After some site upgrades this weekend, Cigar Envy is now available in 22 languages.

This site gets a lot of visitors from around the world. Mouse over the small map graphic in the far right column and you will see what I mean.

We have a broad readership in Europe, Asia and the Middle East in addition to North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The map shows readers over the past six weeks, with dot size representing numbers of people visiting the site from various locations.

We will be switching over from the machine translations currently on the site in the next few weeks thanks to the interest and assistance of volunteers in several countries. I’m working out a special way of thanking them for their generous assistance.

More on that, and details on the new translations, are below the fold.

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Results of the poll on opinions on Drew Estates Acid cigar line are in.

These cigars, of course, are always a subject of controversy in cigar circles. People seem to either hate them or love them, with very few opinions in between whenever they are discussed in online forums.

The poll results show a little more diversity of opinion. Maybe the Cigar Envy audience is a different cross section of the cigar-smoking public, or maybe the anonymity of the poll caused people to be a little more free in saying that they liked them without fear of flaming. Perhaps the sort of people who answer web polls differs significantly from those who post in forums. I’m not sure what the difference is — but the results, and some comments on those results, are below the fold.

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Another modification to the site makes each article available in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portugese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese in addition to English.

It is machine-translation, done on demand, but you can bookmark pages in your language of choice and come back to them later.

In order to translate the site, just click on the appropriate flag in the far right column at the top (above the calendar and well past the picture of Jennifer Tilly smoking a cigar on this page, and Jennifer Aniston smoking on the next page - click More), and the page you are on will magically transform. Another upgrade is in the works that will make every page on the site appear in your chosen language from then on — that should be ready in a week or so.

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The new Cigar Envy Discussion Forums are open.

There is a block in the right column menu that will take you there, or you can click on the link above. The Forums are free, and I hope you will enjoy them.

The new Forums will provide a different level of interaction than takes place here at the main CE blogazine or on the Cigar Envy Deals and Discussion email list at yahoogroups.

Talk about starting cigar passes and trades at the yahoo discussion group led me to set up Member Forums here at the main Cigar Envy site to provide a bit more privacy and a quicker response time than the yahoogroup gives. The active Cigar Pass forms at the discussion board are private, by invitation only from the pass moderators, and can only be viewed by members of each pass group. This way, members can share their home addresses, phone numbers and the like while doing passes without spreading confidential information widely on the web.

To gain admittance to a Cigar Pass, post your interest in the Register For Passes Here Forum and a moderator will admit you to a group as soon as possible. Please do not post your home address of other personal information in the open forums.

As long as I was setting up the Pass Forums, I decided to set up a full message board. There are forums for member reviews of cigars, cigar accessories, and retailers. There is also a General Talk category with areas for politics, humor, disaster relief and other charities and other subjects. Livin’ Large is the are for diversions such as wine, beer, and liquor as well as sports talk, travel, entertainment and more. I’ve also set up some areas for pipe smokers. To protect member privacy, most of the forums are not visible until someone has registered.

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Regular readers may have noticed that there have been no updates here for the last few days.

The reason for the frozen condition of Cigar Envy since last week is directly related to another freezing event. I’m talking about the ice storm that hit the southeastern United States last week. It has caused hundreds of thousands of people throughout the region to be without electric power and other utilities for several days.

I wish that I was one of them.

Instead, I spent a couple of days in the hospital after an auto accident related to the storm. I was travelling in South Carolina on business when the weather turned foul. I was in a large pickup truck, and having no problems since I’ve lived and driven in places from Michigan to Arizona to New York and know how to drive in bad road conditions.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true of all people.

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Since a lingering upper respiratory virus has left me unable to smoke, I haven’t posted any new cigar reviews in the last few days. I’m back-logged with some really great cigars that I’ll start sharing with you in the coming week if all goes well.

While my sinuses are opening up, I’ve bee making some cosmetic and “behind-the-scenes” changes here at Cigar Envy that should make the site a little more useful, and user-friendly.

• First, the first right column now has a listing of the top ten most read articles that is updated automatically.

  Obviously, more recent articles are showing up most often right now since the count just started a couple of days ago, but I’ve been surprised at how some of the older ones shot up quickly because of search engine traffic and referrals.

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