You may have noticed the banner saying "The new main site will be opened on 18 sept.".
For those of you who are not sure what's going on, here is some explanation.

In the past, we had a PianoSociety main site, containing composers, pianists, and links to mp3's,
and we had a forum. Due to problems at the provider, and the raid of the Swedish police, we lost all that. As a quick solution, the decision was made to create a new forum containing the material from the site. While it has a certain charm to have a one-stop solution for both site and forum, a forum is not really a replacement for a proper site. So we always considered this a temporary solution, and have since then been working on a new main site, which will look and feel similar to the old one.

This new site is nearing completion now, and some of you may already have been there. As from 18 september, the new site will be open for the public, and as from that date, the forums 'Composers', 'Pianists', and 'Member composers' will disappear from this forum, making it just like the old forum once again. We will provide links between the site and the forum, and take some effort to make them look alike.

Any questions/remarks/suggestions, let know !

Thank you much, Chris and Robert, for your dedication to this charitable forum!

Hopefully the work on the new site does not rob too much of your piano (and organ) playing time!

I must be honest and say I have not been doing all that much about the site recently. It is Robert doing the bulk of the work.

Well, it has certainly done that for me but I hope to catch up with my practise later this autumn and winter.

Techneut and Robert - I second the "Thank You" for all of your work. In a weird way, we are alike. Your hard work is creating and maintaining the site, and I my hard work is wasting a lot of time looking at it.
Of course, I'm kidding - a little - but I think this forum stuff is kind of addicting.

Yes it is. I'm glad to see a bit more life in it recently. It seemed to be braindead for a long while,
perhaps it was just the holiday season. Yet, a lot of people who used to post here have just dropped off so cheers to all the new posters for livening up the place.

Raid by swedish police

Yes it was quite a shock. They were attempting to squash piratebay.com which happend to be hosted by the same provider as we. In their stupidity they simple took ALL the computers without even thinking twice. Outrageous really. And we are still recovering from the loss.

Were you there when it happened? Did they physically take away your personal computer?

No, this all happened at the Internet provider's premises in Sweden. We just lost the server that hosted the site, forum, and mp3's. Nothing to do with our PC's of course.

I thought that story was posted somewhere here but could not find it. If you google on "piratebay raid" you'll find the details, even a video - though that is not very exciting.

At least the police was very friendly, though a bit slow, when I contacted them and we were among the first who got the equipment back. Still...quite interesting how they act. One problem for PRQ is that if the police found anything at a server which a user has put there, they can be made responsible for the content and they have not gotten everything back. They are processing the issue in Swedish court and you can read about it at http://prq.se

Not everything is in english though.

Wow, thanks for working hard on making a real "site" again. I was worried it would stay as forums indefinitely. Great work, REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING IT!!! THANK YOU!!!

Here is a preview link but remember than things can still change a bit.
Preview

I like I like!

...may I just add my two insignificant two cents? Have you considered making a directory of composers/pianists? In another words, instead of having a long list on the side bar, there would be instead an alphabet on the main body with linkable letters to the last names....

Kind of like this, but not as uni-corny (bad pun, excuse it) as the graphic image of the text books:

http://www.classicalarchives.com/comps/


Just a thought. But nevertheless I will be happy to have to the old site back. This forum-only website is not as effective.

Thank you for all your hard work

-the juuf

Hi Robert, Hi Juuf:

Although that stack of books looks interesting on ClassicalArchives site, I prefer how Robert has the names laid out on the new site -- with the entire content of the list along the left margin so that each person's last name is visible. That way you can see ALL the pianists' names at once and don't have to fuss with clicking the letter of the last name.