I'm happy to report that our new subscription mechanism is online.
All the latest info about it is in the new SECTION 7 of the FAQ so go and have a read, find out what it's all about, what it costs and how to do it.

I should stress that our original plan to make subscriptions voluntary is STILL TRUE - if you don't want to, or can't afford to, then don't worry - the site hasn't changed for you.

I'll not repeat any of the information in the FAQ here but suffice to say it's pretty much the result of all the discussions we had with you - many thanks for your input, if there's anything about this new subscription system that we've done, that you don't like, just drop us a line and we'll be happy to talk it through.

As an extra bonus for subscribed users - we've decided to bring online a much sought after facility for placing Photographs online. It's in development at the moment but it's storming along. It will be a separate, subscriber only, website and it will integrate with Dear Diary so that you can quickly and easily put photo's into your diary entries.

Why Subscriber only for the photo site? Simple - we feel that as a free site it would cost far too much to run in bandwidth costs and would be far more wide open to abuse from things like Pornography. Put simply, if someone pays for a service they are far less likely to abuse it.

We also have a Web900 subscription system coming online imminently, this means that for (US only, unfortunately) those without credit cards you can sign up by simply dialing a phone number. We'll let you know when it's online, any day now.

Matt and Steve.