Forums, Feeds and the Family
In just three months, our website has exploded!
December 21st, 2007 - September 2007 marked the three year anniversary of Comic Related. On September 14th I relaunched the front page of the site and found myself a little blow away by the explosion in interest that suddenly presented itself. This is due in part to the redesign and in part to my getting out and networking at regional comic conventions.
Family
Around the hallowed halls of Comic Related, I refer to those who contribute or take part in our website as the "Comic Related Family". Since September that family has grown to include three individual comic creators, seven comic companies, two web comics, two comic creator groups and eight new contributing writers!
Suddenly our little "family" finds itself fielding advertising requests, a landslide of daily press releases, more cool covers than I can share in any given week, review and interview offers and so much more. All I want for Christmas are new ways to organize and push content onto the site and a brand spankin' new 48 hour day.
I have to admit that it's all getting a bit too exciting for words. In just three months I find myself moving from feeling as if I were sometimes talking to myself (though site stats indicated otherwise) to staring at the monitor saying to myself "this is happening... it's really happening". Given our current rate of growth, I can't imagine where where going to be in the next six months to a year but I'm looking forward to it!
Forums
One area that's clearly reflecting this growth is our forum. As one member posted just a couple days ago...
"I saw that Transfuzion had a new forum when I was at their website and I have to say I'm impressed from what I see. Usually the forums are limited to just the publisher and a couple of creators so it is good to see that a whole network is here. I plan to be a regular visitor and I like that you have some topics for creators trying to break in."
-- posted by Writerguy on December 18th 2007 at 06:27 PM
We have an active, friendly community emerging that's both welcoming to new visitors and LOADED with experienced comic professionals. New creators, comic companies and comic fans are joining us all the time. As an example, two companies (Transfuzion Publishing and Desperado Publishing) saw their forums launch within the last week.
I invite you to join in the discussion by signing up here. Next week I plan to roll out a new Gallery feature within the forum allowing fans and creators to upload artwork, comic pages, fun photos and more.
Feeds
As the forums grow, we want to make it easy for fans of the website or the forum community to keep up with all the information we post. For you web surfers who prefer keeping up with sites through RSS feeds, we've made surfing Comic Related an easy thing. We've set up RSS feeds for the main site, our forums and each main area of the forum.
If you visit the main page of www.comicrelated.com and check the lower right corner, you will find our first RSS feed. It's updated in real time with every single post made to the main site and carries somewhere around 25 updates at a time. As news and information tends to fly across the front page (we post 4 to 8 stories on average every 24 hours), that number usually covers about 4 days of content. It's good for a quick catch up when you're pressed for time.
In our forums, we're really pushing the technology to the max! We have a feed that tracks updates to our entire forum, plus we've launched feeds tied directly to several of our more dedicated content areas. Here's the complete rundown...
Main Feed
Comic Related Site Update Feed
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Main Feed
Forum Update Feed
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Individual Creator
Jonnie Allen Forum feed
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Individual Creator
Ron Fortier Forum feed
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Individual Creator
Max Ink Forum feed
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Comic Company
Alterna Comics Forum feed
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Comic Company
Awakening Comics Forum RSS feed
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Comic Company
Cinemacomics Forum feed
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Comic Company
Desperado Publishing Forum feed
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Comic Company
Penny Dreadful Press Forum feed
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Comic Company
Transfuzion Publishing Forum feed
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Comic Company
Wham Bang Comics Forum feed
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Web Comic
The Adventures of Chad Cleanly Forum feed
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Web Comic
Night Owl Forum feed
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Comic Creators Group
Lexington Comic Creators Group Forum feed
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Comic Creators Group
Sunday Comix Forum feed
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Comic Related Column
TV Party Forum feed
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Comic Related Column
Wham Bang Column Forum feed
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Unfamiliar with the technology?
Here's how Wikipedia explains an RSS Feed
RSS is used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains a summary of content from an associated web site. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.
RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader," "feed reader" or an "aggregator." The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.
The Related Recap is a daily column by site creator, Chuck Moore.
Follow this link to visit our previous Related Recap update
