Moving to shousetsubangbang.com

[ladysisyphus]

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded out of LiveJournal fan culture, it started on LiveJournal, and since 2005, its primary home has been LiveJournal. And yet, we realize that it is now time for Shousetsu Bang*Bang to (mostly) leave LiveJournal

Comments

[_profiterole_]

Breaking stories into parts that fit LJ's character limits couldn't have been practical for you guys, but as a reader, I appreciate long stories to be broken into chapters (of whatever length, like on AO3). Is that something you've thought of for the website?

[ladysisyphus]

Good question. I'd say the answer is 'in general, probably not', and there are two main reasons why. The first is that WordPress' interface doesn't have anything native like that, so at the minimum it'd involve finding a plugin and spending time integrating it.

But the other reason is that these are short, standalone stories, and most of them aren't written to be broken into anything so formal as chapters. (I know the 25k word limit technically can push some submissions into 'novella' territory, but most novellas don't have explicit porn scenes inflating their word counts, so.) Chapters such as those on AO3 also tend to be evidence of a story composed and posted in stages; by the time a piece gets to us, it's been unified.

All that said, this would be a good thing to keep in mind particularly if authors of spectacularly long December stories wanted it. Thanks for giving us something to think about!

[ariamech]

Given how the website behaves it seems like it would significantly increase the amount of work required on the editors' side in the interest of making sure the chapter links line up. Then again, it might not involve that much more than the LJ method does? My WP experience is limited. I think I'd care more about whether really long entries would break Wordpress when considering whether I'd want my pieces filleted into sections.

[dipping_sauce]

I've attempted to create an account, I got the confirmation email and clicked on the link, but when I try to log in it says I'm temporarily locked out?

[ladysisyphus]

...That's weird. Maybe because we've had a couple people creating accounts in the last half hour? Let us know if that doesn't clear up.

[ariamech]

As part of the new primary hosting format, how will this affect the suggested width of illustrations/standalone art/comics? 800x800 is VERY small in this modern era, even over a pokey wifi phone connection; standalone art is already marked as such, and illustrated stories are marked with asterisks on issue pages, so there's an established warning to people who might want to conserve data.

[ladysisyphus]

As per the comment below, I don't know: How should it affect those things?

No story we have received thus far has broken Wordpress, so.... I mean, don't take it as a challenge, but it's true.

[beili]

Seconding ariamech's question. And what about comics for the artist special?

Also, while we're on the topic of art: if one goes far enough back through s2b2, the art disappears. This includes the cover art for older issues, and is also true for the site (I guess the pictures' hosting time had run out at some point?) The issue covers are available on the wiki, but the art that hadn't been uploaded there is not.

[ladysisyphus]

I guess I don't know! Is there a reason to have art parameters set differently from the way they are now? One of the things we're keeping in mind is that an enormous amount of our website traffic -- well over half -- is coming from mobile devices. But if things are worth changing, please let us know.

And yeah, that's a known issue. Before we had the domain, all the art was hosted elsewhere; that site went down, breaking all the links. We've got all the art saved and backed up, and we've fixed some of the issues, but it's a time-consuming, repetitive task that's gotten pushed down the priority list. I'm hoping that once the spring semester is done but before the summer session starts, I'll have time to do some of that.

[beili]

Artists like to - not lose a bunch of details in the resizing? (and people are lazy and will not click the link to enlarge, when it's provided). Also, previous experience shows that folks mostly read with the pictures turned off, and barely even notice there are pictures. As to the actual size suggestions, I'd say 1000x1000 px is good, but ymmv.

Would you like a volunteer to help (if that's feasible)?