29 March 2016 - More text has been added to some of the Rainbow Ark Fun Facts.
22 March 2016 - Some of you may have noticed that Rocko's Reviews was taken down about a week ago. It was an unfinished work and new reviews were being sent to me by the author every few days that I immediately posted. But it had been a couple of months since I had heard from the author, so I wrote them out of concern to make sure they were okay. I received a series of replies that basically made it clear they no longer wanted to associate with me or with Rainbow Ark.
17 March 2016 - Just had a request by email to add a link to our Resources page, so I started another row underneath the current ones.
3 March 2016 - Posted some new content to the lj and added a series of twitter links to the journal last night trying to stop rainbow_ark's current slide in the ratings. Even bare_furs which is the other nearly inactive journal I moderate just flew past it, at 1540 to RA's 1560. Has everyone moved on? There have been no journal comments in a long time.
13 February 2016 - Just added navigation arrows to each page of the Rainbow Ark Fun Facts to take the viewer to the next or previous fact.
13 February 2016 - Last night, added a new term in our Glossary, with thanks to member, Stoneth: Sissy.
23 January 2016 - I just added a new feature to the Lounge here called "Rainbow Ark Fun Facts" found just under the two rows of avatars and atop the two columns.
27 December 2015 - I just uploaded HRC's 2016 Buyers' Guide which replaces the link for the 2015 Corporate Equality Index which is the "paw" at the top of the right column in the Visitor Lounge.
22 December 2015 - Just switched to the new home page and accompanying set of primary and secondary pages a few minutes ago. I'm now in the process of checking connections and fixing any broken links, although there doesn't seem to be any at the moment.
17 December 2015 - Fixed an expired link in the Glossary.
12 December 2015 - Been putting finishing touches on a new colorful home page which is the most smartphone-friendly among all its predecessors. There are also new versions of all the primary and secondary pages which use the site's navigation at their top. These new versions have a new simpler nav strip with a bigger link footprint also with smartphones in mind. I've also increased the size of the text in the footers. These new page versions will blip on simultaneously with the switch-over of the new home page near the end of the year.
25 November 2015 - More pages are added to Rocko's Reviews almost daily. It's now up to 15 total. Our lj community rating has now been in 3 digits for nearly a week, including a record best of 936th on the 23rd. Since this is not just a fluke, I'm thinking seriously about switching from basic to paid again with my own funds, to get back a few perks like stats.
14 November 2015 - Permanently closed "The Ark Store" this morning, Just finished pointing in the entire navigation the shiny new section called "Rocko's Reviews"
18 October 2015 - Rainbow_ark's community rating hit 1086th today! If we make it to 3 digits, I'll buy a round of sparkling ciders, and pay for a year of paid journal myself.
17 October 2015 - Little html changes to the Rainbow Ark inclusions section of Resources.
7 October 2015 - I'm pleased to announce our LiveJournal community rainbow_ark just climbed to its all-time highest rating: 1131st place. September 30th marked the day that it has been in the top 2000 for consecutive days for the past 30 months. Most of this success unfortunately can be attributed to the greater relative decline of the surrounding communities.
3 October 2015 - I have just put more space between our social media buttons in our footers to make them easier to select with mobile devices.
2 October 2015 - Just finished going through the whole site and changed the acronym MRA (My Rainbow Ark) to MyRA, to avoid the unfortunate confusion some may have with MRA which more popularly stands for Men's Rights Activists.
29 September 2015 - Switched to the new slightly different home page. The dolphin also might eventually be a link to something, but for now, he's just smiling at you. Also today, tweaks and additions to Donations, the member gift art Gallery page, and Site Map.
20 September 2015 - Just about ready to unveil the tweak on the home page. I'll wait probably until I get back from RainFurrest. The Ark Store button is removed, but it can still be accessed for awhile from the footers of the other pages. We're giving the FA art pieces a rest and just enjoying the ocean view for awhile. And there's an easter egg that takes the visitor to other places.
2 August 2015 - A new item has just been added to the Virtual Cork Board at the top of the left column here.
29 July 2015 - Something that only a few dozen LiveJournal communities can claim, but ours has been in the top 2000 each consecutive day for the last 28 months! Of course, all of this has been during our lj's decline, but back in our heyday, EVERY lj community was doing great. We've been able to hang in there fairly steady when others we used to benchmark with have bounced all around.
