Happy Easter & Site Updates!

It’s Easter! A time to be thankful for Christ and all he does (though really, that’s a daily thing…) and because of that I’m in a really good mood, so…here’s a special treat:

I got off my lazy bum and updated some stuff around the site!

I’m now officially caught up with updating the fanart page & the fanfiction page (if you don’t see yours and you sent it…resend it. I may have missed it), and I managed to get up Benjamin & Éclat’s cast pages.

Productive-ness, go! :D

On Manga & This New Age

And now for a soapbox aimed at the Manga fans out there since you’re more likely to read it here than my blog! Because no one reads it! XD I’m not sure how many of you this actually affects, but as an avid manga reader myself I’m sure a few of you out there are, too.

Also, agree or not, I’m not here to argue with you and am unlikely to really discuss this in the comments–I just want you to be aware of alternatives & my opinion on the entire thing. This topic has been bothering me lately and I just need to get it out there.

Please do not use Manga Aggravators (online manga/comic readers or mass download sites that run on pirated material & ads). Don’t even visit them.

Once upon a time, Scanlations were pretty much the only way to get manga that wasn’t super mainstream like One Piece or Naruto (aka anything Viz or Tokyopop picked up). To everyone’s delight–publishers listened/noticed what fans wanted and started to print smaller run one-shot manga that were popular with Scanlators (Like DMP Books & the Blu Division of Tokyopop)–and that was awesome. The anime/manga industry is one of the few entertainment industries doing things the right way and listening to fans (which you can also see with Simulcasts on sites like Funimation & Crunchyroll).

I’ve got shelves of books I’ve purchased–ridiculously happy to have legal copies of titles that I loved in English. The best part? Scanlation groups & associated forums were/are very good about removing scanlations and stopping distribution once titles were licensed & available–even for stuff like doujinshi when the authors asked–encouraging us to buy the legal copies (and I did–I think I spent too much if I’m being honest–I’ve even got the original Japanese imports for a good chunk of them that I bought before titles were licensed). It was win-win all around for fans and publishers alike.

And then Manga Aggregators showed up. I didn’t think too much of them at first, they were just a place to put a bunch of scanlations in one place, at first just for download, and later to read online. They seemed harmless–I was naive. These aren’t groups out to support the manga publishing industry–they want to make money off content that is not theirs in any sense. Not only do they often post outright scans of English published manga, they post scanlations without permission. Many outright refuse to remove titles when asked, including both licensed titles and unlicensed titles the scanlators don’t want mirrored (so as to better control its take-down it in the event the title is licensed) or be associated with groups that host licensed work. They make a ton of money off advertising for a service that is hurting the industry and are flat out spurning the wishes of the people who translated the manga in the first place.

Need proof? I hate to break it to you folks–but Tokyopop went out of business. Out of everyone printing manga, I bought the most from Tokyopop–so you can understand how the issue would hit close to home. To make it all worse, this situation appears far worse than game or movie piracy that’s making the news–flatly, the scope of it baffles me.

When I search for a manga title (by itself without download or some other pirate keyword) on Google and three or four illegal aggravators shows up higher on the list than a legitimate, legal site–something is wrong. I know Piracy is never going to go away completely, but this isn’t right and it’s not what the original scanlation groups intended. These sites are a legitimate problem that’s threatening an industry that I love–so please, please, don’t visit them. Don’t support their ads and please do not donate.

Most importantly–this problem isn’t a service issue that the games, movies, and book companies are suffering from at the moment with ACTA and SOPA. The manga & anime industry listened and they’ve got a TON of legal venues to get manga & anime that’s hosting both old and new stuff–and they’re all very open to hearing what you want to see.  JManga is even making a move to go international soon–which is great! (On the JManga note, I know that the site launch was a bit of a mess and made a bunch of fans angry–but at the moment it looks like they’ve turned things around. I’m really happy with them right now, and if the publisher lists are anything to go by, they’ll have a ton of desired titles in the near future–new ones uploaded every Tuesday).

Thank you for your time, and just in case you didn’t know–here’s four legal sites to get Digital Manga from. So take your pick and make it legal! :D

Jmanga - Emanga - Viz Manga - Square Enix

Bye Bye Forum

Hey all!

Not that anyone used it, but here’s your official announcement that the forum is kaput. Milk in the Pantry has closed it’s doors and taken our forum with it.

Most of you probably just said ‘WaM had a forum?’ which is why it closed. XD

To those of you who used it–thanks! :D

I’m rambling now. The point is, the forum’s down. XD *thumbs up*

WAM PAIR-A-THON YEAR 4

That’s right! The Pair-a-Thon is here for round four! I’m really excited for this year…like I am every year! :D The rules are pretty much the same as last year, but here they are again if you need them! So without further ado:

Let the Forth Annual Adventures of Wiglaf & Mordred Pair-A-Thon Begin!

Winners posted! Thanks for another great year! :D

Submission & Winners can be found here! :D

See Below the Cut for more rules and information!

(more…)

Site Caching and You! :D

Hello all! Long time not see for a normal announcement, right? Though this is more of an explanation…

I was browsing survey results and I noticed someone comment that when browsing older strips, the ‘Last Page’ link sometimes drops you off a few strips before the actual latest one–I’m here to explain this!

WordPress is a CPU intensive program, and so to keep from going over my server’s CPU limitations, I had to start caching (a few of you may remember a panic induced craze over this where I feared being kicked off my hosting despite no actual warnings being given out. :D I was a mess. It’s funny now, but then it wasn’t.)

Moving on!

Caching is where the site creates a plain HTML file to be delivered to the user instead of dynamic, php driven webpage. This way, the site only has to process the PHP info once, and deliver the plain html over and over in its place. It’s far less CPU intensive and makes the pages load faster for you the end user. *puts on cool glasses*

Normally, it creates the html file the first time someone visits the page, and then reloads it when someone leaves a comment or recreates it when the cached page ‘expires’ (this can be anywhere from an hour to a week).

But that wasn’t enough–to really get my CPU usage down to where I was comfortable, I had to preload all of the pages into the cache (in other words, I create all the html files to be delivered in advance). I have this set to happen once a week, and while the cached page will reload/recreate itself if someone comments–let’s face it, not many people comment on old strips.

What this means, is that the ‘Last Page’ link will go to whatever page was the latest when the cache file was created. This link won’t be updated until the next full-site cache preload. :)

And there you have it. I know it’s a little bit of an annoyance when you get to what you think should be the ‘Last Page’ but see you still have three or four more comics to go, but the caching is important for everyone to have a quick loading site.

Thanks for understanding!

(And this is also why the main page will say ’2 comments’ when the strip in fact has about 20 or so–the main page only refreshes when I manually update the post there, or a new one is posted. :D)