I just had the pleasure of meeting Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame. As anybody who is a regular reader of that blog is aware, Cory is a big fan of steampunk and the entire maker subculture that has erupted in the past couple of years.

He signed one of the bookmarks I made for the Steampunk Convention last October and mentioned that he’d even been to this site before–I’m honored!

Thanks for dropping by Chicago Cory!

Several kind readers have brought to my attention the bug that seems to be appearing on pages other than the homepage. Specifically, there seems to be an issue with the background image and some other images displaying correctly leaving a lot of white space. I’m looking into this and will hopefully have it resolved soon. If you have any suggestions as to what might be causing this, please email me at haltingpoint (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!

Those of you viewing the site in IE6 may have noticed some very ugly looking gray boxes around some of the images on the site since the redesign. This was caused by how IE6 handles transparent images…in short, it doesn’t play nicely with them. I had held off on posting new content to the site in fear that I might lose it while tinkering with things and trying to fix this issue, but I’ve finally done it!

Or rather, Chris Van Patten has done it. Chris is a kind soul who came across my plea for assistance and, being a kind person, helped me fix it (it took him all of two seconds). Chris is a WordPress wiz and has very affordable rates if any of you are in need of coding or design assistance and you can feel free to learn more about him on his website (and feel free to mention where you heard about him).

Note: This was not any sort of paid posting…I just really appreciate the help he has given me on this issue that has plagued the new design for some time and wanted to show him a little link love.

First, thank you for the mention and link on LiveJournal, its always interesting to see where my traffic is coming from.

Second, to address renireligion’s curiosity as to whether I will ever consider adding other auction site listings to BuySteampunk.com, well, that is a complicated question to answer. (more…)

If you are a regular visitor, you may have noticed things have changed around here over the last couple of days.  That is because I am currently in the process of releasing a COMPLETE redesign of the site.

Here’s what it means for you:

• Same main categories (clothing, goggles, jewelry, etc.) but now I have the ability to add sub-categories under each to let you get more specific in your search
• New Featured Listings section in the upper right that will house crafts of note from specific crafters and once things are running smoothly, I will open this section for paid listings as well so you can advertise your own wares
• Adding a forum
• Moving the blog portion of the site front and center–it used to be buried and this will help make you aware of the latest happenings
• AMAZING new visual design thanks to my incredibly talented designer Sam, plus its all in Wordpress now versus individual HTML pages
• A LOT more updates…I’ve been holding a lot of post ideas in reserve until the new site was live because I didn’t want to cause any issues with transferring the old posts but once things are finalized, expect a lot more content added on a regular basis

So, that’s all great stuff, however I need to ask you a favor.  Please be patient over the next few days as I get final tweaks in place.  There are several known bugs that are being fixed (such as the gray boxes in IE and the broken category pages) and I have a day job, so this can’t all be fixed overnight unfortunately.  Just be patient and don’t give up on things–they WILL be fixed!

Please be sure to leave any comments regarding the design in this post–thanks!

Apparently there was a steampunk blog carnival which I was unaware of.  However while reviewing today’s traffic, I noticed a couple hits from a site called MyDisguises.com and low and behold it listed this site!  Thanks guys!  They have a nice listing of steampunk links there to look at and the concept for the blog will surely be of interest to you steam fashion hounds.

Our friends over at SteamFashion have compiled a great list of steampunk clothing resources that is quite extensive.  The list features sites for those that are more of the DIY variety as well as those who prefer to purchase their clothing premade.

If you have any interest in steampunk fashion I highly recommend you give that list a gander although be warned, you will probably end up spending some money afterwards!

Today I am proud to announce that the BuySteampunk.com news blog is officially live!

I have a few tweaks that still need to be made to get it more in line with the rest of the site in terms of font and formatting but it finally looks passable.

This section will feature a variety of content including the following features:

Crafter’s Spotlight

• Exclusive interviews with popular and budding craftsmen and women. They’ll share pictures and info about their latest work as well as tips and tricks that they’ve learned along the way.

Artifact Feature

• Check back frequently as I will be posting specific listings I find that I feel are real gems in the rough. Due to the way eBay searching works, occassionally there are some great steampunk crafts, steampunk parts, or tools that do not get displayed. Here is where I will highlight these unique items that you may have missed.

The Closet

• Join me as I look at the “latest” in victorian clothing and steampunk fashion trends. We’ll look at steampunk goggles, traditional victorian style clothing, steampunk clothing, steampunk jewelry and much more.

And much, much more!

Be sure to bookmark this site now and add our RSS feed to your list to stay up to date on all the latest steampunk news about steampunk crafts you can actually buy instead of just drool over.