Phew. I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of days migrating fic from hopeful_fiction to hope.oscillating.net, and updating tags and whatnot in prep of merging that fic LJ into my Dw account.

Working backwards, I've got up to mid-2004. I've just hit the Try Seventeen ficlet and am pondering whether to start a "One-offs" category under the Fandom category parent. I suppose all the Crossover fandoms could slot under there too... hmm.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying this archives plugin that displays a list of all posts ever, by date. i.e. provides a master list of fic uploaded there without me having to do it manually :) It also gives me a pretty good overview of the trends of volume and fandom in my fic writing over the years.

Also handy is the automatic wordcount plugin, which tells me I've uploaded almost 340,000 words of fic to the site so far.

O_O

Fic! I've missed it being my primary mode of fannish engagement.

...Oh, the irony of going up to my address bar a thousand times a day and typing in "anal"... so it auto-completes to analytics.google.com.

In other news, the Supernatural Wiki has been updated with info on 3.02. Pick up on a wee bit of trivia that isn't listed there yet? Add it!

You can keep up with news updates on the special superwiki_news community.


ETA, random thought: I swear, I read so much Wincest that all just plays out in exactly the same setting - the motel room - that sometimes I feel like I'm watching the sims. You know? Sim!Sam types on his computer while Sim!Dean has a shower. Dean gets dressed. Sam has a shower. They get into bed. They wake up. One of them gets coffee. They go out in the car. They come back. They have showers. They eat take out. They watch TV. They go to sleep. They wake up. One of them gets coffee. They have showers.

You know? like those little pixelated figures, just walking back and forth in the same room. Having showers. Typing. Drinking coffee. Watching TV. Sleeping. Talking in sim-talk. Having showers.

So, with all the LJ stuff happening, I have been moving myself over to my space at Dreamhost, as well as offering this space to other people. There are only a relatively small of other folks so far, but I thought I'd comb through the DH TOS to make sure I'm not infringing on anything liable to get me shut down and lose all my data! This is especially important to me as I host a number of pro websites on my spades of space as well.

In the DH TOS I discovered that: They must give you 30 day's notice before shutting down, which is good (no massive loss of data, just in case). ETA: this does not apply in the LAWFUL PURPOSE section listed below (immediate termination in place instead).

They have strict copyright laws that I'm not to worried about in terms of fanfiction etc - in terms of fair use, I think me & my hostees are fine with that (just as long as no one's uploading any copyrighted TV, film or music - they have been very publicly strict about that in the past).

However, one section called LAWFUL PURPOSE includes the following:

1. Customer may only use DreamHost Web Hosting's Server for lawful purpose. Transmission of any material in violation of any Country, Federal, State or Local regulation is prohibited. To this effect, child pornography is strictly prohibited as well as housing any copyrighted information (to which the customer does not hold the copyright) on DreamHost Web Hosting's Server.

( Emphasis mine. Complete TOS can be found here: dreamhost.com/tos.html)

This obviously has implications similar to those recently brought up in relation to LJ. To be safe, I'm seriously considering emailing DH support with a query about this clause, and how it applies to fanfiction - because if I'm providing this space to fans as a safe place away from LJ, I want to make sure the same problem isn't going to occur. For the record, I have had fabulous experiences with DH customer support, and have considerably more faith in how they would handle and approach this kind of issue than the way LJ has (and I know that a lot of people have left LJ for that poor-handling fact alone).

But, I want to gather together my facts etc first; draft a proper, researched email that provides them with the history over here, and the legislation etc that has been researched in relation to this.

I was thinking about posting to fandom_lawyers, but I know that a lot of people on my flist have been quite involved in this whole debate and may have some links on hand they could point me to (failing that, I'll probably do some deep digging around myself before asking someone more professional for a hand).

Anyone have any suggestions or ideas in relation to this? links to offer?

This afternoon I revamped hope.oscillating.net to fully host my fanworks, instead of just linking back to livejournal entries. I've transferred over a bunch of stories (the visual editor really helps, heh), and will gradually work on adding older stories as time goes on to bring it up-to-date.

The whole thing was very simple - just did my one-click install of Wordpress, picked a skin I liked the layout of, then went in a tweaked a few little thing to get it looking unique. It took me only a few hours.

The good thing about skinning is that you can chuck all your content in and refine the layout as you feel like it without having to do any more work on your content.


After my last host went psycho, I felt that archiving on LJ was more secure, but I'm not so sure of that any more. I have a bit more faith in Dreamhost, but will also be making sure I backup what I've got up there as well.


