GOTH.NET is currently having some occasional email problems. The problems seem to randomly appear and disappear. If you're having some problems accessing your pop mail or webmail just try again later. We're trying to get the situation sorted as soon as possible.

GOTH.NET suffered downtime over the last 24 hours due to some issues with the box, which will have made the site uncontactable from 2.15am EST until about 7pm EST.

The GOTH.NET FAQ was launched today. This page should hopefully answer most of the common questions that PreZ and myself have to field, regarding email, webspace, the Gothic subculture etc.

After a few topics on the Forum turned towards cooking/baking a plan was hatched by one of our Forum moderators to launch a Recipe Mailing List to trade recipes on. So, if you're a kitchen wizard or are just looking for some new recipes, sign up for the list and check out the archives for past recipes.

New links have been added to various sections. There are about 100 new links spread across the Community section and the various Links sections, most notably the various clothing links sections and also the music artists links section

Art and Writings updates will be following shortly.

We upgraded to a new version of Ikonboard yesterday which caused a few problems which led to the board being down for a number of hours. Then during the night the database for the forum died as well causing another few hours of downtime.

Things should be working now, however, if you run into problems with the board, contact admin@goth.net with the nature of the problem.

GOTH.NET suffered some downtime this week as some of you will have noticed. Initially it was a scheduled upgrade to the network, but unfortunately part of the filesystem on the GOTH.NET machine started to fail at the same time, and eventually ended up requiring an entirely new harddisk and all the subsequent software installations, after having tried to fix the existing one a few times without much success.

Data loss due to the filesystem dying was minimal and only affected a few users who will be contacted in regards to this.

There were also some problems with Password Changing through the website and also some people reported having some problems with accessing the FTP server to upload things to their websites, both issues have now been fixed.

This is the first in a series of updates that are in the works, but due to the special features we didn't want to wait...

GOTH.NET now has it's Java WebChat aplet up and running. Coded by Pitr who is a longtime DarkerNet staffmember this was made especially for us to use on the website, and also on the DarkerNet website. You can connect to the WebChat through the Chat page.

We have also set up an announcements email list so people can be notified per email about updates, special features and the like. You can subscribe and unsubscribe here.

GOTH.NET also recently received it's second website award. Yay!

GOTH.NET is also featured in Mick Mercer's latest book 21ST CENTURY GOTH. Some of you may know Mick's previous books HEX FILES, GOTHIC ROCK BLACK BOOK and GOTHIC ROCK which all cover the scene extensively.

We're currently working on updating the Art, Writings and Links section and we're also working on adding a new section for Music in which we focus on an artist and offer information, possible downloads and maybe even contests with giveaways. So keep checking back!

Republican U.S. Congressman Sam Graves (the irony...) in Missouri has decided that he needs to waste $273,000 of taxpayers' money to "identify Goth culture leaders that are preying on our kids". This of course is a completely ridiculous notion but has the potential of turning into yet another witchhunt like the aftermath of Columbine. Newsarticles here: Education Week, Yahoo! News, Wired News.

You can email the Congressman himself at sam.graves@mail.house.gov. The email address for Y.O.U. which is the Youth organisation that is getting this funding to save kids from us Goths is: webmaster@bluespringsgov.com. Email the Webmistress if you would like the postal address and/or phone number for either the Congressman's office, or Y.O.U.

Please remain civil and polite in any correspondence to either party as swearing or being irate aren't going to make people at all sympathetic to our point of view. I do urge as many people as possible to at least email and let them know they are WRONG (yet again) about Goths.