1100 Members

Continuing the 100 increment post tradition that I started to count down to the 1000th members of RAF, RAF has gained 100 more members in 17 days.

Our 1100th member is somewhat ironically MCCCXXXVII or 1337. He registered today at 08:28:39EST.

Digg RAF?

Enjoy our forums? How about delighted that we have both all the e-books and television show?
Digg RAF to spread the word... Click the Digg icon above, or here.

Few Aesthetic Changes

We have a new "no avatar" image. Now it's simply the RAF logo.

In addition, the RAF banner has been changed from this, to this.

Happy Holidays from RAF

Happy Holidays to all our members and fans. I would personally like to wish everyone a great holiday.

Oh and you guys can now download all the Animorphs TV Show episodes (in the best quality we have) via a torrent that was seeded. All files come up to 3.80GB, and took 2 days to be seeded. But hopefully we have sharing Animorphs fans, an you won't have to wait so long for the download to complete.

1000 Members

jeiwaru116, registered today at 15:50:40 EST is RAF's one thousandth member. This of course happened 20 days after our 900th member registered.

All E-Books Uploaded...

Now that RAF has all the Animorphs E-Books (with 49 uploaded by me and OCR ed by nihtelek), all that is left of the E-Book Project is the editing of these books. 

I have removed the 10 post restriction on the Ebook boards, and the Other Section. So all those who are hungry for Ebooks no longer need to spam RAF to download them. All that is required is your membership.

What we do ask of you, if you have the time, is to, while reading the e-books, note any typographical errors and post in the Animorphs E-Book Project Board.

Evolution of the Banner

I decided I wanted to take a trip down memory lane, so I dug up some old (and relatively new) banner images I created throughout the life of RAF.

Here's the first banner for Richard's Animorphs Forum, used in early 2003:

The second, a more refined banner to fit the black and blue forum template:

Then I decided to move the forum in a more general direction. This phase is the Richard's Absolute Forum phase. Here's the banner that went with the new template that was a much lighter feel.

I then reverted to an Animorphs based forum, Richard's Animorphs Forum re-emerged in the latter half of 2004 with a new light blue theme. (This theme was created for another one of my projects, so I just implemented it into RAF). This is the banner, which we had for quite some time.

In the early months of 2005, RAF got its logo. It was introduced in the following dynamic banner. All banners after, then followed this theme. Logo on the right, image on the left.

Late 2005 saw the text "Richard's Animorphs Forum" removed, the banner was narrowed, Ax removed, and the RAF logo color changed to white. One such variant can be seen below:

The height of the banner than became a problem in my eyes, as it never stood out as banners should, so then the now recognizable banner was extended using the same Megamorphs 4 Animorphs image. The only difference rather than skewed as can be seen with the above two banners, the Animorphs' silhouette are displayed on the current RAF banner as they appear on the book.

It is this banner that is currently being repeatedly modified to prevent monotony.

Best Day in Years

Yesterday, December 2nd (mother's birthday), RAF experienced a massive increase in activity. Here are some highlights:

1. 362 posts
2. 120 Members online in 24 hours
3. 10 new member registrations
4. 8,587 page views on RAF (most in over 2 years)
5. 79 page views on the 'Blog (most since blog started in Feb.)
6. RAF Audiobook Project got some activity on Teamspeak
7. Alternamorphs 02 uploaded (only #49 left)
8. 13 Members online at the same time
9. Staff members increased and updated
   

Gallery:

RAF Staff Additions

Hey RAFers, Mike, AKA Phoenix004 has been promoted to the RAF Staff after 4 years of being on RAF. He is one of a few more chosen to moderate the forum, expect more members to join the team.

In addition to Mike, Russell AKA Esplin 9466, has also been promoted to the team.

TheEllimist / Adam has been promoted to an administrator.

Welcome, and congratulations to all of the above members.

Animorphs Audiobook Project

Well, our members can't stop coming up with new brilliant ideas. This time, mrguy36, has come up with the idea to develop audiobooks for Animorphs.

For more information on joining, et al, view the Animorphs Audiobook thread.

The TV Show Stats

So now that 30 days have gone since i've uploaded the Animorphs TV shows, it's time to review some stats.

