As I write these words, our website is still down. Put simply, the site was hacked, and somebody was using it for a phishing site for a time. Our hosting service (rightly) took the site down to prevent more people from being victimized. Why phishing sites still work, I have no idea, as you would expect that with all the attention they’ve received people wouldn’t still blindly click a link that arrives in their email without being very careful. Still, I guess some do.
Currently, AUSU’s hired coder is busily at work doing a security audit, finding the hole that the hackers got in through and patching it up. Once That’s done, I can see about putting up the web-version of The Voice Magazine. Until then, I hope you enjoy the PDF, and, if this is your first encounter with it, welcome! You’ll find It’s all linked up pretty to make reading it and bouncing back to the table of contents a breeze.
But speaking of the web-version, there’s probably a number of things you don’t know about it, especially because as I look at the volume number of this issue, I realize that this is the magazine’s 23rd year of publication. Way back in the day, the Voice was a print publication. But that was quite expensive to so, so it only came out four times per year. On the plus side, it was mailed to every single student. (Of course, at only four times per year, it was entirely possible for some students to never see a single issue.) When we first went online, the paper was a hugely laborious set of simple web pages, each one having to be hand coded with a lot of copy and paste going on. Over time, we advanced, somewhat, and eventually came up with what the current Voice website is. If you think it looks old, You’re right. It was actually one of the first content management systems developed for the web. The whole idea of blogging hadn’t taken off yet, so AUSU essentially had to have the site custom coded to meet the needs of The Voice Magazine of the day.
Something else you might not know is that The Voice Magazine has a Facebook page. That’s right. Just look for AUSUVoice on Facebook and you’ll find where I post any updates about publication or other tidbits that you just need to know right away. Also, if you find the “Email Signup” link on the Facebook page, you get access to a pithy reminder each week when the Voice is available for viewing. (But I’ll never mail more than once a week and never unless there’s a new issue out. After all, I know how badly my own mailbox fills up, and I don’t want that to happen to yours.)
More importantly, once You’re signed up to our email reminder/subscriber list, you’ll get information on our occasional secret contests and surveys. Each year there’s usually at least one survey or contest That’s only announced to subscribers. And the prize is usually something pretty sweet, like a small tablet computer, suitable for reading The Voice Magazine, oh, and your AU e-texts, while on the go.
Finally, if You’re not all Voiced out already, you can also follow our little twitter reminder at AUSUVoice. This is where I practice bad twitter poetry to announce new issues. Some people like it, apparently. don’t ask me why.
Enjoy the read!
WEB UPDATE!
If You’re reading these words, you obviously know that our website is back up because You’re on it. So what’s going on and why does this issue seem so much larger on the web than it is in the PDF?
Given how the hack basically kept articles off the web for an extra week, we thought it would be a good idea to include all of it as part of our current issue for this week. Once the next issue of the Voice goes up on Friday, I’ll revert the old articles back to issue 37 and they’ll be stored in the archives like normal.
Until then though, here’s everything that got missed because of the hack. Some good stuff in here too.
Enjoy!
