Thu, 21 Feb 2008

Thoughts on Moving Ahead

If you came to the site in the last few days and got a huge list of errors, I apologize. The site's sysadmin is apparently doing a long-talked-about server move, and one of the WordPress plugins I use broke on the new setup. The new machine and old machine are both running currently, and while browsing to arilin.macrophile.com was last night directing to the new site, connecting to macrophile.com via SSH went to the old site. So I spent about an hour debugging files on the wrong machine. ("I can delete the broken plugin and it's still there! Aaaah!") A check just now as I wrote this showed the site now going to the old site, where the plugin is (probably unnecessarily) deactivated--so if you're seeing the text look a little strange, with underlines around words that should be italics and URLs in the "refurbished" message below instead looking like footnotes in [brackets], it's because the plugin that converts from my "Markdown" text formatting to HTML isn't working. On whatever machine you're currently seeing this on. Which if it's broken is the old one. Unless it's not. Unless I fixed it.

Some comments I approved on the old machine didn't show up on the new machine last night, either, because the new machine's database copy was apparently older than the old machine's. And I have no idea which database will be used when I post this. (I think I've approved those comments on both machines at this point, and I'm still not sure all of them are showing on... whichever machine I'm looking at now.)

Confused yet?

Anyway, while the comments below weren't entirely unanimous about the wisdom of wading into the dangerous waters of the "community site," nobody seemed to think it was a bad idea. Chaswari wrote, "The obvious thing to do would be to introduce memberships to this Giants' Club thing. That way you could have stuff like profile pages of members of a message board." He went on to opine that "would be rather pointless, since Giants' Club members can meet at the Giants' Club," but for people who aren't on FurryMUCK, the site is the Giants' Club. (Except of course that right now it's my blog, so it isn't.)

Mega suggested "a heavier emphasis on IC-ness (or at least 'worldbuilding')" to differentiate it, "so it's not just Yet Another Macro Message Board." This is certainly an interesting idea. And indeed, even though YAMMB is a great acronym, it's not what I want. The question, then, is "What do I want?"

I think a good way to answer that is to ask, "What do you, the prospective users, want?" I can't have the site be all things to all people, and I think there's often a temptation when one contemplates these community things to try and do exactly that. But a lot of existing sites are pretty good at what they do; throwing in an image gallery and a blogging module and what have you might not be the best use of resources.

So. What do you want?

(N.B.: this should not be construed as a promise of anything, nor a time schedule for any implementation. But I definitely want input!)

Comments (6) · Tags: ,

Incredibly off-topic but,
your site is blacklisted by the Sacramento public library system, yet Mr. P's Gallery isn't. How the heck could that be? Do librarians consider "nudity in literature" to be worse than "nudity in image"? That would be so stereotypical of them. -just some of my thoughts.



Posted by Seti the Wurst at Sat Feb 23 21:07:00 2008

What I want from this place? Well, if you ask so directly: I want more stories.



So if there's a possible new direction that will somehow make you write more, then that's the one I'm for.



Posted by Chaswari at Tue Mar 4 08:51:00 2008

Oh, and thank you for quoting my spelling errors on the front page. Appreciated.



Posted by Chaswari at Wed Mar 5 12:54:00 2008

You're welcome, although I don't see any spelling errors. As for more writing on my part, here's the scoop.



I have been writing since the last time this site was updated... but not writing macrophile-type stories. I try to keep this web site separated from my real name, but because of that, I haven't been able to say, "Hey, check out other stuff I've done" over here. (This cuts both ways; a few of the stories I've written here are ones I wish I wouldn't mind owning up to under my real name. It's already been demonstrated to me, unfortunately, that some people will decide that macrophile porn is the Most Unforgivable Thing in All Recorded History and jettison long-standing friendships over that. And some of the stuff that does come up under my real name on a Google search will lift employers' eyebrows enough as it is, frankly.)



I don't want to make it sound as if I'm never going to write anything involving giants ever again, but there's nothing I have on the table for that right now. I have some fairly involved long-term projects in addition to the "what to do with Arilin's web site" conundrum. That's part of the not-so-secret rationale for wanting to take the site into something that's a lot more community-based; while I'd still like to get new stories of my own out, I'd like to give people reasons to keep coming back that aren't just "has a new story been posted."



Posted by Arilin at Wed Mar 5 23:47:00 2008

Yeah. I need to follow your 'other' site more often as it is! (And no, folks, I'm not telling you without cat-lady's permission.)



Quite frankly, though, I think it's the general furry stuff that'll make eyebrows raise first. :P



Posted by Mega at Sat Mar 8 16:23:00 2008

"I'm not telling you without cat-lady's"

Well, maybe you should've shut your mouth altogether, then. NOW I MUST KNOW!


Posted by Chaswari at Wed Mar 12 11:10:00 2008

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