The most popular & the most downloaded episode is Episode 1: My Name Is Jake - Part 1.
The least popular is Episode 18: The Release.

Not Well

I am sick.

900 Members

Our 900th member (Leonic) was registered today at 7pm EST. It took 12 days to jump from 800 to 900.

Some Issues

Ok. The Animorphs Forum Ebook board is now protected. You have to have 10 posts or more, or willing to assist with the editing of the books, in order to have access to the board.

Another thing. I sent out emails to two different groups of members, both instances resulted in the emails being sent, or appeared to be sent to the wrong person. Not to worry (and hopefully your email agent didn't mark it as spam), the email is legitimate.

For further assurance that emails from RAF are received, please add admin@animorphsforum.com to your contact list.

Sunday Edit:
Member Groups have been edited.
They are as follows:


New Member: 0 - 9 Posts
Junior Member: 9 - 99 Posts*
Full Member: 100 - 499 Posts
Sr. Member: 500 - 1999 Posts
Xtreme Member: 2000 - Posts
RAF Elite: Member who in a RAF Elite. #2 top poster.
#1 Poster: Top posting RAF member.


* RAF Junior Member group has been expanded from 100-499, to 9 - 499 to accomadate the new system whereby persons have to post 10 times in order to access the RAF E-Book Board.

800 Members

As I said previously, reaching 800 members came as a surprise, because only yesterday we were at 780 members, and on Monday the 5th we were at 750. Anyhow, 100 members in 13days is a new record for us. Who is RAF's' 800th member? "spottedleo69," registered Today, November 11th at 03:32:31EST.

7 Days Into The Month, and...

over 1.3 Gigabytes of e-books have been downloaded by our members...
the most popular ebook is The Invasion (book #1 of course), it leads by only .17% of all downloads...
the ebooks have been completely downloaded over 1000 times..books 51 & 47 have been uploaded.

There you are! Your useless statistics of the week

47 Ebook Posted + More

/After quite a wait, msaecila has scanned book 47 for your reading pleasure, arpitnathany has OCRd it. Both users (and Dace) have been given the new title of e-Book Contributor. 6 more books are left to be uploaded to the RAF servers. Numbers 49, 52, 53 and 54. Book 51 has been uploaded, but has not been OCRd. Both Alternamorphs are still undone.

/After one week since RAF hit 700 members, our 750th member is tupsumbong, registered today, November 5th. This 50 member jump in 7 days is unheard of in our history.

Animorphs TV Show Available

After a little work on my part, you are now able to easily download and watch the Animorphs TV show. Unlike the e-book project which is only open to members of RAF, anyone can access the pages to download the shows.

http://animorphsforum.com/tv

Happy viewing!

I've created two help pages to assist persons who are unfamiliar with the process.

Links Back Up + Tv Shows

The Animorphs Forum's E-book Project links are back up. If you encounter any problems, do not hesitate to email me at richard[at]animorphsforum.com, or leave me a message on the forum.

 
I've acquired the Animorphs TV series from Demonoid, they have been re-formatted to reduce file size, and are being uploaded as I type onto friendly file hosts. Expect the collection to be available on November 1, which is today, depending on which time zone you're on.

Here's a taste of what is to come. VLC Player is recommended.

I'll like to thank whoever the original uploader of the series, pretty hard to track who that might be, but thank you.

(link is the first episode of Animorphs) Animorphs Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Host Switch

The Animorphs Forum's domain (http://theanimorphsforum.com) is host switching from a 100mb / 3gb per month, to a 25gb, 35gb per month host. As a result of the DNS switch, the e-books may not be available for a time. Ripway's links will still be up, but links in the Direct Download thread will be affected.

Wednesday Update: Ripway links are down until 6PMCST

Monday Update

What a busy weekend it was for me. I, for the first time, scanned and uploaded book 34, and it is officially available for download via the Animorphs Forum e-Book Project. I must thank nihtelek for OCRing (is that a word?) the book for the Project.

Since yesterday, my Ripway web-space that has been hosting the e-books for easy download access, has been overwhelmed, and has been repeatedly shut down for excessive bandwidth usage. The image below displays bandwidth usage for the past 24 hours.

