All of the entries from the 2008 Photograph of the Year Contest have been received and processed. Everyone that submitted a photograph should have received a confirmation email back letting them know if their entry was accepted or denied. We’re almost ready to begin the first round of voting, so we wanted to give you a couple of details while you (patiently) wait.

I just sent this post out as an email, but for those of you that have chosen not to receive emails from the Corner, or just subscribe to the blog, but aren’t registered for the Corner forums (what’s up with that??!), here’s the email that went out - wouldn’t want to leave you in the dark, now, would I?

Better late than never, right? Here’s a quick update on the past Contest Corner Challenge as well as the current CCC.

It’s been about 13 hours since we started the upgrade, and we’re obviously not finished yet. The forum is working, but it still looks pretty funny. We’re basically having to rebuild the template (all the files that make the Corner look like the Corner) from the bottom-up, so it looks like it will take us a bit longer than we initially thought. We’re aiming to have most of the design bugs complete by this time (10pm-ish EST) tomorrow (Tuesday) night - we’ll be working on it most of the day tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to continue to post stuff up in the forums and galleries, and don’t be freaked out if stuff looks different, or you get an error, or it’s blue instead of orange, or whatever - over the next day or two. Because of the delays, however, the winner announcement of Contest Corner Challenge #52, and the announcement of CCC#53 will be a day or two late. I’m aiming for late (as in past midnight) on Tuesday night for the CCC#52 winner announcement, and hopefully mid-afternoon on Wednesday for the announcement of CCC#53 (but don’t hold me to that… it depends on how the rest of the upgrade goes, and how tired I am by midnight on Tuesday night). But enough with the updates - go back and enjoy the new Corner forums.

Since 9am this morning (EST) we’ve been upgrading the software that the Corner forums run on (vBulletin). The upgrade is complete, and the forums are now open again. We do have some work to do, though, to make the Corner look pretty again. If you notice some things that look different or aren’t quite working properly, rest assured we’re working on it now (though we’re going to take a break for dinner and stuff soon). We’ll keep working on the finishing touches into the night. Once we think we’re done, I’ll open up a thread so you all can tell me what I missed. Hopefully by sometime on Tuesday, we’ll be all done! If you want to send me some coffee, though, you’re more than welcome to drop by with a latté.

Less than a month ago we announced the 2008 Server Fundraiser project. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’ve been having around the Corner lately, and that we’ll soon need to move ourselves to a bigger and better server. In comes the 2008 Server Fundraiser. In addition to the 2008 Server Fundraiser page, I’ve added a banner at the top of the main forum page so that everyone can keep track of how we’re doing. So far, we’ve raised over 60% of our goal of $2,500 with over $1,500 in donations. Less than $1,000 to go! So what are you waiting for? Get your donations in!!! You’ll even get some cool stuff in return for donating, and one person will receive a Lowepro Stealth Reporter D550 AW camera bag! I have one of these bags myself, and it rocks.

We’ve raised over $1,500 in less than a month - you think we can get that last $1,000 before the end of April?

Last week we kicked off the 2008 Server Fundraiser with a bang, and we’re making some great progress already - with almost $1,000 of our goal of $2,500, we’re nearly 40% of the way there!! And all that in 5 days!! How awesome are we??!

What? A blog post? Isn’t Tim supposed to be on vacation…