Hey there guys,

If you are a Heita! regular, then you would have noticed that things look a bit differently around here. If you are new then you shouldn't be thinking this, other than how much the website reminds you of standing in an empty hall.

Yes, there is currently no articles, stories or any other content for that matter. Why? Well, I am here to tell you why!

We are in the process of reworking the entire website, from scratch. This is turning out to be a HUGE job, and while we are working as fast as we possibly can, these things tend to take time.

So what's changing here?

Previously heita! ran as a simple blog. We tried to make this simple blog do a lot of things that went beyond the scope of a simple blog, and things got - complicated. The website became slow and almost unmanageable! So, rather than work on trying to keep the boat afloat, we decided to build a new boat, stronger this time, faster this time, more powerful this time. Here are some things that you can expect to come:

• You features
  From the start we placed a great amount of priority on you, our visitor. We never really had the infrastructure to handle this very well, or at all though, and while our intentions were good, the practise was horrible. Our new website will enable much more You features like proper commenting, discussions, voting, reviews, rating, writing your own articles, notices and a whole lot more. Heita! is fully dependant on you, so we would like to make you feel more special over here!
• Events
  Our events section sucked. It was a side idea that we got and implemented as such. We realised how much of a large role this could play within Heita! and also realised how much our old platform could not do it. Well, now we can! Our events management part of the new website will be grand and special! Events is now a major part of Heita!
• Articles
  The way we manage and sort our articles and stories has been terrible. We have been rethinking how we want to do this for a long time, and we are busy implementing this to be so much more user-friendly! A lot of time is being spent on this, so much so, that the website is not ready yet!
• Artist Features
  We have been toying with this idea for a while now. A part of our ideals to help promote up and coming South African artists will be to feature them a bit more, and to create permanent profile pages for them, to which we can link every time they make the news! Pretty nifty no?
• Advertising
  Heita! makes it's existence through advertising. We are busy implementing the TraaidMark Adverteur advertising system into the website, which will open up some more opportunities for us, as well as streamline our advertising!
• Newsletter
  We are starting our newsletter. Subscribe to it!
• Blog
  We always update you guys on what's happening. We also did this in our main content sections, which is a terrible way to do it. We are now running our own heita! blog alongside the main website, effectively seperating all Heita! talk from the things that Heita! talks about.

That's it?

No, it's not. We are also working on some other great things, some of which you will probably see more of within the next few days.

• Online Art Gallery
  Let's be honest, it's expensive to exhibit your works. Heita! don't intend to compete with the physical art galleries, but would like to present a more alternative space to show off your work to South Africa. We are still thinking about the how, but we would love for the galleries out there to work with us, perhaps running concurrent exhibitions, one in the gallery and online with us.
• Online Directory
  We do already have a directory, but it just isn't doing it for us. We are busy rethinking this great idea and making it work as great. We don't like things to be too far away from each other, and this is a part of our family. Let's bring it home. We are also making all listings free until the end of the year!

So all in all, things are happening once again. We are almost there guys, please be patient for just a little bit longer!

If you guys have anything you'd like to see in Heita!, now is the time to let us know! All you need to do is to drop us a comment, and we will get back to you on that!

Thanks so much, and looking forward to the journey with you!

Heita! team