Friends,
Learning a new CMS system adds significant time to a deployment. That’s what we’ve learned over the past month, and while we’ve made progress, we’re not ready to launch tomorrow 
THAT’S OUR STORY AND WE’RE STICKIN’ TO IT!
But we’re excited to launch, as we have several great new slogans that are getting rendered as we speak. And between American Apparel and Article1 clothing, we’ve got literally dozens of styles of clothes we’re choosing from. The site is going to look great, the catalog looks dope, it’s summertime, and the economy hasn’t folded entirely yet. Smiles all around. [smiley face] See?
We’ve gotten your emails (nothing makes us happier than hearing from a customer who wants our shirts, after we’ve been offline for so long!), and we are doing everything we can to get this site done properly pronto!
While no one can accuse us of being in the tshirt business for the money (since we haven’t exactly been hustling over the last two years 
we are excited to get back online and reconnect with our customers and the friends we made selling in Union Square back in ‘04-’06.
Question for YOU: Do you live in New York, and if so, do you know of anyone who has access to a great rooftop where we could hold a combination pre-launch party and photoshoot for SpankTheMachine? Maybe early June? Thinkin’ moosique, entertainment of one sort or another, happy beautiful people all over the place, you know – summertime.
SpankTheMachine,
SpankTheMachine.
Pretty soon, we’ll have some updates regarding the slogans, the clothing manufacturers we plan on using, and the syle and color availability. If you would like to be informed of this stuff, shoot us an email at info@spankthemachine.com and we’ll keep you abreast. Otherwise, you’ll be able to check it out on the first of May (we hope!)
-STM
We have used Zencart since 2005 and have been really happy with the results thus far. However, we are about to put in some major time with CSS and design work, and as of yet there is no new release date for Zen Cart’s new core version, which will make much of the effort we are going to put in over the next few weeks redundant (as the current templating system will be incompatible with the 2.0 version). By the time the 2.0 version is stable enough to make the migration, I feel like I will have JUST figured out how to properly manage that template system.
So we look at this timing disjoint with ZenCart an opportunity to dive in to Magento. So far, so good, although learning a new CMS is always a trial in the beginning. Patience, glasshoppa…
-STM
It’s around 1:30am on the morning of April 2nd, 2009. I had been wanting to relaunch the site on April 1st, 2009 (after missing about 100 other deadlines over the previous two years) but I ran out of time again, so I decided to settle on May 1, 2009. While I had been planning on putting up a backchannel/meta blog thing detailing the planning behind SpankTheMachine, it wasn’t until coffee earlier today with a friend (talkin’ bout you, Shtudio) that the idea of a countdown to the launch came up. So pretend this post was yesterday, April Fools’ Day. There are exactly 30 days until May 1. On that day, I will launch SpankTheMachine. Being that I’ve been saying that STM is about a month away from re-launching for the past two years, it is time to walk the walk.
We got plans, dreams, slogans, and a sense that after eight years of El Bush, it is time to laugh again. We’re stoked to claim our corner of the interwebs, and if capitalism holds out long enough, we might be able to sell some shirts in the months ahead.
SpankTheMachine,
SpankTheMachine
4/1 – 4/2/09
