Alright, so here's the deal with the release of Minecraft 1.0:
As soon as the final version releases, I'll start work on a new map with a spawn town. Once I finish the spawn town, and have all amenities built in, I'll send the new map to Kodlee, who will implement it on the server. I expect the new map to be up and running, with the server fully updated to the latest version by next Monday, the 21st, perhaps earlier.
In the meantime, the server will continue to operate on 1.8.1.
Also: All temporary bans will be reset. We might reset perma bans later on, but for the initial update to 1.0 we'll only be clearing the temp ban list.