New CalChess Website: www.norcalchess.org

ANNOUNCEMENT from CalChess President Tom Langland (originally dated 11/01/09)

As many of you have observed the CalChess website (www.calchess.org) has suffered a major malware attack. From what I can gather, the website was possibly penetrated several weeks ago, and has since been hit critically. This is not the first time the site has been attacked and penetrated, but one of several. The current location appears to provide insufficient protection against outside attacks. I also continue to receive 40-50 spam messages a day.

My attempts to remedy the situation have met with extreme resistance, and the current environment is untenable. This was a position I thought was regrettably forthcoming.

To that end, I have been working on a long-term project to improve the site, and due to the above situation, I am releasing it ahead of my intended schedule.

So... I am announcing the new official Calchess website located at: http://www.norcalchess.org

The new site is still a work in progress, and I am looking forward to feedback. I do not have any plans to maintain the "old" site.

/Tom Langland/ (photo at right)

Postscript by fpawn: In fact, the www.calchess.org domain name already expired and the former website is now history. What a shame! The old webmaster put much effort into the site, but unfortunately the many tools were never utilized to their potential. I tried hard for several years to write articles in the hopes that other local chess players would contribute as well. Becoming frustrated, I turned my efforts to this blog and www.calchess.org died. There are many reasons why nobody wanted to post, ranging from pure laziness to the quirky personality of the webmaster. Fortunately, Tom Langland stepped up and volunteered many hours of his own time to develop www.norcalchess.org almost entirely from scratch. I sincerely hope it meets a better fate, and I pledge to contribute again. Nonetheless, I intend to continue posting the majority of my writings on this blog.