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).

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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!

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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)

URL Change

Hey! Some of you  may have noticed www.wiglafandmordred.com no longer directs directly to the site…

I was re-reading my Terms of Service for my hosting and apparently they don’t permit .htaccess redirects to directories and/or sub-domains. Heh. Decided not to press my luck & removed my redirect before anything could come of it. I might send them a line later & see if I can’t work something out/get permission to put it back up though since I’m only doing it for one site instead of a bunch of them (which is why I’m assuming it’s not permitted in the first place). We’ll see.

So now the link is now  back to a good old regular parked domain (aka it just sends you to liliy.net instead of liliy.net/wam).

LESSON: Read your Terms of Service more often than once every few years. XD

Just thought I’d let you know in case anyone got confused. ^^;;

*makes note for next batch of business cards to include both web urls*

On the bright side, maybe now ‘www.wiglafandmordred.com’ will stop showing up as a referral link in my stats. That always drove me crazy. XD