Bye Bye Kathleen!Well… glad you all noticed… It’s pretty much done for now absent a few minor tweaks. As has been noted, the site loads much faster now. We’ve added social bookmarking, live search on the bottom right column and a design that is cleaner, less cluttered and, well… faster! In the future we’re going to add more Ajax enhancements and other stuff to make the surfing experience even better.

For those of you who miss Kathleen, well, here’s another pic of her for you to enjoy. The new “I Love Hashem” Gal is Israeli. Her name is Mor and she lives in Jerusalem. You can, if you insist, get her shirt here. The photo came from a photo shoot I did for the current cover of World Jewish Digest. It’s for a story by Tobin Belzer about Jewish 20- and 30-somethings and what the hell it is exactly that they want. The article discusses Jewish identity and actually fits in rather nicely with Esther’s last post on the topic.

But it is a good question though. And having waded waist deep in the back end of Jewlicious, I’d like to know the same thing. Just what the hell is it that you want?

For instance, do you all want a message board where you can talk to each other freely? Will it be used or will it just languish? Is the comments section enough in terms of discussion? I am also contemplating the possibility of allowing free registration to Jewlicious – meaning, people will be able to register and submit posts which we will moderate. There’ll be no guarantee that posts will get posted but opening Jewlicious up a bit might not be a bad idea. Also subscribers who get their posts approved enough times might be able to eventually become actual regulars, allowed to post whatever they want without moderation.

I am also contemplating a digest system – one that will send periodic notifications of recent posts via email to anyone who chooses to subscribe. You can already subscribe to comments on a particular post (look at the bottom of the comments box) and I am pleased to see that many of you already have. I am also open to any other ideas that anyone might have that would increase this site’s functionality.

I don’t know. These are just random thoughts. I’d of course totally appreciate your feedback. None of these radical ideas have been implemented and none will be without further discussion with the existing Jewlicious gang. But what the hell, we can think about it right?

The track below is titled Beautiful. It’s off of Moby’s new compilation album due to be released in November called Go: The Very Best of Moby. I know no one listens to techno anymore, but Moby’s all growed up now. Even Debbie Harry (Blondie) makes an appearance on the album. I picked this track because, well because you are all so beautiful!

[audio:moby_beautiful.mp3]
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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

20 Comments

  • I don’t really have a strong opinion about message boards, I do like the idea of people being able to submit topics and I really like the idea of the daily digest.

    Keep up the good work! 🙂

  • Heh. The message boards, not so much. Good RSS feeds is all I need. (which you might already have, I haven’t tried to put you into my bloglines lately.)

  • I miss the old Jewlicious.
    I feel that since the summer , Jewlicious has been a bit weak. There used to be timely and interesting articles about whats going on with world jewry, disucssions around halacha, and in general -things that make you go hmmm…

  • Boo to discussion boards.

    More contributors and more controversy. We’re pablum these days.

    I miss Kathleen. That’s a way better pic of her than we’ve been staring at for the past year.

  • A couple minor issues with the RSS feed. I’d prefer to see the whole post and not just the start of it. Also, when you click on the link referenced in the RSS it should take you to the full article and comments, not to a summary with only the headings.

  • Not a big fan of the message board thing – unless you put a P.M. function in it, to keep the one on one discussions to a minimum. I think the comments section alone forces us to be be more thoughtful before sending (although, maybe not so concise). middle – all the controversy seems to come from the comments section anyways, as does a lot of contributions and relevant linx. All in my humble… IMHO… oh, what the blog…

  • The ATOM feed is worse. It has the same problems as RSS, and it screws up apostrophes and other marks leaving hex codes.

    What’s wierd about the link problem is that its not the link itself. The summary and full view have the same link. But when you follow the link from Google Reader(I can’t comment on other programs) it takes you to the summary page.

  • I like the faster loading. Makes your site much more likely to be viewed, and there’s a lot of good stuff going on here.

    Also — love love love the Moby! Thank you!!!

  • How about some Web 2.0 features, Digg-style. If you implement registration, members should be able to “digg-down” comments (especially spam) and vote for favorite stories.
    P.S. Unbelievable new mentos ‘n coke video on Google Video.

  • I agree with Half-Jew. I miss old Jewlicious. The posts were so interesting that I dint care about the layout. I remember refreshing the page dozens of times back in the day. Your contagious love of Israel made me drop everything and go to Yerushalayim for as long as I could. Now you are becoming the establishment of the e-media (I am sure some of you might want to argue that you already are) and I feel things slow down. You want to include other people into the process. you were always elitist and although many times it was annoying because of who you are (diversity, class and format of who you are) it always ended up to be your mark of … (I dont know you, have to insert some nice word by yourself).
    So sure change the site, the gal, make it more user friendly but give me back my old Jewlicious too!

  • a separate message board would be really cool, but definitely leave the comments and everything, too.

    i don’t miss Kathleen so much as i miss the girl who was on here when i first visited the site. she had on a grey hashem shirt and had dark hair…? definitely the “original” jewlicious girl to me.

  • Say, while you’re redesigning, would it be possible to put the radio back up? One of the reasons I loved your site was because I could jump about the room whilst listening to “Start Wearing Purple” as loud as my little laptop speakers could handle.

    Please bring it back.