Do we still need this community?

[dutchxfan]

Hi everyone. I've been working on a new website and relaunch LoganAndMarie.com and archive my own work over there. I would also like to archive all other fics from the authors that we love, but before I'm going to make stupid decisions, I'd like your input.

Is this LiveJournal community still the right social media platform to share things?

I'm

Comments

[paradisekendra]

If I may make a plea, please don't ever delete this LiveJournal. After all of the work I did to back up the DDFH, the thought of losing another chunk of this fandom is overwhelming. If it's about updates, things do not have to be constantly updated to have a useful place. If you never updated this LJ again, it still serves a useful purpose.

There is nothing that can duplicate the experience of a platform that existed when a fandom was watching their show/film being aired together. The original fans who joined all have their posts and artwork and contact information on those platforms and that can never be recreated. You can't ever gather those same people onto a new platform 10+ years later. It's so precious to be able to look back and see all the names of the incredible fans who were a part of the fandom and think about the memories you shared together.

This LiveJournal is now the only place I can reach out to the fans of the L&M fandom. It's the only place I could even let them know that I saved the stories backed up on the DDFH. It served a great purpose to me. There's no L&M group on FB (there's an inactive page that no one's used for years), there's no way to create a group or forum on Twitter, or Tumblr, so those spaces unfortunately are not the right platform for fans to talk to each other.

So that's my (very passionate) two cents. *hugs* Apologies for the loooooooooong explanation, I'm still in mourning over losing all my YahooGroups and InvisionForums due to them deleting their servers. :(

On a positive note, congratulations on the new L&M website re-launch! I can't wait to see it! Were you able to recover the original homepage? (OMG, Cricketgrl's fan art!) I think a paid LJ account could be totally cool. What would the features of that be?

[dutchxfan]

Passionate or not, you totally convinced me. I share the same thoughts, but I just wanted it validated. Also, I totally agree when it comes to the other social media platforms. They aren't suitable for creating a community, except for FB. And I hate FB, haha!

I'm not sure what benefits your get from a paid account, but at least all ads will be gone for me. That's a huge plus because LJ looks so shabby with the ads all over the place.

I did find my old L&M website on one of my external harddrives. There's only 1 splash page from Cricketgirl, but I think I have more of her work saved somewhere else. Have to check. But all in all, the page is coming along nicely so far. :)

EDIT: I just read that I can embed LJ into my website a little easier with a paid account. I think this might be handy. Need to check it out more, but at least I'm going to link to this community from the website.

[roguelotus]

I totally agree with paradisekendra, who put it so eloquently. Thank you so much for keeping this part of the fandom alive. If you start a new site, you can just leave a post forwarding people to the new site.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help!

By the way, there is a small group of Rogan fans who have gotten together on Discord, if anyone is interested. Discord is not my favorite venue, but it's really nice to see people interacting in real time and knowing that there is still enthusiasm out there in the fandom!

Come on over and join the conversation!!

Posted on tumblr by englismajor226:
"It’s more important now than ever that we keep in communication. As we are all socially isolated, let’s maintain the spaces where we have always been free to cross oceans and countries to come to gather and drool over some Rogan.

I created a discord. If you like Rogan stuff, join us, please. There’s a channel for writing/character questions, and a channel for linking to music that inspires, and general comments. I want to know how you are all doing. Let’s check in with one another.

Here’s the link: https://discord.gg/UFzT46x "

[dutchxfan]

Thanks for the info and the offer. I'll check Discord this weekend. It's nice to see you're still around here as well. :)

[paradisekendra]

I will check out Discord this weekend too! Latest next week if my job needs me long hours again due to the situation we're all in. Mid-week I'll have a break again.

I love the ability actually talk live with people. I desperately miss AIM, so I have been trying to find other instant messaging/chatroom like forums. So yay! I just need to learn how to use it. But the group of fandom archivists who helped me backup the YahooGroups got me as far as installing Discord and using it to teach me how to use the PGOffline software, so I know a little bit. I'll play around with it soon! Thank you for creating another sister platform for L&M fans!

[roguelotus]

Discord is super easy! Just click on that link and it will walk you through choosing a username etc. and then take you right into the message boards. There's no installation!

Yes, people chat in real time for sure; they've even had live watch parties where everyone watches an X-movie at the same time and comment live as they all watch it. Super fun!

I'd love to see you on that board!

[paradisekendra]

Yes! I love watching X-Men films together! That's a totally fun thing to do. I used to do that on AIM and Skye all the time. I'll definitely see you there soon! ;)

[paradisekendra]

Oh good! Yayyyyy. I'm happy to validate this LJ any time. Let me know if you need some praise it, we all need a little bit of appreciation every now and again for the work we do. There's nothing wrong with that. :)

You want to talk about the importance of deleting fan fiction sites, I still go on the X-Files Gossamer site! http://fluky.gossamer.org Bless those people for still hosting it! I LOVE looking through that website and seeing stories uploading in 1995! We were so afraid at that point that fan fiction was going to be deemed an actual crime and we weren't going to be able to do it. X-Philers were pioneers in online fan fiction and that website is everything to me. Without that fandom taking the risk, none of us would be here. It's sooooo awesome. So trust me, there's always relevance to leaving a part of fandom history out there. *grins*

I remember there were two versions of the L&M.com website, the layout Cricketgrl had before she gave it over to you, and the second splash page she made that I believe was the last one on the website. I only have the last one saved also, which annoys me no end because I loved both layouts and I'm usually SO good at backing those layouts up. So if you find the first homepage layout, would you share it with me please???

I'm so excited to see the website! Yay!

[dutchxfan]

Guess what?! I've found my layouts! They're all in php and programmed by hand by me. I'm not going to use it anymore. I used to host it on our own server but now, I host at Wordpress (at least for now). I'll use a standard template and change it a bit to fit my needs.

Do you want the templates?

[paradisekendra]

Yes please!!! OMG you know how to program your own templates! I really need to get on learning that! But yes please, I wouid love to have the templates. Thank you for offering to share them! :)

[dutchxfan]

Just to be clear, I don't have Cricketgirl's layout. I only ever used mine the time it was online. I can't even remember anymore what it looked like before me, to be honest.

[paradisekendra]

Gotcha. No problem. If I ever find a screenshot of the first layout of LM.com, I'll share it with you. It was BEAUTIFUL.

[cricketgrl]

I'll have a make a post with all the artwork and such from the first version. Mostly Splash pages.