Xenite.Org News

We have a new look... - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

October 27, 2000 at 13:11:16

Xenite.Org is growing. The new look for the Fact/Rumor Roundup is a reflection of that growth.

The need to redesign the Fact/Rumor Roundup coincided with changes in our priorities here at Xenite.Org. Reporting daily news about Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies is getting to be rather formulaic, and many sites now carry the same stories. The homogenization of news content was almost certainly inevitable as the number of sites reporting Tolkien and movie-related news built up their resources and perfected their systems.

Rather than try to compete head-to-head with dedicated news sites, the Fact/Rumor Roundup is returning to its original purpose: reporting the facts and rumors as concisely as possible. We're still going to write original content about what we deem to be more interesting stories, or stories which only we cover. But the Fact/Rumor Roundup will carry the headlines from TheOneRing.Net and Tolkien Online in a very prominent position.

And we've asked other Web sites to provide us with their headline feeds if they are able to do so. In fact, Michael Martinez has been developing a Javascript headline service and sharing ideas with other Webmasters who seemed interested.

Our many readers will therefore benefit from the expanded coverage that can presently be found only on Xenite.Org, while continuing to enjoy the occasional exclusives and special analyses which Xenite.Org has been bringing to fans for two-and-a-half years. We hope these changes meet with your approval.

In particular, we anticipate fewer problems with page loading, as one of the banner services we are dropping had frequent server problems which resulted in page hangs and broken banner links.