We are working with our tech people on some website updates and repairs at Fastpitchwest and Ballparkradio. Just wanted to give you a heads up in case of any downtime for the sites. Not to worry if that happens, we’ll be back soon.

Remember, we do have a temporary site for the times when Fastpitchwest and/or Ballparkradio are down for any appreciable length of time. Click here for the temp site and then Control-D to bookmark it for future reference (since this blog goes down when the regular site goes down).

If you’re looking for the Red Rock photos, they are coming, but we are holding off on uploading so as to not disrupt the repairs underway. They are prepped and ready to go, hoping we can upload them tonight or tomorrow morning.

If you have a cell phone or PDA that connects to the internet, you can read our blogs, the “Morning Brief” and “The Deuce”, Ballparkradio, GHFL.ca, along with everyone’s favorite, Al’s Fastball, and more on pages which are optimized for small screen viewing, with a minimum of graphics for quick loading. Using your web-ready phone or PDA, just log into: http://www.fastpitchwest.com/pda.htm

For a peek at what the pages look like, click the link above, then any of the links on the “PDA page”. The specially designed pages make small screen viewing a breeze. You can access this page by clicking the “Resources” button on our main menu, or just adding “/pda.htm” to our regular URL. Choose “no pics” link on the PDA page for quicker loading.

If you are one of those folks still using a dial up connection, these links work great for you too, especially the “no pics” versions.

I’m pleased to say that the transfer of our website to the new server was completed last night without any glitches. The main website site, blogs, forums, and calendar appear to be up and running – and noticeably faster thanks to the new server. Drop us a comment if you note any problems, but things look good from here.

For those of you not familiar with the tech aspect of things, a “server” is a computer set up to “host” all of the many files that make up our website, much like your own computer, except that it’s running 24 hours a day and is connected to the world wide web (www), so that anyone can access the site. When we do updates, or post to things like this blog, the files are sent to the “server”, so you can read them online.

We do recommend that you bookmark our “Temporary Site” for future reference, if you haven’t already, as we’ll use it for those (hopefully infrequent) times when the main site is down. Click this link, then hit Control-D to save it to your bookmarks. We’ll post information as we get it at the temp site during any outages, to pass along any information about the outage.

During the next week or so, we’ll be doing some year end housekeeping at Fastpitchwest.com to get it the site ready for the new year. Hard to believe it, but 2006 will be our ninth year on the internet covering men’s fastball.

Because the size of our site has grown so much, we may be moving to a new “server” at the company that hosts our website, and it’s possible that the site will be down briefly, or that some features will be offline temporarily. In case we do lose touch with you during this server move, we set up a temporary site set up using our Word Press blogging software, at:
http://fastpitchwest.wordpress.com

We recommend that you bookmark it for future reference. On most browsers, that means clicking the link and then hitting “Control-D” . This site is for temporary use only, in the event that our main site is down for any appreciable length of time.

We look forward to another great year of men’s fastball in 2006. First stop: Orlando, Florida for the AAU International Tournament, January 19-22, 2006.