Welcome to The Pork 4.0!

Our thanks go out to all our loyal members who have kept this site alive for over 5 1/2 years. This year we'll be celebrating our 6th year online (May 12th 2001 was the official launch date). 

We have completely redesigned and coded the site from the ground up and is the first stage of many to our goal of providing several "themed" sites under the umbrella of The Pork Community.

It's now 2007 and as such we've upgrade the site with the latest in technology. The site is built with .NET and features a new Flash based Voice/Video chat system.

Here are a few new features/upgrades we've made to the site:

• Site Settings
  
  
• Skins
• You can now choose the look and feel of the site through various skins.
• We'll be adding new skins in the future (the first will be for DarkPines).
  
  
• Choose your Time Zone - You can view the site with your time zone instead of the default "Pork Time"
  
  
  
• Roleplaying
  
  
• We're still working through the bugs and tweaking the system with your feedback. This system was taking so long it was holding back rolling out the new site so we've decided to go ahead and launch even though we know this system isn't completed.
  
  
• Check out the new Character Creation system by clicking on the Roleplaying link at the top of the page.
  
  
• There's too many features to list here but if you're one of our regulars in the Darkpines chat room we hope you'll go create a Character and give us feedback on the new system!
  
  
  
• Chat Rooms
  
  
• New Chat Menu
  
  
• Image Settings
• Lock or Post Once a PicPost (yes.. we've finally fixed PicPosts!
  
  
• QuickPosts
• Can now be accessed under the QuickPosts link instead of a drop down menu.
• Improves the performance of the chat room since the majority of users didn't use this feature.
• Allows you to insert multiple QuickPosts on the same post
• Allows you to add to/edit your post containing your QuickPost
• No more limit on the number of characters allowed in a QuickPost!
  
  
• Private Messages
• Set who can send you private messages!
• Everybody
• Nobody
• Users on your Buddy List Only
  
  
• Away From Keyboard (AFK)
• Click the AFK box and your name will update with (AFK) next to it in the room list
  
  
• Prevent PM's in Public!
• We've added a "Lock" feature so that you can keep the name of the person you're private messaging selected to prevent accidental public postings of your private messages.
  
  
• Spell Check!
  
  
• Hide Room Description
• Located under Room Settings you can check to hide the room description.
  
  
• Reverse Direction
• Located under Room Settings you can now Reverse the direction of messages in the chat rooms. Handy if you're used to other chat sites that show new messages at the bottom.
  
  
  
• Discussion Board
  
  We've completely updated our Discussion Board system:
  
  
• Spell check feature!
  
  
• Report! feature.
• You can now report a message to our team with a couple of clicks!
  
  
• Topic Ratings
• Finally you can rate your fellow members topics!
  
  
• Improved Search Capability
• Highlights words matching your search!
  
  
• Polls
• Allows for more answers and even has a Multiple choice option!
  
  
• Subscribe to a Forum/Topic
• Turn Email Notification on or off per Subscribed Topic/Forum.
• Our old discussion board only allowed you to subscribe to a topic. Now you can subscribe to a Forum (replaces old Hot Topics feature). This is now available to all members.
  
  
• Sub Forums
• These allow us to organize the discussion board a lot better by placing similar forums under one main forum.
  
  
• Member owned forums. The owner can: 
• Edit and Delete Posts or Topics
• Moderate new topics and/or posts (posts are not live until approved)
• Set the Skin for their forum
• Add other members as moderators
• Create a header that is shown at the top of their forum. Useful for creating a section for rules, links etc.
  
  
• Cool New Post Icons and Emoticons!
  
  
• Spam/Ban Control:
• We can deny new users the right to post messages until they have been approved.
• This wont effect you unless you've never posted on our discussion board before. After 3 approved posts you are granted the right to post automatically.
  
  
  
• Event Calendar
  
  
• New Event Calendar to keep track of events in chat rooms.
  
  
• Eventually will allow uses to post their own events (for now only volunteers may add to the Calendar).
  
  
  
• Pager System
  
  
• Completely redesigned and features:
• Ability to create folders to store messages
• Increased message limit for all levels of membership
• Ability to have an "Email Read Receipt" when somebody reads your message
• Spell check feature!
• Empty all your folders in a couple of clicks
• Ability to turn on a "Pop-Up" alert when you've received new messages
• Ability to completely turn off your pager
• Messages look exactly like Forum posts so you can use Chat Pictures and message icons!
• Larger area to type and read your messages
• No more popup window
• Send a pager message to multiple recipients!
  
  
  
• Help/FAQ
  
  
• Our new Help system is located here. This is where you can search for answers to your questions or ask a new question to our team!
  
  
• Official answers to your questions are located in the Help system and we'll keep adding to those as you ask them. Our goal is to make our lives easier and allow you to easily find the answers to your questions.
  
  
  
• Search
  
  
• Our new Search system is located here. This is where you can search the Help/FAQ, Discussion Board, or the entire site.

• My Account
  
  
• Redesigned
• Completely redesigned with much better tools to allow you to add/edit/delete your settings.
  
  
• Buddy/Ignore List
• Can't remember why you added somebody to your Ignore/Buddy List? No problem, we've added a Description field so you can enter a note when you add a user to your list
  
  
• QuickPosts
• QuickPosts are now more powerful and the character limit has been removed. Yay!
• QuickPosts now allow for text formatting and PCode
• In chat rooms you now click on the "QuickPosts" link which opens a window so you can select more than one QuickPost at a time! This also improves chat room performace as there is no longer a QuickPost drop down menu.
  
  
• Profiles
• Fixed many of the issues we had with the old Profiles system. Now you can edit ALL of your profile on one page. Much easier to use!
• Added "Featured Profile" option. Check this option if you would allow us to add your profile into a rotating list of "Featured Profiles" on the front page. Once a month we'll select a Featured Profile and the winner will receive a 1 Month Gold Membership upgrade/extension.
  
  
• Graphic Vault
• Redesigned with tools to edit/delete multiple images at the same time.
• New Sort feature allow you to easily see which images you uploaded last etc.
• New upload tool that doesn't open in a new window and can download an image from a URL!
• Increased the max size of PicPosts.
• Public Image Gallery updated
  
  
• Membership Upgrade
• Redesigned to make upgrading your membership easier.
• Secure Payment system updated so you stay on the same server and the secure connection is activated when you visit the page to enter Credit Card info and deactivated when you leave that page.
• Gift Certificates! Finally, instead of upgrading your account and then contacting me you can purchase a Gift Certificate and either send it to a Buddy or enter an email address to send it to. You can also set to send the Gift Certificate anonymously!

We also have some upgrades coming within a few months utilizing some Flash technology to allow members to record a Voice and/or Video profile and we are also looking at adding a Voice and/or Video feature to the pager (Video Voicemail). Interactive maps will be available in select Roleplaying Rooms and we'll be rolling out some Voice/Video technology that will be integrated with our HTML based chat rooms (in addition the the Voice/Video chat system).

As always, your feedback is welcomed and encouraged on our suggestions forum. If there is something that you feel would make our site even better please let us know.

Thank you to all who have supported us over the years. Many thanks for the emails and pager messages I've received supporting me and the volunteers.

A special thank you to our awesome volunteers who dedicate their free time managing the day-to-day operations of the site.

I hope our little corner of the Internet has brought you entertainment over the years and continues to provide you a chat home for many more years to come.