Dooferbook is to reconnect old friends and squadron mates, although most of the traffic we get here is from non-registered guests who are here to simply read Dooferbook entries. So far this year we've had visitors from over 60 countries ( which prompted the new translation module on the home page) and average close to 1,000 hits a day. Not huge, but considering we are non-profit,  don't accept advertising and barely out of beta, not too shabby.

BTW, please feel free to use the Invite function (top menu) to send invitations to your buds who are not yet members!

 -- Webmaster out...

Well, after two days of some serious geekdom - migrating SQL databases, messing with Photoshop, rechecking code, etc., the Dooferbook has a new look. The objective was to make the site as bloat-free as possible, and I've decided to focus on the things that people used most; namely, the blog and community features.

In short, here's what's changed:

I stripped many of the functions that weren't being used - the forums, event planning and other stuff that you probably won't miss. If the site ever gets bigger and there is a demand for it, I can always add them back in.

Another casualty was the Douche or Not section. The component I was using (basically a 'Hot or Not" clone) will not function with the new underlying code so until I find a decent gallery component that functions similarly it will be on the back burner.

The Groups component was retained but it is buggy. I left it up so I can run tests as the code improves. I see a bright future for Groups once the site begins to grow.

The Invite function has been replaced and should work a lot better than the old one. By all means, use it!

One more thing. The goal is to get the site W3C/Web 2.0 compliant with full up SEF and SEO. From time to time you may find the links return 404 errors. If this happens, refresh your browser with the key to clear previously cached items that may no longer be where you your browser thinks they are!