The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with reports from Boskone and the New York Comic Con, as well as a link to an interview with George at the latter event.
The History section has now been removed and the two articles that it held have been integrated into the FAQ, which in the future may end up having other essay-like answers to questions (both frequent and not so frequent ones) added.
The Concordance has finally been moved into ExpressionEngine. Old links to specific sections will no longer work, but it will now be easier to construct such links, as each section gets its very own URL. Additionally, it will be possible to see when each section was last updated. And yes, the AFfC update is finally in progress, so some sections have already had new material added.
This message was sent to all current members of the webring, but as many of the emails bounced, we are posting it here as well in the hopes that it will reach a few of those people.
Due to the fact that RingSurf, the software that powers the webring, has no measures in place to prevent spam submissions, we have found that we are no longer able to make use of their services.
We are therefore forced to change how the webring works, and this means that everyone who wants to remain a part of the webring will need to update the ring code that they have on their webpage.
The way this will work is as follows:
1) Everyone who wants to remain a part of the webring should email us. Please make sure to include the name of your site in the email.
2) Two weeks from now, we will send out the new ringcode to everyone who has responded. The new ring will then start functioning side-by-side with the RingSurf ring.
3) Two weeks after that, the RingSurf ring will be deleted.
If anyone has any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We would also like to note that we’d love to see more ring members as soon as the switch over has been completed, so if you have a site suitable for inclusion in the ring, do get in touch with us about being setup as a member.
An issue that has troubled us for awhile has involved the fact that when the server hosting Westeros.org-proper is down, this can lead to the server hosting the forums to act this is very slowly. This is due to the fact that some of the sidebar content—the latest news and the recommendations—is pulled from Westeros.org, and the attempt to complete the loading stops up the rest of the board until the connection finally times out. Previously, when this happened, we had to manually turn off the calls for the news and recommendations so that the rest of the board would act normally. Of course, this depended on our being aware of the problem and available.
After learning some elementary but new to us PHP, we believe we’ve worked out a way to prevent this from happening from now on. It may cause very minor delays in those cases where Westeros.org is out, but we’re talking a couple of seconds rather than minutes, so it’s a definite improvement.
We’ve upgraded from IPB 2.1.x to 2.2.1. This is a relatively major upgrade, including a host of changes both up front and behind the scenes. Unfortunately, these means that the skins the board uses are quite broken in some areas, to the point where the board is unusable until these skins are updated. The board will be down while these updates are being carried out. We have no estimate on how long this will take, but we’re working as quickly as possible.
Over the last few days, we have continued making numerous updates to the site. The most recent involve art of various kinds. Several new artists have been added to our list of artist links under Derivations and the Gallery (a merging of the former Artwork and Images sections) has seen one new but very belated addition in the form of the talented Raya Golden who exhibited her work during the LA WorldCon.
Visitors to the site may or may not have noticed a lot of things changing of late. We are finally hard at work on getting all content on the site handled dynamically through ExpressionEngine, which will make it easier to update, easier to indicate changes to existing materials and easier to search.
Some of the major changes done just recently are an overhaul of all of All Sorts of Weird Stuff (for example, the various licensed products and the artist links now reside in a wiki called Derivations) and changes to the FAQ and the Prophecies under the Citadel.
We are also working on some major changes to A Ring of Ice and Fire (the current ring code will be exchanged for something spam proof) and we also expect to turn the Artwork section into a proper dynamic gallery quite soon.
A blast from the past has been added to the SSM collection, thanks to Tony Tellado of Sci-Fi Talk. He has posted a radio interview he conducted with GRRM back in November of 1996, while he was at work on A Clash of Kings and when he supposed the series would be done in four. The entry in the So Spake Martin collection can be found here.
We’ve just been informed that the A Song of Ice and Fire Board has been nominated in ARWZ’s first annual award, designed to promote forums that have helped provide a place for fans of “alternate reality” literature (SF/F, horror, etc.) to talk about it. We’re very pleased with this, and would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the board (past and present) who has helped to make it the great place it is. :)
If you’d like to vote, go here and scroll down a bit to the list of forums. We’re down towards the bottom.
The Prophecies section has been reworked and updated. It now sorts prophecies by character, and the index lists the prophecies with book number, page number(s) and a hopefully descriptive title. We have also added information from a A Feast for Crows.
Every six months or so, we like to raise funds to help cover some of the costs incurred in running the A Song of Ice and Fire Board. Because of most excellent site admin (who also provides hosting for Westeros.org in general), the cost of the board is much lower than it would be at a commercial hosting package, but there’s still some cost. If you use the board to any degree and enjoy your time here, please do donate! To donate, you can go here where a group action for $500 is being hosted.
It should be noted that Fundable does take a percentage of the money raised (7%) but the convenience of it is that those without Paypal accounts can just use their credit cards without having to sign up for anything. Furthermore, Fundable actually requires fundraisers to be $500 or more; if a fundraiser fails to reach its minimum, the funds are basically sent back to the donors. $500 is more than we need this time around (in general, we look to raise roughly $750-$800 per year to help with the hosting costs). We contacted Fundable and they have assured us, however, that if we don’t reach the $500 mark, they’ll still pass on the money. This is one reason why we’ve made it a 2 week fundraiser rather than a month-long event, since we’re not concerned about reaching $500. That said, we do hope to raise at least $350.
Again, if you wish to donate, please go here. Thanks for your continuing support!
Thanks to the efforts of our incredible sysadmin, Sparks, the whole site as well as the MUSH are now back up following the hacker intrusion on the server yesterday.
We have also taken the opportunity to upgrade to the newest release of ExpressionEngine, so if you spot anything that doesn’t seem to be working properly anywhere on the site, do let us know.
A new subforum has been added for the purpose of discussing what fans would like to see in The World of Ice and Fire.
The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with a new piece of correspondence giving some new information regarding the appearance of weirwoods, and a belated report from the San Diego Comic-Con.
The So Spake Martin collection has been updated with a new audio interview with GRRM, thanks to Geeks On. The interview begins about half way into the program.