The offer still stands for anyone who wants hosting (username.oscillating.net). I would be happy to set up Wordpress for you (i.e. install it; you can do modifications & add content yourself), and give you a hand if you need it to customise.

I'd be glad to install wordpress for any current hostees who want a more manageable archiving system, too.

Speaking of hostees, I've just set up a closed google group to better communicate with you, keep track of you, and have a place to store some resources you'd find useful. I'll chase down email addresses and add you to it this evening, so consider yourselves warned :)

I just went to sign up at greatestjournal only to discover that GASP, MY USERNAME WAS TAKEN! ..only to discover that it was taken by ME, a while ago. oops.

I was thinking last night about how it wouldn't be so bad, leaving lj, I could still keep up with people using RSS and whatnot... but then I realise. Friends locked stuff. It's pretty much what I use livejournal for these days, for reading about my friends more than their fandom stuff, and for posting stuff for my friends, not for the public.

It makes me really sad and pissed off to think that that could be taken away from me, but I don't see a lot of choice. I'm also incredibly sad about the idea of abandoning my comments, my feedback, my conversations with friends (and foes) that have taken place over the past 5 years.

So, I'm http://angstslashhope.greatestjournal.com. I'll try and use ljArchive to upload this journal over there, will use Semagic to cross-post all entries over here and over there (until the time comes for whatever), and will think about how to get hopeful_fiction somewhere else as well.

In addition, if YOU are looking for somewhere to archive your fannish works (or blog), I have tonnes of bandwidth and space over at http://oscillating.net, and can install for you the very handy blogging software Wordpress (which is also good for fic archiving!), at the click of a button.

I can also provide (at the click of a button) password protected directories on your webspace there.

It is not my own server though, but Dreamhost's. I'm pretty sure they're quite lenient when it comes to fannish works - podcasts, songvids, fanart, fanfiction. However, they don't gel with the piracy stuff, so if you wanted to take me up on the webspace offer then it's with the agreement that you won't be uploading any films, tv shows or mp3s (that you don't own the copyright to). I've got far too much important stuff on that account to have it all done away with in one fell swoop because someone wanted to share the latest episode of SPN with their friend.

So with that clear, drop me a line if you want a yourname.oscillating.net subdomain for your blog or fannish works.

('oscillating', btw, is a reference to it being multifandom hosting - as in 'oscillating fan'.)

So, I was thinking about all this wikis-for-fandoms (and texts/shows) stuff.

And you know what? I own www.fandomwiki.com, which will in time house a kind of aca-fen fandom-pedia (hopefully).

I was thinking I could offer subdomains there for other fandoms that want to create wikis for their shows (and/or fandoms).

So for example,
http://supernatural.fandomwiki.com
http://dexter.fandomwiki.com
http://smallville.fandomwiki.com

etc.

I know that there are already fandom wikis out there (for eg. http://heroeswiki.com), but yaknow, surely not all of fandoms are accounted for, and surely there are folks around interested in managing/administrating such a thing, if they had the space and configuration/installation taken care of for them.

So, questions:

- would people be interested?

- if so, how to 'advertise' this availability? I'm not the best at disseminating information to such a wide 'audience'.

As you may or may not know, I run oscillating.net, a multi-fandom hosting domain. I've recently moved it over to DreamHost, which means I have metric buttloads of space and bandwidth.

I also have one-click installs for a number of nifty things, including MediaWiki, the software used to build wikipedia. Thus far I've used it to create the Super-wiki, which is fab, but I still have all this space left on the domain!

So, er, this is a call - if you're interested in constructing a wiki for your fandom... hit me up. I can set you up with an oscillating.net subdomain, install the wiki for you, help you with configuration etc.

There are some other one-click installs available too, here's a list:
http://wordpress.org/
http://gallery.menalto.com/
http://www.joomla.org/
http://www.phpbb.com/


So, if you have any fandom (any/all fandoms welcome) projects that need hosting, bandwidth, any of the installs/software above... Drop me an email to hope@oscillating.net, or comment here, and we'll have a chat.

Feel free to pimp this post around if you can think of other folk who'd be interested.

I LOVE HAVING TIME TO DO STUFF AGAIN.

I didn't realise how much I'd missed webdesign. *PRODUCTIVE*

Look! http://www.hope.oscillating.net/

LOOKIT WHAT I MADE EEEE!

it also works if you go to http://dombillijah.com or http://rosiesamfrodo.com!

HOMG I LOVE DREAMHOST.

Another reminder, if you're a hostee, friend ot3_hostees to keep up to speed!!!!1