You may have noticed that the front page has updated - but this is not your usual 'new stuff available.' This actually marks the deployment of my new "automatically update the front page with published articles and reviews" script.

For as long as anyone can remember, updating the 'featured content' box on the front page has required someone to hand-edit the front page's HTML and then upload the changed file via FTP. Well, that's just not good - so I've automated it.

It's worth noting as well that because editors no longer need to edit the page by hand when publishing something, they can set things up in advance of when they go live - possibly weeks if they so desire. This should help them to establish a more regular flow of content on the front page by doing articles when it suits them and scheduling them for regular publishing, instead of having to log into the site on release day every single time.

Edit: I've also been persuaded to throw together an RSS feed for it. Hooray for SQL Server's XML queries and XSLT!