greetings and questions!

[bardicfool]

Greetings! I'm earthy, and I've been an Amassment lurker/admirer/sometimes participant for quite some time (I used to own storygirl.org, which is now defunct). I'm just now thinking about getting my fansite mojo back on, and I have questions

Comments

[icysnowdrop]

1. (My domain name is defunct too; I'm not running a collective anymore and I'm just uploading my fan sites with a static status.) Honestly, I went with whatever sounded good and versatile. I'm really picky with names so sometimes it takes me almost a year to find the right name for myself. This meant that I didn't pick a name that sounded it was confined to a fandom (in case I lost interest). I also avoided color-sounding names, because it's just weird to have "red" in your name but with a blue layout. There's a certain term for it ("something" inconsistency) which escapes me at the moment.
2. I... don't have a professional site, but I do have personal art sites that I keep separate from my fandom sites. It's pretty hard because I do fanart and those topics overlap, but I don't want some random person I know IRL to stumble upon my sites and think that it's all there is to me. Plus, these days, I'm pretty paranoid at what I'm putting out on the Internet (SOMEONE MIGHT USE MY WORDS AGAINST ME AAAAGHHH), so I separate my identities to be safe

[daysees]

I remember in 2002, there was a race to claim "first English fan site to XX" but with newer series coming out, no one really cares...

^ This! I remember actually doing this! I made a shrine to a character for a friend and was like "omg!!11the first english fansite" and I remember someone emailing me to correct me. Haha. Man, yeah, I remember that if you had the first english fansite to some Digimon character, you were the bees-knees!

[bardicfool]

>>I separate my identities to be safe<<

I figured this was why most people separate professional/fansites. Like you say, in some cases, such as for artists, the crossover probably doesn't matter (and might even get new people interested in your work!). But there's always the concern about how your hobbies/interests might affect your professional standing (for example, maybe if you're into slash/yaoi or something considered "controversial," you'd want to keep that separate from a professional online persona).

Of course, nowadays, with the whole concept of online privacy changing/disintegrating, people seem to care a bit less about that sort of thing....<.< >.>

[dubiousdisc]

Hello, and welcome back! :D

[bardicfool]

>>Technically I wouldn't even have anything to hide considering that in my other life I am an illustrator and comic artist and it's perfectly reasonable that someone who writes their own stories would have to have been inspired by someone else, it's just that I want to keep fansite-making as a relaxed, fun activity<<

This makes sense. Are there any copyright issues with having fanart and original art available in the same location? I remember when I first started doing fansites, we were always told to have a disclaimer somewhere on the site that said we weren't making any money...but if you WERE making money off of something on the site (like a blog or original artwork or something), would that be an issue, even if you weren't making money specifically off of the fanart?

[dubiousdisc]

Not as far as I know. And even if you were making money out of fan art, it seems like almost no one cares anyway...

[daysees]

Hey Earthy! Glad to see you again! Are you looking to make a return with a new domain as well? I would be very excited to see it! I remember when SG.org went down, I was wondering what happened

[bardicfool]

>>I don't know if shrines were ever really popular enough to amount for a large portion of what is the internet. (I think it'd be really interesting to do a study to see how much fansites/shrines/fanlistings do take up.)<<

I agree! In general I think there used to be more before social media got so big, but that's more of a feeling rather than a documented fact. Have people gotten lazy? Or maybe it's just easier to squee on Tumblr or something rather than putting together a whole fansite....^^;;

Did you make a conscious effort to separate your fandom site (love-gala.org) from your comic one (winged-victory.net)? That seems to be the route I see folks taking most often, but I wasn't sure if there was any cross-over in visitors, particularly for artists. (My interest in this is basically that I'm thinking of putting together a professional site for my writing/freelance web design at some point, and I'm not sure if I should do that as part of the same domain as fan stuff, or try to keep it separate.)

[daysees]

Hmm, I guess I do separate it. Even though most recently I've become more open with the type of art that I do. (Even though some people think the subject matter is strange, people have been more appreciative of it.) But I do separate them because, actually, I am kind of *embarrassed* to show my fansites to people in the professional sector.

Side story: I made a lorem ipsum generator at nyarth.net (Pokemon-based) and shared it with some of my previous co-workers. Some people thought nyarth.net was really cool and other people were like "You have too much free time" and I got some strange looks. It was actually very funny but that's one of the reasons I do tend to separate it. I like to keep my "professional" and "free-time" work distinct.

[newtype]

Welcome, Earthy. I remember you from our common love of Auron. It's good to see you around again and to hear that you're getting the urge to shrine again

[bardicfool]

Auron! <3 Speaking of awesome sites disappearing off the net, I always wondered why the Auron sites faded away....

I definitely agree about the design stuff. It always irritated me when I saw a site that looked gorgeous but was really hard to navigate and/or had no real content to it. Better to keep it simple and fill it with awesome content, IMHO. Which is not to say that pretty designs aren't good fun, too; but I think the content/personality of the creator are more important.

[turkmikari]

Hello and welcome

[bardicfool]

Oh, hey, the notes page is a really neat idea! I'll have to poke around there to refresh my memory on all the coding stuff I've forgotten. ^^;;

[turkmikari]

thanks ^^ I'm actually working on a minor update for it right now.

[turkmikari]

PS: moved that page here XD http://piratesboard.net/mikari/fantasy/azure/notes.html