Does the old map of the planes from the previous incarnation of planewalker still exist? I remember it being very nifty. Graphics of the great ring where you could click on individual planes to navigate to them.
Also, anyone still around from the old board?
I was there for about the last year before it died out. -Sniff-
Yes, though if we bring back that style of navigating Planar Portals we're likely to develop some new art to do that with. There's some on going debate on which navigation system Portals should use.
PW on hiatus... I'm from after the site went on hiatus, but as far as I understand some of the original people working on it got caught in real life, and had to pull back from working quite so hard. Apparently there was also a debate at the time of what to do with 3rd ed and eventually things just fell apart and no one was actively working the project or sure who to talk to about it.
I came in *long* after this, originally starting with Gabe over in the campaign setting area (he came in not long before I did). Gabe got some people active again on it - and then I migrated to the website and started slapping that into shape.
Further details will have to come from an older blood. 
I was around well before the first hiatus after FW dropped. Nobody's ever talked to me about anything and I've always been a part of the community slowly plodding through my letters and the like.
We still have the graphics you mentioned. They were excellent for the older version of the site, but don't fit into the structure of the new site. As Clueless said, there is someone working on adapting the planar portals graphics to the new site design.
Input is welcome if you'd like to look through the Planar Portals section, and let us know what sort of navigation you like. 
It would be hard for me to give sugestions about how it should be without breaking down in tears and begging for everything to be the way it was.
While the old graphics for the great ring may not be the most user friendly way of navigating they are rather neat. Is there any chance of them being shoved somewhere out of the way just for a bit of eye candy?
I take it all the material submitted but not published in the olden days is lost?
I think I have a few things still on disk somewhere but the rest...
The joke back then was "soon". Everything was going to happen soon. Ashy and Orri were the head honchos at the time and...-starts getting nostalgic-...-mumbles quietly about the days before 3rd edition-...
I put together what I had in the DB, and slowly but steadily recompiliing the things we still had in html. It's just not exactly 'fun' to do...
I thought you enjoy coding....lol
Thats not coding! That's copy and pasting!
I thought that's what I was doing...
Well, if you have old stuff stored and don't see it on the site, upload it to us. I believe Clueless managed to restore a lot of what was on the old site. Besides, new submissions are good too. Man can't live on nostalgia alone. With a solid database behind it and the new 3.5E rules, we can make planewalker even better. If you want to just look at the old graphics or old site design, go to archive.org, type in the planewalker url, and pick one of the old dates in 2002 or 2003. I believe the ring graphics were present at that time.
BTW, how do you find the navigation for planar portals now (graphics apart)?
Good idea. Thanks.
Someone must have put a lot of work into those graphics.
The navigation for planar portals is easy enough as you can click on the area on the bar at the left and all the sub-areas will be displayed. Logical and straightforward.
I would suggest perhaps adding something to indicate the alignments of the planes. Perhaps the lawful planes could be written in a mechanical, angular font and the chaotic plane names written in a wild calligraphy? Evil planes in blood red writting and good planes in gold?
Just a suggestion.
Ive heard pleanty of refreances to planewalkers having been on hiatus. What caused it? What happened?