Site Upgrades

[Rob]

As I'm sure many of you have noticed our nigh omnipotent tech dude extraordinaire (I have to keep making the compliments more elaborate or he beats me) Chadm1n has been making some wonderful improvements to our fair site.

First off I'd like to talk about the banner exchange.

The Webcomics Community Banner Exchange is an attempt to allow all our members to exchange banners without having to post a whole bunch of links and banners on their site. It is, if you will, a repository of banners that lead to members webcomics, all hosted and presented in one spot.

To participate in the program you must create a thread here on this board stating that you wish to participate in the exchange.

You must then provide a link to your site that shows this image:

...has been coded to appear on your site (if you want to use or make a different sized image for your page to link to the Banner Exchange page we will consider different images on a case by case basis... I know sites are different so I'm not saying you have to use this button but you must use something and you will probably have to make it yourself if you don't want to use what we are supplying... but if you have questions about it you can ask us in the banner exchange board). The image must serve as a link to this page.

http://www.webcomicscommunity.com/exchange.php

And you must provide us with a banner for your comic that is 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels high. No more, no less.

Once you do that a staff member here will review your application. We will check your site to make sure that the button image is displayed on your site and that it properly links to the exchange page. Once that is verified your comic's banner will be added to the exchange page.

Unlike front page ads that must be incorporated into the HTML by Chadm1n a site can be added to the banner exchange by any staff member here. So your requests will be handled quickly and you won't be waiting long for your banner to be up if you apply to take part.

Banners that are added to the exchange page will appear in a random order every time the page loads. So no one comic will always be "the top banner" presented to any visitors. Every comic will have an equal chance to appear in the top slots.

Unlike our front page ads, membership in the banner exchange will not require active membership. It's too difficult to constantly be changing the code of YOUR websites so I wouldn't want to force you to remove the button and yank you from the program because you haven't visited the forum in awhile. So as long as you are a member in good standing and you have the Webcomics Community Banner Exchange button coded on your website and it properly links to the banner exchange page your banner will appear on that page.

However, the staff will periodically be checking member sites to verify that the Webcomics Community Banner Exchange Button is on your site and if it is removed from your site your banner will be removed from the banner exchange page unless you can prove that the button is indeed on your site and functioning properly.

Next I want to discuss the creation of our new chat room.

In case you haven't noticed, the top center panel next to your profile image has been split in half and a large chat image has been placed there along with the most recent chat messaged sent in the chat room. That image is a direct link to our new chat room.

In case you missed it here is that chat image as well as a link to the chat room.

It is a fairly standard IRC chat room (I think.... honestly I don't know but it's a chat room and some of those IRC commands apparently work because I've been booted out once already) and it adds a great resource to our ability to communicate here.

Just remember, when you're typing all that important stuff, we're here to share information with more than just the folks in the chat room. So if you have something important or compelling or of interest to the whole community to say... please copy and paste it into a forum entry in the appropriate category so others can learn from it as well.

And one last note; you must be a member of Webcomics Community and logged in to your account to use the chat room.

It used to be that I would leave the forum up while I was working and I would check to see if new entries were posted often. From now on I will try and leave a chat window up and open in case any of you need anything. My instant messenger programs still work and I usually have them up and running as well. But this is a nice simple place for us to converse on topics related directly to the site without worrying about upgrading our AOL software, a Trillian account or any other nonsense.

I hope you all like the new features. We're alway trying to think of new ways to improve site functionality and to make your visits here more enjoyable so if you have any suggestions please let us know... because we're about out of them ourselves.

Once again big thanks to Chadm1n for all the hard work. Thanks man.

[Chadm1n]

As I'm sure many of you have noticed our nigh omnipotent tech dude extraordinaire (I have to keep making the compliments more elaborate or he beats me) Chadm1n has been making some wonderful improvements to our fair site.

<blush>

Unlike front page ads that must be incorporated into the HTML by Chadm1n a site can be added to the banner exchange by any staff member here. So your requests will be handled quickly and you won't be waiting long for your banner to be up if you apply to take part.

I'm pretty sure Rob just said I was slow. Compared to light? Yes. Molasses? Not so much. But eliminiating myself as a bottleneck is always one of the top deliverables.

It is a fairly standard IRC chat room (I think.... honestly I don't know but it's a chat room and some of those IRC commands apparently work because I've been booted out once already) and it adds a great resource to our ability to communicate here.

To be fair, you offended the geeks of the world by calling us nerds. Kicking you was a moral imperative of the highest order. I must admit that I found it an oddly satisfying experience.

And one last note; you must be a member of Webcomics Community and logged in to your account to use the chat room.

Otherwise, you can't get there from here.

Once again big thanks to Chadm1n for all the hard work. Thanks man.

I would like to thank The Academy... oh wait, wrong venue. You're welcome! I hope everyone can put these features to good use!

[Gar]

Thanks Chadm1n!