28 July 2015 - Just added our Twitter feed to the Lounge here. It hasn't been conducive to the design of the last two home pages where it's been in times past, but it made sense to include it here.
19 July 2015 - Minor addition to July 1956 in Crossing Paths.
16 July 2015 - I was so excited today when I'd found an old RA avatar I'd thought was lost forever, which was created by member honehe back in 2005. I hadn't realized it was stored as an extra avatar in our now defunct ra_activists lj. I nabbed it, then added it to the others in our "To rainbow_ark, With Love" Gallery page just now.
12 July 2015 - A small but important change: on the YJLM primary page, the "ed" has been removed from "transgendered" in the first paragraph above the study. Also, just made the media buttons larger throughout the site to make them easier to select with mobile devices.
27 June 2015 - Just finished editing the 1M1W page in response to yesterday's historical SCOTUS decision. There has been some renewed activity on our lj, so we may not close it in December after all. We'll see how it goes.
6 June 2015 - A new testimony is now pointed in the navigation: Dracakitty.
5 June 2015 - Column adjustments to the Testimonies page and length adjustment to the navigation strip to accommodate a new testimony which is completed, and will be pointed soon.
31 May 2015 - Pending some miracle of former Arkers (disgruntled lj users) returning to LiveJournal from other social media platforms, our lj: rainbow_ark will close in December. To date, the last entry posted by someone other than a maintainer is April 5, and the last minimal discussion took place on March 29. From January 1st of this year, only 13 individuals have posted at least one comment or entry. In recent years that number would typically be 35 to 40. Closing membership keeps out the spammers and preserves the discussion history as an archive. Current members would still be able to post either privately or publicly to our lj community. The two main factors which have led to this are 1) the steady decline of LiveJournal, 2) the growing obsolescence of being a niche for LGBT religious furs because of the increase in resources elsewhere.
17 May 2015 - Minor text changes to the site, such as on Timeline of History/Faq.
12 May 2015 - The new home page was unveiled last night. It's received some positive feedback from our FurAffinity family. If anyone misses the previous home page, it, and the 4 before it can be accessed in the footer of the Site Map.
2 May 2015 - A purely Site News update - I now have the "Earlier" announcements link opening in [this] scroll, with a back button to the current, instead of it opening new windows you have to close.
29 April 2015 - I'm beginning tonight some on-the-fly changes throughout the site to make the pages a little more mobile device-friendly. The most notable improvement in that regard will be the new home page coming this summer.
24 April 2015 - Fixed a broken link on the Resources page.
14 April 2015 - After all this time, just today I found that I'd misspelled a "Gomorrah" in the Jude study, so I fixed that.
11 April 2015 - Fixed 4 broken links for YouTube embeds in The Furry History Project, and replaced 'removed for copyright' The Cunning Little Vixen PBS interview with Beverly Sills with a still from that 1983 opera.
2 March 2015 - Our host InMotion just completed a server migration where our website and email service resides. I'm currently in the process of changing the code in all of the email login buttons with the new server number. For those you who have email accounts with us, and you had your password saved for the login, you'll have to re-enter that.
21 February 2015 - Everyone hang onto your butts, tomorrow our lj is reverting to basic. At this point I think the only things visibly which will change are our 12 avatars reduce to 6, and we might lose the custom layer which we use for "syndicate". All the avatars are saved elsewhere, and if we lose the syndicate buttons, I have a workable custom theme ready to shift to.
19 February 2015 - One version of Internet Explorer didn't like where in the code I put the border="0" for the Rainbow Ark headers, so I corrected that this evening.
19 February 2015 - All of the Rainbow Ark headers are now links back to the home page so peeps don't have to back button or scroll to the bottom.
17 February 2015 - Added 6 new images to Crossing Paths between the years 693 and 1624.
9 February 2015 - Several minor fixes and a typo corrected to the new "Member Art" page this evening.
9 February 2015 - A "Member Art" section has been added to Our Gallery, and Czar's and Vaperfox's sections have been placed in archives and still available in the site map.
22 January 2015 - On the 20th, LiveJournal essentially redefined the criteria for what constitutes an active journal. They're now implementing the change in algorithm further down the scale each day. They seem to be trying an approach to make their Social Capital ratings not seem pointless, or to inflate their community totals which were at 5800 on the 19th, but this morning totaled 7338. But whatever the aim, it only plays with the numbers, it doesn't even prolong the inevitable and ignores the fact that only the top couple hundred communities are truly healthy. Rainbow_ark's rating was affected with the change from 1132nd on the 19th, to 1466th on the 20th.
