Halloween is my favorite holiday (that's today, by the way, in case you are caught up in work and hadn't realized it). It happens in my favorite season of the year and its one of the few I try to take time to celebrate. Part of that is the whole pagan thing... part of it is that I just like costumes and masks

For those who haven't been visiting the forums this week, we've been having a bit of a discussion about reader / fan traffic and what things we can do (all of us, not just the site admin and authors) to bring more people to visit the site. Some people raised concerns with the glare caused by a white background, so we're playing around with an offwhite background. We might move away from our traditional blue and white to find something that gives us both a cohesive look and can still be functional in that way. We've tried to do some clarifying of the fan fiction policies... that there aren't any rigorous (or even very time consuming) restrictions on getting a story posted in either the forums (the lowest tier of visibility) or the open WhatIF level (the middle level). Yes, the top level (Featured WhatIF) stories DO have to undergo a lot more effort; but the end result is meant to put these stories on a pedestal. And the effort is relative to that (and equivalent to what the canon authors are required to do).

We've also chatted a bit about how it is difficult to get good feedback... something that is easier, of course, when the population is larger and more active. We talked about advertising/promoting the site through the interwebs... and other things. If you have an interest and ideas on keeping this community alive, healthy, and growing; please drop in and join the conversation.

In some of our recent releases, things have gotten somewhat dark. And one of the brighter, sillier groups of students was put through a period of rough times. But today's story should help reassure you. Wondercute might have taken a bit of a beating... but what these girls start endures... and even years later, Whateley Academy (in the 2nd Generation timeline) still has a group dedicate to all things cute and fluffy. Enjoy Morpheus' "Following the Path of Cute." You'll find it via the Latest articles panel... or in the Gen 2 story collection.

Some recent changes to the core software that we use for the site has finally allowed me to do some more involved changes with the CSS without losing it every time we update the software. I've done some things to make parts of the forums pop a bit more and put some color into the way the site layout goes. I'll be adding and playing around with some additional things as I have time, mostly as an experiment in whether we'll stick with this template or more to something more modern when the next big Joomla update happens (after all, this template is supposed to become obsolete once it does). A completely new template might result in a complete rework out of necessity... or we may want something new due to added features that simply aren't possible in this one.

Activity has started to pick back up as we settle into Fall, though we aren't nearly as active at the moment as we were last winter. It's difficult to tell whether that was a result of all the efforts to move old stuff here from to its new home or something else... obviously, forums discussions boost site activity in general. What sort of things are we missing that would bring people in to chat more often? Contests? Short stories at 20 paces with Halloween themes but set in the WU without using existing canon characters? We could probably arrange for some prizes. Do we need to advertise? Are there similar sites out there with web links that don't mention us? Ask their admin's to include us? Person that gets us the most new traffic as a result of getting added to web comic or blog site link pages wins something? 

While we ponder ideas to increase traffic, you may be happy to hear that tonight's content is the follow up story to Phoenix Spiritus' "One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heel"... it's a piece titled "Life's But a Walking Shadow"  Enjoy!

Banking policies... intrigue me. Things have changed a lot in our economy from when I was young... when getting a paycheck cashed meant going to the bank and getting cash. Of course, you 'could' put your money in a checking account, but checks weren't accepted everywhere and you had to track your spending carefully because a check could sit uncashed for weeks before making it back to your bank and having an effect on your balance. Some people took advantage of that fact, of course, so policies were put in place for insufficient funds and 'bounced' checks.

Today though... banks are digitally connected. Running your debut card at a store both verifies the availability of funds and immediately places a charge on the account. A short period of time is allowed for chargebacks and corrections, but all that information is there. Available. And yet... if you deposit a payroll check to a bank... that information may somehow take days to be verified and your money made available to you? How can this be possible? If a verify from my debut card that there is money available for a purchase... how can a bank be unable to contact another bank via a routing and account number to do the same? Worse... the bank providing those funds for payroll from your company's accounts? Already gone from them. So for some 48-72 hours... funds have left one bank and your employer's accounts... but have not yet arrived in your account at your bank. And sometimes that's the same bank!

Is the money on vacation? Is it sight seeing in Rio? That's a long time for money to travel digitally from bank to bank... and I can't help but wonder who is making a profit off the fact that that money is in transit... somewhere?

Strange banking questions aside... we have a great piece from our newest canon member that's been sitting in review for too long and I'm happy to finally release to the public. This is "One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heel" by Phoenix-Spiritus and like Elrod's "Veni, Vidi, Cutie" it deals with some of the remaining fallout from the end of the Spring semester, Gen 1 side. If you have tissues left, you might want to have them handy.

If you've been following the site news this summer, you probably are already aware that we revamped some of our system and policy for handling what we formerly called fan fiction. As a result, some of our non-canon authors have stepped up and begun the process of using these new systems by posting / self-publishing their WhatIF stories to the site. The eventual goal is to give them some direct access to present their stories on this front page along with the current news (which I hope to expand to include author blogging in addition to my weekly release notes and announcements). For the moment though, while we work out the policies and get the authors trained up in how to use the CMS; keeping track of the new stories will take a little effort. 

The 'quick' method of finding new stuff is to check your left hand side-bar, below the login module. There you should find a list of the "Newest Independent Fiction." These stories (with the most recently added/modified at the top of the list) will take you directly to those stories.The other way to get to them is to go up to the main menu in the upper right, select stories... and then find the submenu at the top of the middle section (right above the center advertisement) and select "Whateley Independent Fiction." That'll open those stories in a blog style format where you see just the title information and the blurb/jacket (if the author created one) or the first couple paragraphs of the story, depending on where the marker is set by the author. To read more of a given story, you can either click on the read more link or follow the story's main link to its own page.

At this time, we have three selections on offer from a few of our community members... and another three (only one of which is a continuation of one of these existing three) in the pipeline getting feedback now. Those will probably make their way to public release sometime in the next week or two. While I don't expect us to jump to have four or five new story segments available every day in the immediate future... we do hope to see a lot more regular release of material, to give you a reason to check in on us more than just on Monday or Tuesday for your weekly fix.

Speaking of that weekly fix though... it has been a little while since we jumped back from our new Gen 2 timeline and advanced things in the original timeline. We do have a few things in the pipeline for that, however, and some planning to do for the new freshman class; but before that, there are one or two... maybe three... things that we need to tie up on the existing stories before we move on to Fall 2007. It was pretty clear that readers weren't happy to wait until September 2007 to see how some of our girls dealt with their sims finals... and that good, because we don't intend to make you wait until then either.

From Elrod, "Veni, Vidi, Cutie" ... a continuation of the Wondercute end of the Spring 2007 semester. Enjoy!

Gonna keep it simple today, so everyone can just snag a story to read while they sit around and enjoy the smell of grilled burgers and munch on potato salad and cole slaw. The latter being one of my favorite picnic-ish things. Not that I mind fresh grilled burgers... or a good hot German potato salad (my mom has this recipe that....)

Anyway... to share for the day, a little Gen 2 piece from Morpheus "The Writing On the Wall" ... this is Part 1 of 3.