As a result, I have moved the Direct Downloads links to another host which allows for 3gb with of transfers per month versus the 150mb per day with Ripway.

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The last 24 hours have been a statistically active one on RAF:

Over 70 members logged into RAF.

See the peak that Sunday experienced.

Tuesday, Oct 30 Update: RAF experienced a huge traffic spur on Monday (when this blog was posted) because of the email I sent to all members. RAF saw 3,658 hits, 366 unique visitors (or different persons), 280 first time visitors & 86 returning visitors. The best one day stats since November 4 2005 where 3,911 hits were recorded on that day, 364 unique visitors came on RAF, 346 first time visitors, and 18 persons returned to the forum.

The graph above has been updated to show Monday's totals.

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You can now access RAF via http://theanimorphsforum.com/, but that domain will redirect to http://animorphsforum.com/.

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Our 700th member was TobyRocksSoHard, registered today.

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Awards?

New Staff Member

Adam / TheEllimist, a long time member of RAF has been promoted to the RAF Staff. He joins Druid / Raphael on the team.

Their jobs will be to moderate the forum, and have fun. I'd like to welcome Adam, and please, don't harass him... :) thanks.

What Happened to Richard?

Yes, you may have noticed, but for the 1290239th time I changed the name of the forum. Now, it is no-longer Richard's Animorphs Forum, rather The Animorphs Forum. The dropping of my name from the forum's name was done to de-personalize the forum's name.

I'm still hung up over the RAF, because that is what the forum is known as. So for the time being, You will see RAF: The Animorphs Forum atop all web-pages/ 

As usual, accessing the forum via animorphsforum.com is recommended.

theanimorphsforum.com is on the way...

60 Members + Stats

Here are the 14 day page view stats for RAF

And for the first time in our history, 60+ members logged into RAF in the past 24 hours.

Deleting Posts

After years of members having to ask a staff member to remove threads, I have finally removed the block that prevented members from removing their own threads.

Initially, this was done to prevent disjointed threads, but I realised that members should know what they are doing when they remove their own threads.

600 Members

After hitting 500 members 26 days ago, RAF has hit 600 members.

Our 600th members is rowrow, no doubt the surge in members is the result of the e-books being uploaded by our members.

eBook Project Update

As all members of RAF should know, the Animorphs eBook Project, started by Dace, has a home with RAF. To date 36 Animorphs books have been scanned and uploaded by volunteers. These books can be downloaded free from the Richard's Animorphs Forum eBook Project.

Thanks again to the members who have taken their time to scan copies for members unable to access an Animorphs book.

Most Active Day of the Year

Yesterday, Sept 29 '07 was RAF's most active day (in terms of page views) in exactly 16 months.

2052 hits were recorded yesterday, with 185 Unique Visitors, the last time RAF was viewed 2000+ times in one day was on May 29 '06; 16 months ago.

In addition, 139 posts were created, 1 removed, and 1 locked.

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October 2 Update: On October 1, RAF received 2,618 views, extending the most viewed day since April 20,2006.

Massive Outage Yesterday

For reasons beyond me, for nine (9) hours yesterday (sept 11) from 12 to 9. RAF and it's associated pages an services were down. Sorry for the inconvenience.

500 Members

Granted I have removed 428 members from RAF for inactivity (as of June of this year), RAF has reached the 500 member mark.
Just for record keeping, RAF's 500th member is bleed, who registered just minutes ago.

RAF #10 on Google

Searching a few days ago I realised that RAF made Google's first page when one searches for "animorphs". We've been hovering at 14 & 15, but finally made the jump to number 10 this week past.  The picture below shows the results for "animorphs".

RAF has been atop of the keyword rankings for "animorphs forum" for years.

Random Statistics

Early August marked the first time in RAF's history the member list has grown over 400 members. Currently there are 412 members registered on the forum, the most in the history of RAF.
Also, in the statistic arena, RAF saw over 1000 page views, the most since June 28th of this year. At this moment 1,229,952 hits have been recorded since February 23, 2005.

E-Books a hit for RAF Blog

After only recording 126 hits to RAF Blog since I began tracking 24 days ago, I began noticing a quite a number of persons coming to the blog in search of Animorphs E-books.

