First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Kwanzaa, Fantastic Day O'Presents & Greed and a Happy Holiday to everyone. If I've missed a holiday you celebrate, I apologize.

We'd like to announce that version 4.0.1 of Side 7 has launched! This small update brings back a few features that didn't launch due to time constraints with version 4.0, and adds a few other features. Back is the management of Profile Images, and added are views of which of your images have comments and which have been Favourited by other site members! A few minor bug fixes are also included, such as comment reply notifications going out properly. Also, we added CAPTCHA security to a few areas of the site to prevent bot spam.

This update has been a long time coming. If I might be a little personal, this has been a hard year for myself or my family. Medical obligations, loss of employment, and the premature birth of my daughter all played a hand in forcing priority changes and delaying work on v4.0.1. Fortunately, we've clawed our way past most of the major issues and are digging ourselves out of the red slowly but surely. This means that the doors are open to begin work on v4.1.

Version 4.1 is a very major update. There are major back-end reworkings that will facilitate features such as music, video, and literature uploads. Yes, we're adding these media types to the site, since they are all valid forms of art. Video may not be added in v4.1, but instead might be added in v4.1.1. Other site features will include the site skinning system, which will open with a Site Skin Design contest! Winners will receive prizes of a year's subscription to a 5-Star account, addition of their skin design to the site (fully credited), and other prizes, such as art supplies! Recent Upload and 5-Star Account RSS Feeds, as well as automatic Twitter updates, will help get the word out about your latest art additions. Embeddable gallery and image tags to post to other sites or use in forums sigs are going to be another way you can advertise, and click-throughs from those tags will be counted and will earn you Account Credits!

We'll also institute the Invite A Friend system so you can earn Account Credits or Account Subscription extensions for getting your friends to join! Speaking of friends, our Friends system will be completed in the v4.1 release, giving you access to private, friends-only uploads of your images, music, and prose that don't count against your gallery count and are exempt from the site rules (privacy has its privileges).

We hope you enjoy the new features of the site and look forward to the upcoming features. Thank you for your patronage!

-- Bad Karma

Sounds good, Bad Karma. Here's to more wreaking your own brand of havoc across the internet come the new year.

It's been a dicey year for just about everyone, but you sure have delivered on the potential of Side 7. My appreciation to you for all your hard work!

Big Bad and Beautiful...side 7 is coming up from the ashes to be a whole new site from what I have seen and soon MUSIC!!! oh man I am so excited for the next update keep me posted bro.