It’s been about 15 months since we did a major overhaul of ThePulp.Net. In summer 2011, we reorganized the website, added several new features and jettisoned a few other features that weren’t very popular or used.
But one of the complaints of then-new TPN echoed by several of you who took our user survey last spring was the website’s rather lackluster appearance. ThePulp.Net is “calling out for some pulp color,” one survey respondent said.
During the summer we began looking at ways of better reflecting the vivid pulps in ThePulp.Net’s appearance. We’ve introduced more color and larger images in the latest redesign. As time permits, we will continue expanding the use of images and color throughout the site, including here at Yellowed Perils.
We also redesigned ThePulp.Net logo for a bolder, more pulp-ish look, while still retaining elements from the 1998 original.
In addition to appearance, we’ve also reorganized some sections of ThePulp.Net. As an example, we’ve moved the pulp articles section under pulp info, rather than leaving it as a stand-alone section. That move put the articles in a more logical location and helped us consolidate the menu structure at the top of pages.
Another part of last spring’s survey asked if you would be interested in contributing to ThePulp.Net. Many of you answered that you didn’t feel qualified. That’s far from the truth.
If you’ve read stories from the pulps, books or articles about the pulps, or discovered websites about the pulps, then you have something to contribute to the pulp community.
You may have a factoid to add to a page at the PulpWiki (you can even create a page there if there isn’t one for that topic already). You may have come across a pulp-related website that you want to suggest that we add to our listings. Or, you might simply want to express your opinion in a comment.
We wholeheartedly encourage you to do that. Because without you, the pulp magazine fan, ThePulp.Net would have little purpose.
I missed the pulps in their original form, but I caught their second wind. My formative sequence was in large part a bunch of boxes of my Dad’s old books. I was reading them around 1980, but the books themselves were from the ’50s and ’60s. Slim little volumes with yellowed pages and stories full of punch. I still remember reading one of the first stories there The Doom That Came to Sarnath in a volume packed with various fantasy stories. Original Conan. Jirel of Jory. Shorts by Clarke. Fritz Leiber reprints. E.E.Smith reprints. James Blish. Bucketloads of others that I only vaguely remember. I was a precocious eight, nine, and then ten year old with a voracious appetite for reading, and those boxes represented a rich vein of material. I suppose it’s no wonder that I have a deep love for the shorter story, even today. The idea that we’re headed back to that sort of time? It sounds like an AWFUL lot of fun, Dean!