It's been a lot of work, but last week marked the posting of the 250th story.

The site has come a long way in less than 6 months. The two most recent changes - the addition of embedded videos in the "News of the day" posts, and the "Videos" archive, are two more steps along the way.

Does this mean that this will be the final format for the site? No - I have something new planned within the next few weeks that I think people will like. Details soon.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by.

You might have noticed I've begun including videos in the stories that get posted. I'd like to draw your attention to something else - the new "Videos" link on the topics menu, or the "Videos" link at the top of the page. They have different purposes

• The one at the top of the page brings you to an index of videos
• The one on the left brings you to stories about individual videos or notifications of new pages added to the video index.

I think you'll find some of them to be either entertaining or useful. Why not check them out? And of course, if you have any videos to suggest, please submit them using the "Submit story" link at the top of the page.

Today, we mark another milestone - the 2,000th entry in the searchable database of off-site articles. Most people assume that the search box in the upper-left corner is just for searching transboutique.com stories. This is far from the case.

The vast majority (approximately 90%) of the search database is off-site content. This is content that has been vetted to ensure that it is relevant, isn't a "landing page", "doorway page", or some other form of advertising spamware, and is related to transsexual, transgender, lesbian and/or gay issues. You shouldn't have to wade through pages loaded with porn links when searching for information on transsexual on-the-job discrimination.

Earlier today, I added external link 1,500 to the searchable database. You can search the full text of all these news items and web pages anonymously. For those who are curious, item # 1,500 was the Associated Press announcement that US President Obama will require hospitals to give better access to the partners of lesbian, gay, and trans patients.

To respect copyright, you will only see a short excerpt of any external content. When you click on the link, you will be taken directly to the external site.

You can read more about the reasons why you would want to use our search in this article.

Just a quick note to say "Thank You!" to everyone who has stopped by in the first three months.

A word about how I do the statistics

• I don't count "hits" - that can be anything - an image, some text.
• I don't count pages that are grabbed by a search engine in the total;
• I don't count pages grabbed by a utility program or script such as "wget", "curl" or "mirror";

Only pages seen by a human being in a web browser count to the total

Sometime a bit after midnight, that number hit the 50,000 mark. It's a start, and I just wanted to say that I appreciate that people find the site interesting and/or useful.

On Thursday, an anonymous poster replied to an article reporting on a petition about crossdressing. It certainly has the fingerprints of a troll post - it's anonymous, and it attempts to conflate the issue of cross-dressing with masochism and child pornography.

Anon: "What about people who get sexual gratification from viewing child porn? Should any of those be classified as disorders? If so than what makes them different from a transvestite fetish?"

Asking what the difference is between a cross-dresser and some perv who is into "kiddie porn" is flame-bait, pure and simple. Yes, it can be argued that this is a judgment call, but it doesn't take much in the way of judgment to label this particular post a troll. To borrow from Justice Potter Stewart, "I may not be able to define it exactly, but I know it when I see it."

Why discuss this in public?

That particular series of comments is the reason why anonymous comments have been disabled for the time being, and why the time that could have been spent on this weekends "On the Couch" series was instead spent on other things.

The search box doesn't just search the articles posted here on transboutique.com - It now provides results that include some other web sites as well. To respect copyright, you will only see a short excerpt of any external content. When you click on the link, you will be taken directly to the external site.

Earlier today, I added item # 1,000

Whether it's news or just information, you will get more information without having a search engine tracking what you're looking for.

Yesterday I added article # 100.  This meant that the "front page" became more than 10 individual pages, so to keep the site manageable, stories more than a month old will be moved off the front page and into the story archives. (See the link in the top menu - right next to "Submit story).

You can still see all articles under a topic (even those that are archived) by clicking the appropriate topic icon or menu, and you can still search all the stories via the search box.

Tomorrow will mark the 8th full week of operation, and I'm marking the occasion by making some improvements to the site.

3 new topics: Education, LGBT, Politics

One thing I can't help but notice as I edit the daily news stories is how many issues surround two topics - education and politics. If it's someone being denied an education because they dressed according to their gender and not their sex, then it's politicians trying to pander to Neanderthals with a bit of trans-bashing.

There are enough of these stories (let me rephrase that - unfortunately, there are too many of these stories), and these are topics that affect everyone - because it's your tax dollars that pay for it.  That's why you'll see both Education and Politics as new topics.

Going forward, many of the stories that affect transsexuals, transgenders, cross-dressers, gays or lesbians, and that have either an educational or political slant, will be found there.