The Alternates

[Thevious]

The Alternates is a fantasy web comic based on an ongoing campaign. There will be a fifty-one page prologue followed by three years or more in the current story arc. The three-year arc will contain many smaller arcs within to keep the story fresh. The prologue will be more serious that the main comic, which will be humorous, and contain the occasional fourth-wall violation.

The story line is about the loss of magical energy and the quest to restore it. The problem is established in the prologue with the story of a powerful wizard who tries to harness all the magic in the planes for himself and the attempt goes horribly wrong. When the main story opens there are only a few generations left to repair the damage before the planes are destroyed.

The writer is William Chapin and the artist is Jed Soriano, who has done work professionally on an independent comic called Mythoi. Jed has a body of work and a following on Deviant Art http//:www.seriojainc.deviantart.com comprised of both personal and commission work.

Here are a few pages [40-42] from the prologue:
http://seriojainc.deviantart.com/#/d38k4vq
http://seriojainc.deviantart.com/#/d38k4z6
http://seriojainc.deviantart.com/#/d38k52p

[Xepher]

Well, the comic samples look pretty damn good. If you're up to 42 actual pages already at that quality, that shows some commitment too. My one question is if either of you have any experience making/maintaining a website. You're welcome to use stuff like comicpress or other CMS systems to simplify it, but there's nothing built in or provided by xepher.net for that. If you're comfortable with web development stuff though, it should be a shoe-in.

[Thevious]

Well, we don't have much but are somewhat technical. We are going to use Antenna Web Design http://download.cnet.com/antenna-web-design-studio/3000-10248_4-10225469.html for a couple of days and perhaps zip up a set of sample files from it to show we can put a site together.

William

[Xepher]

Sounds good, just let me know when you've got something to show. No rush.

[Thevious]

I sent you a private message, let me know if you received it.

Edit: I just saw your post not to send private messages ant tried to send a test email to admin@xapher.net. This came back as a delivery failure. I need to send you some sample files we have been developing and I cant attach them to these posts. Is there a way you can get a good email to me?

[Xepher]

Well, if you actually sent it to xApher.net it's not gonna work. My admin@ address is on the same site as here... xepher.net, with an E :-)

[Thevious]

I missed the a. GAA! /em tears hair out.

[Thevious]

Our software is only set up to publish to a host. We are confident that we can manage and maintain our website so I think I would like to move forward with hosting on Xepher. We would like to have three email addresses linked to the site [webmaster, artist, writer] if you could tell me what we need to do to go through our proxy (we have the domain name the-alts.com) and will be routing traffic from there.

We will be setting up some final things tomorrow, and adding some links after we have our email set up. I don't think there will be much trouble with links that don't go anywhere for a couple of days as I don't think we will have much traffic at first.

I am looking forward to working with you.

[Thevious]

We have set our domain to ns1.xepher.net and ns2.xepher.net at our registrar. I cannot log in to xepher anywhere but in the forums, so I assume I don't have a user name yet.

[Xepher]

Well, I haven't set up the account yet. As I mentioned in email though, I will... I work an odd schedule and have to rush off to work right now. Tomorrow is the start of my weekend though. If you don't hear something from me in a day or so, remind me!

[Xepher]

Sorry, I should have caught this earlier... you didn't list a username you wanted. As per the application instructions, it'll be part of your URL (when/if not using your own domain.) I've gone ahead and used "alternates" and you should get an email soon with a password and instructions.

[Thevious]

We have the sight up and are in the process of installing the remaining links and replacing the blog place-holders with actual posts.

[Xepher]

Saw that you have some of the site up... just a quick note. Your main background image... http://the-alts.com/the%20alternates%20web%20complete_ver01.jpg is 1.4MB in size. It'd literally take an entire floppy disk to store that. Which, yes, floppies outdated and all that, but considering every single page of your site requires loading that entire image, it means it will suck up a HUGE amount of bandwidth if your site gets even remotely popular. The background is nearly twice as large as the comic itself. If you look at your stats  http://alternates.xepher.net/awstats/awstats.pl your site is using about 7.5MB per visit! Compare that with some of the other large comic sites here like missmab.com or senshuu.com at 500kb and 300kb respectively. You don't have to squeeze down quite that small of course, and it'll be less for frequent visitors who'll have the unchanging things like background cached more often, but do try to conserve bandwidth just a bit. No worries for now while you're still working on stuff though, we've got a lot of bandwidth to spare, but before you get much traffic, it'd be good to have it optimized.

[Kyelatha]

Sorry about that, background will be smaller with the next update of the comic.

I've been trying to connect to the server to update it for Thursday, but it seems to keep timing out repeatedly. Will try to have it up either tonight or early tomorrow morning, if I am able to connect.


EDIT: Still cannot access it today. Missed the Thursday update.

[Xepher]

What exactly is timing out? SCP? If that's the case, do note that there's a lockout for bad passwords. If you mistype your password or something a few times in a row it'll lock you out for several hours (and longer if you keep trying.)