After reading a TechRepublican Second Cup every weekday and the bloggers briefing round-ups for the past few weeks I felt it appropriate to promote Joe Mansour as the new managing editor of TechRepublican. Fortunately, he's accepted.

For his "day" job, Joe works alongside me at DAG helping manage projects, clients, setting up (and playing) the Wii, bills (and other paper with numbers), sub-contractors, office things that I still don't want to know about, intern screening, and everything else that falls in between. Of course, I'd be remiss not to note that he still finds time to volunteer for Slatecard.

The TechRepublican community is always shifting and changing with regard to its contributors and that's important. It keeps the contributions and the voices fresh. The value of TechRepublican is the low-barrier of entry it offers to any Republican who wants to be a participatory voice in our ongoing effort. If you want to be a contributor, shoot me a note (david.all AT techrepublican.com).

However, promoting Joe to serve as the managing editor will help add another long-term consistent voice to the discussion which will add value to the effort.

Hi, Joe. Keep up the good work. (Yes, we've noticed.)

...A new Drupal Theme for TechRepublican.

Will you help us choose our new theme?

Here's the deal: Over the holidays, we're going to be upgrading TechRepublican from Drupal 4.7 to Drupal 5.

This gives us a good opportunity to swap our theme (how the site looks-and-feels).

I'm looking to simplify the blog quite a bit. I'm even tempted to remove most, if not everything, from the right-hand side of the blog. It's a bit cluttered.

I want you to participate in this process by recommending a theme. You can view the available themes at the Drupal Theme Garden. Just click the link, and then search through the available themes for one you like.

*Important* Make sure you're looking at Drupal 5 themes.

Think clean, simple, and modern. Less is more.

Leave your recommendation (via a link) and why you like that theme in the comments of this post.

I'll put your recommendations, along with a few of my own, to the site's contributors for a vote.

This is also a good time to identify new contributors and clear out some of those who no longer actively participate in the discussion. If you think you have what it takes, email me at David.All AT TechRepublican.com and make your case.

Thank you.

Alright, today was a big day for updates. As always, if you have feedback, comments, or questions, let us know. We don't delete comments here.

• Community tagging has been taken a step further. Previously only contributors could tag their own stuff, now any contributor can tag anything.
• In terms of layout, I've tweaked the digg badge and tweaked its placement. Also, the Adsense placement has been turned off on anything except the full content posts. You shouldn't see them anywhere else.
• There are now forums. Only authenticated users can create threads - yes, you'll have to create an account! - but anyone can comment with or without an account.
  
  Our best thoughts come from others. Please share:

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  Continue reading...

In the last few days, you've probably noticed a few things changing around here. In the past three weeks, we've been adding new features, tweaking existing ones, and generally fleshing out ideas for the site. A quick rundown of the new features:

• Content voting - Via the up/down arrow at the beginning of all posts, any registered user can vote up or down a post or comment. Eventually, we'll probably add a block to show the most/least popular and the up and coming.
• Comment Notification - once you post a comment, you can choose to get followup emails to every other comment on that post to stay engaged with the situation.
• SocNet Links - In addition to the links at the bottom of every post, page, etc, there's also a prominent Digg Badge at the top of every item. I'm not happy with the placement...
• Free Tagging - Any contributor can tag their posts with as many tags as they want.
• Tag-based Areas & Feeds - On any post, you can see all the relevant tags and then select them to see all the other posts with that tag. Then, at the bottom of the page, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the tag.
• @Jobs - The announcement of this one might have been a bit early, but we have a job site coming online. Whether you represent an organization looking to hire or someone looking for a position, we hope to be your one-stop shop for technology people on the Right.

Now we'd like to get some feedback from you:

What do you like about the site?

What do you hate about the site?

What would you like to see more of?

What would you like to see less of?

This message from your friendly neighborhood Site Breaker... now back to our regular schedule.