Anatali.com Site News

01 / 21 / 2008 - Anatali 3.0 beta

Weeeeeeee Site Redesign! \o/

I’d be doing an official role-out (and probably will be later this week) but my readership isn’t so large where I need to have everything ready for a zomg surprise. I tend to shoot from the hip anyway.

My God, is this shit brainbending.

Now, I know you purists love coding by hand, but I’m no PHP pro, so when there’s over 400 pages of html to edit, I use site-wide find-and-replaces and CSS, both of which can end in epic lulz as things overlap, are missed via small changes on a specific page, or are repeated instead of overwritten.

For the better part of Sunday, both my comics had centered images, but left-humping text (lots of blackspace/whitespace as things weren’t aligned together). The fix meant making the entire archives centered, which was something I was excited about anyway. That’s just a microcosm, since I’ve been implementing stuff, then tracking the code breakdowns for the better part of twelve hours in the last thirty-six.

Anyway, current updates:

Anatali.com is now Anatali.com, a hub for all my shit instead of A:U’s home. Sure it’s kind of sad for reasons I’ll elaborate on when I’m done with my edits, but the fact is that this project has outgrown its origins as a Science Fiction writer’s site. Obviously, that’s not why ya’ll come here, so the main root page should reflect that. A:U has not been deleted, cast-aside, or any other manner of ‘sweeping-under-the-rug,’ but it is smart to recognize that I have a lot of projects and content to offer now, so they can coexist, bumping together in this hamster-ball of web-obscurity.

Project Wonderful ads have been propogated throughout the AD:DB archives, and I’ve added a banner to Aarin’s Blog. Their existence has already funded a 60% jump in first-time readers through spending profits on advertising. This won't be anything more than you’ve been used to the last few months, and there will be no further intrusion since I think I’ve hit capacity in 'attractive webdesign.'

There is a Gallery page under construction, a new subsite, featuring ‘ma photosgraphz,’ including the older ones from A:U, but without the constraint of making them all tie-into the project. I’ll be blogging with updates when it rolls out and as it’s updated.

I have about a hundred hours of link fixes, FAQ rewrites, and other loose-ends to tie up, but so far the foundation looks pretty firm.

The LOL-forums are now open and will remain so, no matter how long ‘April 07’ remains the most current post. I’ll do some restructuring there too as far as initial thread content goes, but for now there’s no real reason to keep it closed now that I have the bots under control.

I’ll be working on the navigation all week, but if you find any broken links, feel encouraged to help me out by posting them in any random blog-comment, forum-post, or e-mail.

As always, this site is no quest for e-fame, but it is a commitment to provide the best possible experience I can offer for those who choose to return to my running-clusterfuck-o’-bullshit. It certainly isn’t vanity. I hope the changes prove very positive in the short and long run. Anatali.com isn’t going away, so I may as well set a stronger foundation for the future.

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11 / 09 / 2007 - Adspace (Project Wonderful)

So why are there now sponsors on Aarin’s Blog and Debasement?

The reason is I’ve made $0.12 US in the last two days! I’m a fucking professional now!

Oh, wait. Business owners usually frame their first dollar, so it looks like this might take a while before I can crown myself…

In any case, Project Wonderful is cool and popular, and works off of competitive bidding. The adspace is auctioned starting at free, and then public sponsors outbid each other by cost per day. In all cases, this starts at pennies, but can lead to nifty profits, like a pack of smokes or a six-pack per month for projects like mine. (sweet!)

But usually, people dump their profits into bidding on other people’s PW ads, creating a grand circle-jerk of advertising within the webcomic community. PW was more or less created and geared for webcomics, though anyone can advertise through them (including the notorious ‘tea’ people, who’ve discovered me within a day).

So if you see something interesting, feel free to click through. My greatest ‘pipe-dreamer’ hope is to recoup some of my hosting fees, which while not backbreaking, are an expense that doesn’t necessarily need come with the territory. Profit? Nah, I don’t care about profit.

However, if being in the black is conditions for framing that first dollar, I’d need… (Maths) = Five years at current price to pay off every two years of hosting fees. I’m pretty sure that means we’ll need a lot more teapots before we see any celebrations around here.

The ads are cute, and considering webcomics frequent them a lot, you might even find some cool shit. My main thing has always been avoiding donation butanes and google (random) ads. PW is a lot more fun.

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10 / 05 / 2007 - My Friday Nights

I’ve finally (again) come to terms with it: my interests and creative output is cyclical, which is a cyclical conclusion considering the haze of angst I’ve been living in about the whole damn bit in the last two months.

I know this. I’ve known it before: I go through short periods of long-form writing that last the required 4-6 months to finish a novel. Afterwards, I go through a nine-month drought, where I mostly blog, journal, or otherwise write shit not meant to be career.

The short form of webcomics and reviews shouldn’t really be an issue there since scripting comes rather fast when I have the time to focus. Obviously, I’ve had issues since early august, but that too shall pass.

As did Aarin’s Desk 1 year anniversary, unheralded by me or anyone else.

The one thing I can hold up as a webmonkey banner is: my plans worked out.

Over the last 22 months since Anatali.com’s first launch, I’ve posted a lot of stuff. I knew it wouldn’t amount to much as far as each subproject went, but the entire breadth of content reveals a lot of shit over a reasonably long span of time. This is the Lego method of web content management, and while I can’t claim absolute quality or consistency, I can say:

Anatali Backstory framework (30k+ words)
Photo Gallery (20 pics, need more)
Anatali Short Stories (20~ish episodes, many being resolved)
Aarin’s Desk webcomic (111 episodes)
Debasement webcomic (84 episodes)
Aarin’s Blog (308 posts)
Webcomic reviews (approaching 30 reviews)
A host of Bullshit knick-knacks (most involving links, lulz, and networking)

Which I can say is ok for a 3rd job. My 1st Job is cooking 40 hours a week. My 2nd job is lol~novels. My 3rd would be le internets.

While I know who my enemies are (I don’t give them much face time), I enjoy the fact that I know who my friends are. I realize the internet is flooded, so I appreciate your readership and understand your attention can’t be taken for granted. I have to maintain some semblance of consistency in base-line quality and update schedule, and it doesn’t always fit. But I can make it fit, and will continue along that direction. I do enjoy the work and results.

I’ve spent the last two weeks involved in a new project, a conglomerate of writers, building our webspace and getting all those hundred ducks in a row. I’ll link it after we leave alpha and beta behind for our official launch. Understand, this isn’t connected to my lapses in overt activity, but it is filling the time I used for other writing.

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