Hi, all! Please be advised that the site will be down for about 30 minutes on Wednesday, September 23, 2015, sometime between 11 am and 3 pm Eastern time. There is no need to notify me if you find the site down between these hours, as this maintenance is completely expected.
Even more important: This maintenance is required to ready Cookie Connection for a major new software release by Hoop.la, called their "Responsive Design Project." What the heck is "responsive design", you ask? Good question! You can read all about it, and how it will affect this site, in great detail here. Or suffice it to say (in the words of Hoop.la): "In a nutshell, it means that the user interface automatically adapts to fit any size of device. It also means a much better user experience."
If that was too vague, let me try to clarify: The new site will view pretty much the same way on all devices, and be much easier to navigate, going forward. There will be no such thing as both a "standard interface" and a "mobile interface"; you'll have just one dynamic, seamless interface no matter how you're viewing Cookie Connection! Hoop.la has gone further to say that certain areas of the site (namely, the blog and clips) will be a lot more visual, with bigger, higher impact images. Yay! But (gulp . . .), they are also saying that virtually EVERY page of the site (and many of my key back-end admin controls) will be changing in a major way. (Yes, gulp . . . more work for me!)
When can we expect all of these changes? I'm not exactly sure, but I've been told they will start rolling them out to their community sites sometime this month. Once they roll out to this site, I'll be given a one- or two-month grace period to sort out all of the changes made to the back-end admin panels and to set up new templates (headers, backgrounds, footers, fonts, etc.) for the site before they "turn the switch" so that you can see and experience the changes.
So, while this is tremendously exciting news, I do ask that you bear with me as the site is undergoing these changes, particularly during said "grace period". Sorting through the upgrade is going to be a major undertaking for me, on top of an already full workload, but I will do my best! 
When I know more about the timing, and the start of our grace period, I will be sure to send an update. In the meantime, don't be surprised to find the site down for a little while on September 23.