62 persons as you can see from the image below have come to the blog from search engines, and with that the keywords used have come to light. An overwhelming number of persons are in search of ebooks. And thanks to Dace we are now the place to find these ebooks.

RAF Uploads is Back!

After some SQL issues which I never got around to fix, RAF Uploads (the place where you upload your avatar / signature / random picture) is back online. This system is open to all members of RAF to register and manage your images. 
To access the uploads area, click on the more link in your personal bar.

*remember, having a RAF account does not mean you have a RAF Uploads account. We have no access to the Conforums database, so everyone (who hasn't registered there, has to register.)

Additional Advertisment Banner

Conforums has added another banner at the bottom of all pages. I hope it doesn't become a bother. It shouldn't, but after four years seeing another banner makes for standing out.

Host Move

I've just completed the move from XEHOST to 100 WEBSPACE as the result of an impending bill from Xehost :(
Initially RAF (animorphsforum.com) was hosted on 100 Webspace, but I merged RAF with my other two sites so that all my sites can be managed in one area. Anyhow, there should be no visible changes to RAF as a result of the move. What is certain though is that we'll have a host for sure until May 2008 with 100 Webspace.

Cool Visitor Map

Here's an interesting map of the persons who visited RAF recently. Click the image for the full size.

Unexpected Downtimes

The Animorphs Forum.com host was down numerous times throughout today. I apologize, but I had nothing to do with it.

RAF's Rotating Banner Program / Affiliate with RAF

You will notice beginning today (July 12) that in Animorphs related boards at the bottom of the page, Animorphs related banners are now displayed. This initiative is like an affiliate program whereby if you have an Animorphs website, and wish to enjoy some promotion, simply contact me and you can have your banner displayed on RAF.

Of course, your website must also link back to RAF.

Click here to email the program. or simply copy affiliate@animorphsforum.com in the "to" section of your email.

Gaming Section

RAF now has a gaming section. Enjoy it!
August 2007 update: I have taken this section out of beta. To access the RAF Gaming Section, click here.

The E-Book Movement

After an effort from myself to make e-books for Animorphs failed (many times) hope for online books for Animorphs faded for me. But with the help from a number of members (Dace being one who has scanned a number of books so far) there is an e-book project which I fully endorse.

I have set up the RAF Animorphs E-Book Board which will allow members to download and read Animorphs online. This board will be maintained by new member Dace.

I look forward to the series being (finally) available online, and applaud the efforts of the members who have taken their 
time and effort into the creation of these books.

Music + Movies = Media

I have merged the movies and music boards into one board; Media. I made this decision after I created the Animorphs E-Book Board; which will host Animorphs E-Books posted by our member Dace.

RAF Awards & Move Cancelled

Both the move to a new forum system, and the RAF Awards that were recently planned have been cancelled. Don't count out both in the future though. The awards are in my sights for the end of the year.

Our History

Since I have just created a personal website for myself, I began wondering how it would compare to the first website I ever created. Richard's Animorphs. Then I realized that Richard's Animorphs was created six years ago, when I was a wee-toddler. According to statistics which I deleted just last year (along with the entire Richard's Animorphs Main pages) "Richard's Animorphs" was hosted by Geocities, and 'designed' by hand beginning February 2001. At that time only 8 hits was recorded.

The main aim of the site was, and is still today facilitating a place for Animorphs Fans to come and get information on the dead series Animorphs (which just died when RA started).
There were quite a number of pages which included Richard's Animorphs Books (where one could located the Animorphs Books), Book Information (where there would be 'detailed' data on the books), Character's Bio (self explanatory), Quiz , and a 90s styled Guest Book.

All these pages were created, updated by me, in my spare time (most likely when I was procrastinating).

A Message Board was created (Richard's Animorphs Message Board (not so catchy huh?) which was initially hosted by Bravehost (which still aparantly exists today (http://www.boardhost.com/), then I moved from them to some unknown service provider, then in 2003 (two years after RA started) the move to Conforums happened. And as with everything web wise, I knew nothing about the software, so design and general esthetics were not a priority.

