You probably didn’t even notice, either! Check out your address bar – it says goingpostalpenpals.net now! Please let me know ASAP if there are any problems.

Change all bookmarks to http://goingpostalpenpals.net/ please!

Along with a ton of other features I hope! Starting today we’re moving into phase 2 of Going Postal. Once we finish up with Phase 2 we’ll be going out of beta (finally).

Big changes:

1. Move to the new domain – for real! This is going to be much cleaner, and my new server doesn’t have bandwidth requirements. This means…
2. Blogs! I will finally be able to enable blogs so that you can create a blog and post to it to share your letters, writing, pens, and so on. You will be able to use your blog for whatever you want!
3. Requesting a penpal will no longer be a feature! I no longer have the time to keep up with the sheer amount of penpal requests I get. If you have penpals pending, you will still be paired up. But I will no longer be accepting new requests. However! …
4. We will have penpal advertisements! You will be able to post up an “ad” for a penpal! You will also be able to search through ads and respond to them if you’d like a new penpal. These will be absolutely 100% free. They will not pester you in any way. They will not advertise products. They will be for penpals and swaps ONLY.
5. And speaking of that, as a reminder Going Postal is free to use and explore. Thanks to all of you for being a member!

Stay tuned!

Okay, this isn’t even letter related but I’m sure if you’re a lover of letters you’re also probably a lover of books, because the written word is great! I stumbled across this Personal Library Kit awhile back and was immediately overcome with consumerism want. Pockets, checkout cards, a date stamp, and even a pencil, my personal favorite writing utensil of choice (side note: I even own multiple pencil sharpeners, including a manual mounted crank sharpener like the ones in elementary schools).

Anyway, I’m classifying this under Mail Art with the excuse that you could TOTALLY use this for your mail art purposes! Who doesn’t want a library themed letter? Raise your hand if you do NOT want one!

No one is raising their hand? THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT I MEAN I AM JUST SAYING.

By the way, when I was a little kid, I totally ran a library out of my room. I figured I had so many books, who wouldn’t want to come to my library? I didn’t have this nifty set so I wrote who check out my books in pencil on the inside cover. Also, my mom was the only one who came to check out a book. Kind of sad now that I’m thinking about it.

(Disclaimer: I still make no money off Going Postal, including this link. I just did a search for “library kit” and posted the Amazon link because it’s pretty ubiquitous. I also don’t own this (YET) so I can’t speak for the quality or anything.)

P.S. I will not say no if you want to send me one for trial purposes, Knock Knock Marketing Team. Also you can feel free to send me pretty much anything on your site. Thanks in advance!

Great news! I finally secured a domain name for Going Postal, so over the course of the next month we’ll be preparing for the Big Move. This means that it’ll be easier to find Going Postal and lunsh.net will no longer suffer from the large amounts of bandwidth this site geneartes. In addition, I hope to clean up the layout a bit, possibly add some new features, and get back into the swing of things around these parts.

We’re now approaching 150 members, and I’m sad to say I haven’t made a single penpal pairing in a month. It’s amazing how difficult it is, especially with the sheer amount of penpal requests I receive every week! I apologize profusely for this. I need to come up with a better system so as not to get overwhelmed. In the meantime, we have new members joining every day. Please feel free to scout out some new penpals!

ps: This is my post office! Yes, I understand that you’re jealous!

Fantastic news everyone. I’m pleased to announce that Going Postal is now a private community, and you must be logged in to view the forums, site activity, members and member profiles, or groups. All users who register are carefully screened by me to ensure that the user is a Real Person and not just a spambot. Obviously there is always some risk to putting your address or personal information on the Internet, but now that Going Postal is private, you will be more protected against spammers and creepy people.

This means you can worry less about your profile. Random people from nowhere can’t view your user profile now – only registered and logged in users can view your personal info, including your avatar, age, location, and interests. I considered putting an Address field in the profile, but I’m not sure. What does everyone else think about this?

This will also come in handy for organizing swaps or exchanges, as you can exchange addresses within the forums if you wish.

I am extremely excited about this, and have been waiting since Going Postal’s creation for the time and support to make the community private. Privacy is extremely important to me, especially since I work as a web developer. I want this community to be fun, simple to use, and safe, and I sincerely hope that this newest feature will help make this community better.