Big Announcement TODAY

[silverscreenselect]

Tomorrow is a big day I've been looking forward to for a long time. When I get up in the morning, I'll verify that everything is in place and then let everyone know. I've been working on this for the last month or so, and it should finally pay off. I'm posting it here because it's not political.

[Vandal]

SSS finds his "special purpose".

[silverscreenselect]

Tomorrow is a big day I've been looking forward to for a long time. When I get up in the morning, I'll verify that everything is in place and then let everyone know. I've been working on this for the last month or so, and it should finally pay off. I'm posting it here because it's not political.

The big announcement isn't quite as big as I had hoped because there will be a 24-48 hour lag time before it is active.

I have a new website. It's still the same URL, www.silverscreenvideos.com. But for the next 24-48 hours, you'll get an "under construction" placeholder if you go there. (I just tried.) About five years ago, my website crashed. It was still operational, but I couldn't update it any more. And for a site that had weekly film review updates, that meant the site went stale in a hurry. After contacting Network Solutions, I learned they couldn't fix the update feature on the website builder (which they weren't using anymore), but they had a new website builder. So I signed up for a new hosting package and have been paying for two packages for the last few years. I found the new website builder was harder to work with than the old one, so every couple of months, I would start to work on it for an hour or so and then give up. But more recently two things changed that.

About two months ago, I was banned from posting reviews on Amazon. They have community guidelines, which are mostly common-sense rules like no profanity or hate speech and no fake reviews to boost your own products or trash a competitor. They sent me a warning that I was violating the rules, but they wouldn't say why, other than to refer me to the guidelines. Those who have seen my reviews know they were very thorough and not what you would think of as objectionable. About a week later, they sent me a second notice saying that I hadn't cleaned up my act, so they were banning me. They removed all 2,000+ of my reviews and suspended me from the Vine program (free merchandise in exchange for reviews). This notice came at a very bad time for me. I got it on the morning of a day in which I had spent most of the previous night in the emergency room, where an ambulance had taken Mrs. SSS after she had fallen while getting out of bed. She was okay, but that cancellation wasn't much fun to receive. I sent three different detailed emails to Amazon at the email address they gave me asking them to reconsider or at least tell me why I had been banned. No response. I did some online research and found that other veteran reviewers had also been banned for seemingly no specific reason with varying success in getting back. Rather than waste more time beating my head against the wall with Amazon, I decided to revive the website. I was still submitting book reviews on Goodreads, so I still have some visibility.

I had another reason for reviving the site. I am an approved reviewer on NetGalley. That's a site where book publishers can make advance copies of their current or upcoming books for bookstores, libraries, review sites, and other industry professionals. Other sites make advance copies available to reviewers, but NetGalley is the industry standard in that regard and gets the top authors to participate. When I applied with NetGalley originally, I was able to use my website to convince them I qualified. As a NetGalley reviewer, I've gotten the chance to review recent books by Jeffery Deaver, John Sandford, Jonathan Kellerman, Harlan Coben and other top authors. But each time I submit a request, it's up to the publisher whether or not to approve my request. And a few authors (or their publishers) like John Grisham turned me down. I think that with an updated site, I'll be more attractive to the Grishams of the world as well.

So, I've spent a lot of my free time getting the site ready. My daughters think this process has been therapeutic for me. Too often, I fall into a funk and just sit there at the computer screen or the living room couch, looking at the equivalent of cat videos for hours. They think reviving the site has given me a greater sense of purpose and drive, and they're right. So, now the new site has finally been published. I'll let everyone know when it actually goes live. I welcome any comments or suggestions. I'm going to be updating it frequently.

[silverscreenselect]

We're live now. The SSL certificate is working as well. I'm completely legit.

[Beebs52]

I'm happy for you!

[Bob Juch]

It looks great!

[Vandal]

Nice looking site. Is there a search box somewhere?

[silverscreenselect]

Nice looking site. Is there a search box somewhere?

Not yet, I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate a search box and share capabilities, also to make the "Follow Me" interface smaller.