As for Richard's Animorphs Forum's history, it was created on May 22, 2003 (not many know this as the date of its opening is generally regarded as RAF's birthday), I called on a fellow, Cameron; to assist me with moderating the forum. He was RAF's second member, behind myself.
His profile can be seen here. Unfortunately, after not even a year, he disappeared into thin air, and numerous attempts at contacting him failed. He is probably best known today as the starter of RAF's biggest thread, The Continue Game which has over 7000 posts.

RAF's first real member is Asmodeus who yes, after four years only has 173 posts. He was to my knowledge RAF's oldest member, currently at 23, and administrator of Extreme Animorphs RPG.
Initial members who stand out are Ash who registered in July  of 2003, and was RAF's top poster for quite some time. Jessica who registered in October of 2003, and intrepid (now Intrepid) who registered in August of 2003. Intrepid was promoted to RAF Staff on December of 2003, and was RAF's third staff member, and first female staff.

Other previous staff members included, as mentioned before Cam9037, skater, Druid, PotionsPunk (who moderated the now gone Harry Potter Board), Jay, and Neodan.

RAF Statistics

RAF had its most active day yesterday, April 23, since February 4th in terms of pagevews.

REALLY contemplating move

In our 4 years I have never moved from Conforums. But I think for the 4th birthday of RAF I will make the move to SMF, a wholly hosted board system.
Unfortunately, all posts, members, etc will be removed. On the plus side, more features, and functionality.

What do you think? Sound off below, or at RAF.

Richard's Animorphs Forum Awards 2007

After an almost two year hiatus, RAF Awards are back. Beginning the second week of May of 2007, the 2007 awards should be in full swing.

For a list of previous winners of varying categories, click here.

+Categories have not been decided on yet.

The Invasion: Animorphs Book 1: Coming Soon

The first Animorphs e-book is in the works.
Watch this space

July Update: Go to the RAF Ebook Project page for more information.

Locked out? My bad.

For the past 8 or so hours RAF was accidentally password protected. Sorry for the mishap guys, an gals. I've removed the block, and RAF should be back to normal. :)

RAF. No More?

Hosting and domain services are guaranteed until April 2008, but what after April 30, 2008?

By 2008, April, RAF: Animorphs Forum.com would be five years old, or in forum terms... old. RAF Started exactly three years after K.A Applegate finished the book series Animorphs, an oddity for a fan site, but since May 2003, RAF has seen over six hundred (600) registrations, and over one hundred and fifty thousand posts (150,000). But with interest beginning to wither, the question of 'how longer' begins to pop up.

That being said, there's still a definite one year left out of RAF, so enjoy the community, after all, that was the purpose of RAF: coming together to relive Animorphs.

Two Year Statistics

RAF: Animorphs Forum.com Statistics
Period: February 23, 2005 - February 23, 2007

Page Loads: 1,136,167
Unique Visitors: 75,795

'Messenger + Richard

Chat with me on Windows Live Messenger (Formerly MSN Messenger) or on Yahoo! Messenger. You can add me at richard@animorphsforum.com

I am mostly online, so any thing you wish to talk about outside of RAF, is welcome.

RAF Uploads

Created so members can easily upload pictures, text, and compressed (zip) files on RAF. First you have to create an account, which can be done easily. RAF accounts are different from that of RAF Uploads, but once an account with RAF Uploads is created, simply click on the Upload link your personal bar to upload.

You can, after registration, modify your uploads, and get the link so that your file can be posted on RAF.

New Board!

A Suggestions board has been added to RAF for the 2nd time in our almost four year history. This board is available for members, and guests to post suggestions with regards to RAF, and also serves as a support board.

New Banner & Template Changes

I have updated the RAF banner. After almost a year of the same banner,
the update brings in a breath of fresh air.

Interesting thing about the banner is the simplicity: the 5 Animorphs to the left, and the RAF logo to the right.

In addition to the updated banner, the new and old icons on the main page that tells you when there are new posts to a board, has also been updated with the RAF logo.
Images such as post | modify | delete etc, have been reverted to the default images.

Welcome

I never was the one to post a weblog, but I would like to give RAFers the advantage of having inside information with regards to the forum, and my semi-personal life.

Watch this space for information regarding RAF, and my general 
observations surrounding the forum.