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I'm happy to consider anything you want to suggest. Can you give me a link to the service and their policies on ad content? First thing is to make sure they don't allow disruptive ads (pop ups/unders, auto-play sounds, etc.) and for me to get a general impression of their service.

I think you may have confused this site with some other. Perhaps you were looking for http://timecube.com ?

Uh, yeah, as mentioned in the application instructions, your username is your URL, unless you're linking your own domain name here. I can create a new account with a different name if you really need to.

As for IRC, the rules mean you can't run an actual IRC server or client/chatbot on your shell account here. Links from webpages, and client side (java/javascript) stuff connecting to other IRC servers are fine.

Good enough. You're in! You should have an email with login information and instructions. Please follow it, and make sure to set your user info and a new password. If you have any questions, let me know.

Welcome Aboard!

It looks like you have been keeping up with a regular schedule for several months now, so that's a definite plus. I am a little hesitant that you have a friend you'll be relying on to get a site up and running though. Not that you can't do that, but as noted elsewhere, this is "raw" web hosting. Most people end up installing wordpress/comicpress or something similar, though some still create static, non CMS sites as well. Do you know what it is your friend/you are thinking to use or create?

I somehow left the forum in maintenance mode for a while here. My apologies to anyone that was unable to access things. It should be back to normal functionality now though. Please let me know if you run into any problems though.

I saw bacon.swf and thought for sure it was going to be this instead. http://z0r.de/69 :-)

But yeah, web hosting is a heckuva lot easier today than it used to be. The internet is also much, much bigger.  It's a good thing though. Tons of much more specialized communities have grown up in the intervening years, and can provide a much better experience for most artistic and creative websites than my general purpose hosting does.  As I think you noted, DMFA is leaving soon for one such community, and that is the last truly big site I'm hosting. When I started this in 2001, my goal was only to make the internet a better place, and give something back. Tons of people loved the idea, and I like to think I did my part for a good decade there. The fact that it's no longer needed, in a way, kind of proves the goal has been reached. So while I think the sun is setting on this stage of my internet philanthropy, I'm sure I'll find some new, cool thing to do in the future. Just not sure what that is yet. :-)

Okay, you're in. You should have an email with login information. Please follow the directions there.

Welcome Aboard!

Alright, sounds good enough to me. Just didn't want you to think fame and fortune were right around the corner. One last clarification... your username here becomes part of the URL (it's the subdomain) and can be rather longer (64 characters) than most sites. You still want "mwadc"? It probably matters less, of course, if you're planning to point a domain here though.

Heh, no worries on the tech side of things. As soon as I saw one of your characters was using a modified GPL for code, I figured you had that covered.

My bigger concern is persistence. The reason I like to see a fair bit of content is the history and dedication it shows on the part of the site owner. In the 12+ years I've been doing this, I've seen a LOT of people give up in the early stages. To that end, how long have you been writing this particular story for? I see 14 chapters, on what's listed as a bi-weekly schedule, but they're each only 300 to 1000 words at most. If what you're looking for is an audience/fans, a serial novel on a standalone website is usually not the best way to find it, and two or three pages a week generally isn't enough content to keep people coming back.

Now, I'm not saying "no" mind you, and I'm not trying to discourage. I just want you to realize it can be very difficult to get and keep an audience. It sounds like your familiar with that after the novel you mentioned, but I look at what you have currently, and I think it will probably take a lot more work than I see on your site so far. Writing is hard, especially online and when compared to visual, short-form stuff like comics, videos, or even artwork. People will read a crappy comic if it gets even the slightest laugh, they'll look at mediocre artwork if it has any redeeming value at all... it takes only seconds of their time. To get and keep an audience with just the written word though, you need to not only be good, but diligent as well... and of course luck never hurts.

For comparison, I'm currently publishing a fan-fiction novel elsewhere, and I got lucky, getting it publicized by some bigger names in the fandom to start with, and attracting a large readership up front. Now, with an established audience, and hundreds of subscribed and excited readers, I publish a new chapter weekly, averaging between 6000-9000 words each, and I still feel like I'm stretching people's patience between updates. My story-telling ability has been judged to be "quite good" now by lots of fans. Despite that, I know with absolute certainty that if I'd simply published it here on my own site, I would've been lucky to get even a dozen readers after months of publication. Skill is essential, but has little to do with success in the small-time and online.


Now, all that negativity aside, what're your goals here? What milestones have you set for yourself? I see "weekly updates" as one, but how long will they be? How are you going to attract an audience? What's going to keep you motivated when the readers are slow to appear?

PHP, Apache, and MySQL (along with a few dozen supporting libraries and such) have been updated. All of these were minor version updates, so shouldn't impact much, but if you run into problems, as always, just let me know.

In the not too distant future -- that is, a few weeks from now -- I will probably be upgrading PHP from 5.4 to 5.5. As far as I know, this shouldn't be too big of an upgrade, but you might want to make sure your PHP scripts and applications are compatible with PHP 5.5.

So I'm now comfortably settled in Bend, Oregon. I've two different internet feeds (I'm a nerd) and more free time than I know what to do with. If anyone is journeying near this part of the country and would like to say hi, I've got a spare bed to offer. Otherwise, know that all things are on cruise control as far as the site is concerned. I'm spending my time getting in shape, doing some mountain biking, hiking, etc. and I'm toying with Aruduino and the other electronics, as well as nerding it up in some local RPG groups and Belegarth (which is hitting people with padding sticks and calling them swords.) :-)

Using non-english character set encodings for web pages can be slightly complicated. If it's just plain HTML, then two main things. First, you need to use a UTF-8 capable text editor when modifying the document, and make sure to upload the file in binary mode if using FTP. Secondly, you need to set the character set to UTF-8 in the HTML code. This can be done with

Code Select Expand

<meta charset='utf-8'> in most cases. If you're using something more complicated (like a PHP based CMS or some such) then you'll need to find the documentation for that CMS to see what needs to be modified to support UTF-8. See this page for an example/test I just put up. http://xepher.xepher.net/utf8.html That appears to show the proper caret (hat) above the s. If it looks right to you as well, then you should be able to simply use the same meta tag in your own documents.

Yeah, Sisters is just down the road. Funny you mention wildfires, as the last time I went through there, the entire town of Sisters was smokey, the sky was burnt orange at noon, and it was literally raining ash from a nearby wildfire. Combined with the drive right past the extinct volcano, I thought I'd taken a wrong turn an ended up in Mordor. :-P Drop me an email when you get to planning your trip details and we can work something out.

Apparently I borked the avatars/attachments on the forum. I reuploaded them from backups, but some users still have broken avatars, so I apologize. If you are one of the ones still affected, you'll need to reupload your avatar image.