19 January 2015 - I took out all of the ® symbols in instances dealing with 'LiveJournal' and 'YahooGroup' because copyright laws don't require them in regular text and they made reading disruptive.
17 January 2015 - So yeah, yesterday, yours truly began to try out some future LiveJournal layouts which include the RSS/ATOM syndicate for when ours reverts to unpaid and we lose the custom layer which is currently needed to display the syndicate to show in Flexi Squares, and managed to blow up the custom CSS banner and all our custom colors and settings. I spent the next few hours getting stuff to look presentable for this transitional layout for the lj until a new layout is chosen on or before February 22nd.
29 December 2014 - Not a lot to report at the end of the year, except that from here onward I'm changing this date configuration for future entries, thusly. It's everything but official that our lj made it the entire year of 2014 (365 days) in the top 2000 of lj communities, which is something that only about a thousand communities can claim. It's a fitting tribute to our 11-year-old lj as it nears the end of its useful life -so many memories- this is where we learned how to get along and be a family in spite of our sometimes stark differences, as the LiveJournal platform is going the way of MySpace and climate deniers :) There is renewed excitement now on FurAffinity (as long as the DDOS's can be thwarted and the creek don't rise) and on Twitter (which can never be a community, but which nonetheless has its own purpose).
December 9, 2014 - Just added 8 new photos/images to Crossing Paths between the years 1801 and 2012.
December 5, 2014 - After several years open, and all posts by me, the Dreamwidth rainbow_ark account did not receive any other posts and had "0" comments, so I deleted the account this morning. Keeping all the rest.
November 26, 2014 - Happy Thanksgiving! Just added tiny "PC" icon links to the "Rainbow Ark is a resource of..." portion of the Resources page, so the user no longer has to copy & paste the various addys into their browser to read the inclusions.
November 20, 2014 - Just switched out the HRC 2014 Buyer's Guide to what they now call the 2015 Corporate Equality Index. That paw in the top right column was previously a link to the 2014 pdf on THEIR website. Now it's a link to the 2015 pdf on OUR website.
November 15, 2014 - Our Forums may be dormant at the moment, but I'd like to encourage visitors happening by to register and either Xedrik or myself (Jarrell) will let you in. Old-timers go silent. What we need is a whole new generation of people to attend and start some new conversations. Then, some of the old ones will return. :)
November 12, 2014 - I relented and put The Ark Store (Cafe Press) back into the footers, and on the home page navigation. I hadn't closed it yet on the off chance that an artist or two on our FurAffinity community might want to put together something for us, and we could offer the images on products to make available. For right now, it's just the original Chris & Curt poses, but I figured what the heck, might as well make it available again since it's still open, and with Christmas coming, our friends could potentially be looking for gifts.
November 9, 2014 - The opening paragraph to the YJLM has been altered for clarification. Also, there are now a few minor punctuation changes throughout the site.
October 19, 2014 - Added a month search to Crossing Paths, altered some bogus code which appeared in tertiary pages of The Furry History Project.
October 15, 2014 - A list of inclusions of MyRainbowArk.com to other websites has been added to the bottom of the Resources page. More will be added over time as new ones are discovered.
October 12, 2014 - New home page was introduced yesterday evening, Our Calendar was unpointed, and Crossing Paths was added into all the navigation in its place. The previous home page can still be accessed (for artsy purposes) in the footer of the site map.
October 4, 2014 - The new page Crossing Paths was made public today. But its addition to the site's navigation is still 2 weeks out. The alignment, anchors, and links have been tested in both IE and in FireFox. More events to it will be added through time.
September 21, 2014 - No, it's not your imagination, the color of Kiran's nav bar changed from pinks to blues. It's all in preparation to update the look of the site, and there is a new addition which will be ready in October to replace Our Calendar. Stay tuned!
September 20, 2014 - The anchor links for this website and the lj now work in Firefox as well as in IE.
September 12, 2014 - There is a new testimony added, yours truly.
August 9, 2014 - Content is rearranged and an entry is added to the bottom of the Timeline page.
August 3, 2014 - The RainbowArk FA link buttons have been added to the page footers and is the "paw" between the Facebook and Email login buttons.
