1. Lee published a fantastic January Matsuri with 18 excellent submissions, all vying for cash prizes. The topic was “Famous Japanese People“.

2. To find out who the lucky winners were, read Matsuri Cash Giveaway – Winners Announced.

3. Muza-chan is hosting the February’s Japan Blog Matsuri and the topic is “Japan Top Lists”. Read the announcement for details on how you can take part.

However, I’m moved everything onto Hotaru CMS, which is a platform I’ve been building since last June, but is still not really ready to run a site the size of JapanSoc, but what the heck, eh?

The most important thing you need to know first is that if you previously registered via Google, Twitter, etc. you’ll need to use the “Forgot password” form on the login page to request a password so you can log in the old fashioned way. You’ll be able to add Google, Twitter, Facebook accounts from your account page once the dust settles.

Please leave your questions and bug reports below, and I’ll get to them as soon as I have slept and eaten can. Thanks!

I’m taking this as a signal to scrap everything and start again. Start again fresh with a new CMS, one which I’ve been developing myself, a clean database, and a spam free inbox to wake up to every morning.

To those of you who have given so much to JapanSoc over the last couple of years, I’m really sorry that all your content will be wiped. I could try moving it to the new system, but there are a lot of complications migrating from JapanSoc to Hotaru CMS, specifically with how user accounts are mapped with RPX, the provider that lets you sign in with Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I’m not a big business with a tech support department. I’m just a guy at home in the mountains of Gifu, playing with the internet.

Some of you might be reluctant to sign-up again on the new JapanSoc in case I wipe everything again, and that is totally understandable. I hope, however, that you re-join us anyway!

Notes:

1. I wasn’t planning on setting up Hotaru CMS on JapanSoc.com for another couple of months so the first few weeks will probably be buggy, and will have to be done on a temporary theme until I can get one sorted out for JapanSoc.

2. I apologize to those of you with links in the sponsors bar. I’ll do what I can to get them up again soon.

3. January’s Japan Blog Matsuri prizes are supposed to be determined by the number of socs entries got. I’ll see if I can salvage the soc counts from the database or Google’s cache.

4. A REALLY BIG APOLOGY to those of you who use the Wordpress, Drupal or plain JavaScript JapanSoc It! buttons in your blog posts. They will break the moment I take down the files.

In the meantime, you can catch up on all the latest from the Japan blogosphere at Blog Link Japan.

The topic is “Famous Japanese People” which has been extended to include anime and game characters, too.

To spice up the blog carnival, Lee has kindly put up 10,000 yen in cash (well, PayPal) prizes. I’ll say it again, that’s 10 THOUSAND yen!!! Incredible! That’s like 2 MILLION Vietnamese dong! But you better hurry up because the deadline for submissions is January 21st.

Read all about it here!

http://dumbotaku.com/2009/12/22/the-technology-matsuri/

Many thanks to the host, and to everybody who hosted during the last year. Let’s hope we can keep the Matsuri running through 2010.

If you’re interested in hosting the Japan Blog Matsuri, please see the FAQ and let me know. We have openings from February June July.

On that note, we need more people to host the monthly matsuri, beginning with February 2010. If you would like to host, please read the FAQ for more information and contact me so I can add you to the Blog Carnival widget thing. Thanks!

It’s called Hotaru CMS and when finished will closely mimic JapanSoc, but offer oodles of potential for customization because everything is a plugin! Registration, story submission, comments – they’re all plugins which can be upgraded or replaced anytime.

As I work away on Hotaru, I’m porting Chris‘ JapanSoc theme across. Here’s where I’m at so far. The sidebar needs a lot of work, but when I’m done I’m hoping you won’t notice the difference!

Hotaru CMS is open source, so anybody can view the code, modify it and use it for free. If you’d like to follow my progress, I have a dedicated blog for Hotaru where I post updates, and of course, you’re more than welcome to join the forums (yes, I made good use of those old JapanSoc.org forums after all! )

If being part of a fledgling open source community sounds like your cup of tea, please consider joining us!

If those burgers tickle your tastebuds, you might want to soc the matsuri on JapanSoc.

Thanks to David for hosting. Looking out for a ramen-sized matsuri in November!

Update: Problem resolved.