Due to some hard drive issues, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum was down for a bit. Our wonderful host has done some things to try and stabilize it to (hopefully) handle the post-Game of Thrones crush of traffic, but some time next week the system will have to go down to have the disk replaced and an image restored. We don’t have a day or date as of yet, but bear that in mind if it goes down at some point at next week. And bear in mind that if it goes down this weekend, it’s probably that disk acting up.

Ahead of tomorrow’s premiere of Game of Thrones, we’ve made our newest skin for the A Song of Ice and Fire forum go live. The largest change is that we’ve moved from two columns (on either side of the forum) to one, somewhat larger one on the left side (however, overall the forum now dominates more of the dispaly). With the kind permission of Ted Nasmith, who’s allowed us to use his 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar imagery in other parts of Westeros.org, we’ve added his amazing depiction of the Hightower of Oldtown on the sidebar as well.

We’re aware this skin is not 100% yet, but it’s mostly there, and in the next week or so we manage to deal with most outstanding issues. In the interim, however, we’re leaving the “old” skin—renamed Legacy Song of Ice and Fire—available for those who need some time to transition, especially those members of the forum who are using one of the mods that turn the skin much whiter (ala the old “Stark” skin) for whatever reason. Note that it’s staying put only for a limited time, however, just to help with the transition—we’ll probably remove it entirely in a month or two.

As we said, it’s not 100% yet, but we’ve a list of things we’re going to tweak.

The So Spake Martin section of our site—an archive of correspondence, chats, interviews, and signing and convention reports—has been updated with a link to a podcast interview with GRRM conducted by Bear Swarm!. This is about a month old, recorded at the time of the Days of Ice and Fire event.

The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with a number of reports from the recent Days of Ice and Fire event. You can find them here, under the section for reports from signings and events.

The Octocon Q&A has just wrapped, and we’ve posted a transcription from lady narcissa (from the A Song of Ice and Fire forum) to the So Spake Martin collection of correspondence and convention reports. Quite a lot of good material,but be aware that there are some small spoilers here and there for the previous books and A Dance with Dragons.

The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with some of the first George R.R. Martin-specific reports out of the 2010 Worldcon, AussieCon 4. You can find the reports on the Convention Reports sub-section of the collection, and it’s the place to keep an eye on as we get more reports over the course of the weekend. Reports are always welcome at the forum, or they can be sent direct to us.

The So Spake Martin collection of reports and correspondence with GRRM have been updated with an e-mail from May in which a plot point from A Storm of Swords is briefly discussed, and with reports from last week from George’s appearance in San Diego last week. It includes some interesting information on the initial choice for the role of Illyrio Mopatis and how the dramatization of the series might effect GRRM’s depiction of characters.

The A Song of Ice and Fire forum now includes the Tapatalk plugin, which provides greatly improved readability and usability of the forum for users of mobile phones (iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, and Android-based) who download the Tapatalk app. The plugin comes in a light, free version which allows reading but not posting, and a $2.99 version with posting and other features.

The regular mobile skin is still available, so the Tapatalk plugin is not nor ever will be mandatory for using the forum on a mobile platform.

As promised, the SSM collection has been updated with a C2E2 transcript and other reports. And as an extra surprise, we have the link to a brand new podcast interview with GRRM at the Dragon Page. GRRM shares some very frank and interesting thoughts on the process of writing the series and the difficulties and delays that have taken place with the last novel and the present one.

Over the past months, traffic to Westeros—both to the various website sections and the forums—has grown steadily, in no small part due to the buzz surrounding HBO’s Game of Thrones project. Given this, we thought it might be fun to take a little look at the various sections that make up the site and introduce them to both new and old visitors.

First up, Blood of Dragons MUSH, the reason that this site exists at all as all of Westeros was originally envisioned as a website with information for players of the MUSH. As it happened, the website grew so that the pages associated with the game became one section among several and the MUSH itself took longer than expected to complete. But in November 2006 it finally opened and the story has been unfolding ever since. Perhaps you want to be a part of it?

The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with a new audio interview with George R.R. Martin, carried out by Gamer’s Haven. As the name of the site might suggest, there’s a special focus on gaming in the interview, discussing GRRM’s history with games and their influence on his work.

Would you like to pay a visit to Westeros and take part in a pivotal historical event?

This weekend (Saturday 20th at 11 Central Time & Sunday 21st at 10 Central Time) the climax of king Daeron’s Conquest of Dorne will play out on Blood of Dragons MUSH. If you would like to join in, there is still time, as we have a selection of ready-made characters to get new players started almost instantly.

Continuing his fantastic series of colorful, whimsical maps inspired by the setting, Ice and Fire forum denizen Other-in-Law has added two new maps to his gallery: The stormlands and the jaw-droppingly detailed map of the Reach. Though speculative, the heraldry of the maps draws from the descriptions provided by GRRM for Westeros.org’s heraldry page as well as those described in the books.

These are some of the neatest bits of fan art we’ve ever seen for the series.

Patrick of Pat’s Fantasy Hot List has again selected the A Song of Ice and Fire forum as the best SF/F forum on the web. It’s always an honor and a pleasure for the community to receive such recognition. Our Literature sub-forum has attracted a host of insightful fans, well-read reviewers, and interesting authors over the years which has led to a good deal of interesting discussion.

Westeros has finally undergone a long-planned redesign, which brings a new, unified look to all of the various subsites. We hope our visitors will find it easier to navigate between the subsites as well as within the subsites. There’s still some polishing and finetuning left to do, so expect to see little changes here and there over the coming weeks, but most everything should work as intended.