July 31, 2014 - The phase-out of Our Calendar has begun with it displaying 3 months instead of 4. On second thought, we're not going to close The Ark Store just yet, but just unpoint it from everywhere but the Visitor Lounge here. With the new FurAffinity endeavor, since it's primarily an art site, there could conceivably be a need to put submitted art on stuff at Cafe Press, and it's easier to rework the current one, than to close it and have to restart it.
July 17, 2014 - I just added the "s" to the end of the http of all of the Facebook links throughout the site.
July 15, 2014 - Somehow the individual testimonies pages still had the old navigation line-up so I correctified that last night. :) Everything's up and running smoothly.
July 12, 2014 - Rainbow_ark lj is rising dramatically in community rating even with our casual activity, which is an indicator of just how bad other lj communities are doing. I've had more encouragement from another to think seriously about starting a Rainbow Ark on FurAffinity. I'm thinking about it, but I'd probably prefer that another leads it since my plate's kind of full with the other venues of RA.
July 7, 2014 - Inviting anyone on Twitter coming home from Anthrocon to post their con report on our lj. No takers yet. Communities fell by another 30 today, bringing the total to 7461. Anyone who wants a crash course on the total communities any given day, only needs to locate the one called "dose" when they click on "Community rating". Dose is the oldest of the inactive communities, created November 10, 1999, and so it's the one sitting atop the dead zone. Anything above it are the only ones with activity. Logic says this rate of slip will slow soon.
June 25, 2014 - The total number of viable LiveJournal communities fell by another 37 today, bringing the total to an all-time low 7589. Activity on our lj continues to falter as we struggle to stay in the once-coveted top 2000. I'm just letting things play out now. I'll post no more surveys or pleas for participation. The result we see is two-fold: 1) We started with a lot of kids who have now grown into responsible adults--the things which were once issues they've now found help for and would rather not revisit the subjects. 2) LiveJournal, which the furry fandom practically owned in 2005, is now a rapidly dying platform, with rainbow_ark being nearly the last LGBT advocacy community on lj with any activity at all. But that said, Rainbow Ark will continue in other forms which have been set in motion by this website and our Twitter account.
June 21, 2014 - Practically all of the site changes have been completed at this time. The obvious difference to our viewers is the change in line-up to our primary and secondary navigation. Just moments ago, I deleted the email page, so all who have MRA email accounts should now be using the "envelope" login link which can be found in the footers of most pages including this one. The Ark Store is still accessible for a month or so from the link in the sidebar of our LiveJournal: rainbow_ark, and Our Calendar is slated to be deleted in October.
June 14, 2014 - Member Lounge has become Visitor Lounge. Emails have been sent to all MRA email accounts letting them know the interface will be removed and to begin using the new login links throughout the site instead of the link on the email page.
June 8, 2014 - The other two maintainers, Xedrik and SNPDiva, and myself are all in agreement that it's been a good run, but that it's time to stop trying to beat life back into our lj when the platform itself is rapidly declining. This website will continue even though donations have slacked off and there is currently a $73 shortfall. I will personally continue funding it for the time being, and the Donations page will remain open if anyone would like to help with a few dollars. Member email accounts will remain operational for the foreseeable future but Email page's account sign-up interface will be removed this year.
June 7, 2014 - In response to the continued decrease of our member activity, today I began the transition of Rainbow Ark from chiefly a social network, to primarily an archive/resource: Removed the events entry interface from Calendar Builder and unpointed the page. Unpointed multi-player Checkers. "Here, have some pie" will end June 30th. The Ark Store is planned to close at the end of July. Our Calendar is planned to close in October. The Forums will continue for at least the near future. In coming days, more items will be combined together, some will end, and some will remain but be simplified.
May 31, 2014 - September calendar is up, and there's a fresh pie below.
May 26, 2014 - More tweaks to the text of the latter half of the 1M1W page.
May 25, 2014 - Added a link to 1M1W to show most updated list of States with marriage equality.
May 12, 2014 - Resources Page has a new resource and is represented by the tiny Adam & Eve illustration.
May 10, 2014 - If you have an MRA email account, and you use SquirrelMail to access it, they've redone their interface, adding a few features and changing the font. When you login as normally, it's going to prompt you for your "full name" but put whatever you want recipients to know you by. Once you do this and hit "submit" you can access your folders again.
Back