Fundamental Website Setup Links

Welcome To the AWSOM.org website!

If you are an Artist, Webcomic Creator, or Blogger looking for help setting up a website, you've come to the right place! AWSOM.org can help you get a site up and running quickly with tools, tutorials, and news specifically designed for your needs.

(BTW, this News area uses the AWSOM News Announcement plugin available from the menu on the left and the drop down archive below is the a result of the AWSOM Archive plugin)



Webforums In The Time Of Facebook: Dead or Alive?

When we started out with our webcomic at Onezumi.com one of the first companion sites we set up was a phpbb based forum site. Back in those days (wow, is it really going on 10 years soon?) there wasn’t many central places where people could talk about your work–unless you set one up yourself. So we set up the forum and it went well for a few years. We built up a nice but small community. Eventually as LiveJournal, MySpace, and Facebook arrived we noticed the traffic and discussion was eroding away. We eventually shut the forum down and moved on to a very open commenting policy on all of our sites.

So, is this experience just limited to us? I don’t think so. I think that the rise in “Massive Social Networking” sites has lead to the idea that there isn’t a need for a million little places to discuss each of your hobbies or fandoms. There are definitely many independent forums still out there–most of which had very large traffic before things changed, but I really can’t imagine many new ones coming into existence now–though if you want to disassociate your “real life” from a fandom (i.e. furry, kinky, or other things you don’t want people to know you are into) then I can see why that would be a possible successful development.

In some cases a “support forum” seems to be a valid usage for a site specific forum, but they are a real problem to keep spam free and on topic (which was another reason we eventually killed our forum–it was getting too difficult to maintain).

People have always valued convenience–remembering one login is way easier than a million–and going to one website is better than having to follow many. The insidious Facebook login feature they rolled out for web developers–to allow them to be your authentication system–keeps them even more as the central location.

Do I think this is a good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure. It’s definitely annoying to have to maintain fanpages and other elements that aren’t on our own sites–and we have very little control over changes they decide to make to their sites. And I think that the top reigning sites will change over time, which means constant roving for where to find your fans and community.

Ironically it seems that with convenience we’ve lost some measure of focused fandom with the collapse of site specific forums. It’s easy to “Like” something on Facebook, but the depth of discussion seems to have become much more shallow and diluted. Maybe the harmonic will pull back the other direction if people start to become suspect of the MSN types of sites.

A Revival In the Works

It’s been awhile, but I’m looking to restart my blogging efforts on AWSOM.org. I think I might actually have some things worth saying again, so expect weekly updates starting next week. I may do some in-between updates sometimes, but I expect to do at least 1 main update a week, on Mondays.

See you on the 11th :)

AWSOM News Announcement plugin updated to version 1.5.5

AWSOM News Announcement has been updated to version 1.5.5 and is available for download from the AWSOM.org website and the WordPress.org plugin repository. This minor update fixes an issue with the plugin when used with an SSL configured WordPress site. While it’s suggested to update to this version, if you are not using an SSL WordPress site then there are no major changes that would affect your usage so an upgrade is optional.

Small Updates to AWSOM Archive and AWSOM News Announcement Plugins

I’ve recently made some small updates to both the AWSOM Archive plugin and the AWSOM News Announcement plugins.

The change for Archive is to remove the notice to check the Harknell.com forums for support (they no longer exist and are now hosted here at AWSOM.org). The change for News Announcement is the same as Archive, but with the addition of the proper handling for SSL Administration enabled websites. So now the front end editing links will now stay within the realm of SSL.

Minor updates for now, but once I start making these types of changes you can tell I’m back in the mood for adding new features :)

AWSOM PixGallery 4.7.0 now available

I have added an update for AWSOM PixGallery, for version 4.7.0, to the PixGallery Product page. This version has all of the features of the previous 2 beta releases, as well as some new small bugfixes and text updates.

For those of you that prefer the WordPress.org auto-update feature, the new version will be live in their system sometime over the next day or so.

As usual, please contact me if you discover any bugs or issues.

AWSOM Powered