Gone For Weekend

I'll be out of town from tonight (Friday) to Sunday evening. Not sure if I'll have Wi-Fi access, but if I do, I'll remove this post.

See yah'll...

E-Books Offline

RAF eBooks will be offline for the next 12 hours... bandwidth issues.

RAF - Still Kicking!

It's exactly one year since I posted about RAF being no more. Well, firstly, I must say that the year has gone quickly, because I remember posting that thread like it was.... a few months ago, but no; it was a year ago.

My outlook was clearly grim, but now, my optimism has risen. Why? Well, have a look at my statistics posts. We are growing.

Here are some highlights which now negate my doomsday prediction one year ago:

1. E-Books. We have the complete Animorphs series available for viewing and downloading.

2. The Animorphs TV Show, which aired between 1998-2000 was uploaded and is also available for anyone to watch.

3. Prosperous RAF Chat, where members and none-members can chat about Animorphs each, and every Sunday.

4. Audiobook Project is still underway.

5. Secured hosting for 1 year, and domain for 2.

6. RAF Podcast began only days ago.

7. Author, K.A. Applegate joined & participated in our forum.

8. Rapid increase in members. Now averaging 7 per day.

9. Since Feb 27 07 to today, February 27, 2008, we've had 617,954 visits, versus the year before, where there were 311,246 hits.

10. The graph below shows RAF's activity from the previous post to today.



We aren't going anywhere just yet. So sit tight, and enjoy RAF: The Animorphs Forum.

Rules Re-cap

Even though these rules are available on the forum (link), this is just providing a friendly reminder to all members of these rules. If you have questions about any of the following rules, please feel free to contact any Staff Member, for they will be happy to help you.

RAF Rules

1. Spamming is prohibited.¹
Penalties: There will be only one official warning with regards to this rule. After which the user will be banned for an indefinite period.

2. Posts that are disparaging toward any religion, race, nation, gender, or sexual orientation are strictly forbidden.
Penalties: Warnings to Ban.

3. No harassment of any type or form towards any member of RAF will be tolerated.²
Penalties: Warnings to Ban.

4. Usernames (and profile information) may not be offensive, vulgar, profane, or abusive.
Penalties: Edit to Warning to Ban.

5. Pointless, excessive, or obscene cursing is prohibited on RAF⁴
Penalties: Edit to Warning to Ban.

6. Graphical sexual posts are prohibited. Threads of a sexual nature are also prohibited.
Penalties: Edit to Warning to Ban.

7. Multiple Usernames are not permitted.
Penalties: Deletion to Warnings to Ban.

8. Signature images are restricted to 550 by 120.
Penalty: Edit.

9. Excessive Web site promotion is not allowed on RAF.
Penalty: Deletion to Ban.

10. To go with accordance with the Conforums Terms of Service, members of RAF must be at, or, over the age of 13.
Penalty: Deletion to Ban.

¹ Spamming being anything one would do to 'up' or increase their post count. Also includes, but is not limited to posting off topic, and double (triple, etc) posting.

² This also includes, but is not limited to 'flaming³.

³ To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude.

⁴Please note that curse words have been censored as a result of the misuse of the language.

RAF Podcast - Coming Soon

RAF is once again in the middle of another fan made Animorphs project. This time, a number of our members have decided that a podcast would be an interesting endeavor.

Its (the Podcast) going to have discussion on the books, interviews with RAF members, fanfic writers and new Project leaders, news on related projects and websites and much more.
//click for more information

As of now, the team is in developmental stages, so watch this space. The Podcast Team currently consists of the following members:

duffman669
ANItiger13
ANnaBaNAnA
mrlarry
Tobiachel
FroggiJ

Oh, and if you didn't know, you can subscribe to the RAF | Blog RSS feed, so you're updated once a post is made here.

Record Day's Records

Forget our previous best where there was 8,587 page views on one day. Yesterday, when we were attempting to break the record for most users online (which we didn't), RAF | Forum was viewed 13,634 times, let's put things into perspective...

Chart showing the page views from our previous best day in years, to yesterday, our second most viewed day in our history.



Another record we saw broken was the amount of members online at the same time. Never has there been so many members (20)...




As for the big record-breaker, we saw the most users online in 24 hours... (124+)

1500 Members!

swevo24, was our 1500th member. Registered today, 14 days after our 1400th member registered.

VenomSymbiote

Two weeks ago, VenomSymbiote's name was brought to my attention. His posts were, to be put mildly, out there. Some very entertaining. No problem. But then came a post in the Staff Board, notifying me that his posts were directly violating RAF Rules #2 & 3. He was warned prior by the Staff members who encountered his posts. The nature of his posts never changed.

There was a move to ban him, but because I enjoyed reading his opinionated & funny posts, I felt that I needed to notify him that he was pissing off members of RAF, and of course breaking our two rules. Also, there was never a member that was banned without my prior involvement in the matter. So I warned him. Since then, I must say, I personally haven't seen anything too out there.

Then came this morning, when I received a petition; asking for his removal. I already knew the stance of the members of staff, but now I realised that members (+30) thought his posts were discomforting. I then reviewed his posts with a friend of mine, and he came to the conclusion that his recent posts, in fact, broke our rule on tact toward other races, creeds and religions.

Personally, I found his opinion interesting, and at times even thought-provoking. I never liked censoring...

But, the result of this conversation with my friend was that VenomSymbiote be notified of his pending ban. He was banned minutes later.

Hopefully, this will serve as a reminder of the Democratic system that we have on RAF. As Ricardo put it, for the people, by the people.

Record Breaking Attempt!

On Sunday February 24th 2008, we, as the RAF Community will attempt to break the record for most users online. The current record is 56 users (made on October 22 2006).

Please see this and this thread for more information. A mass email will be sent on Sunday.

Yesterday was TAAD...

If you missed it, according to veteran member Tyler, yesterday was Tyler Awesomeness Awareness Day. To find out more about this self-proclaimed RAF Holiday. View this thread.

I manipulated the RAF Banner to commemorate the day.

RAF's Google Ranking

For some reason I noticed that our ranking has been fluctuating for the past few days. As of this posting (11pm) a generic search for "animorphs" puts us as the most popular fan-made Animorphs website out there. But "Animorphs" will drop our ranking to #10... odd

RAF Chat

The idea came from Russell who suggested we create a chat room situation for the Record Breaking day attempt. Ok, fair enough. But then I got the idea that why not open the room on a scheduled basis? I thought about it for a few minutes, and said, ok, sounds good. Today Sunday Feb 17 will be the trial day for the Chat room.

RAF Chat will be open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the following times.

2100 GMT
5 PM EST (East Coast USA)
4 PM EST CDT
3 PM CST MDT
2 PM MST PDT
1 PM PDT (West Coast USA)

... so come in and enjoy the chat!

RAF eBooks

An extention of the RAF E-Book Project, RAF eBooks is another extended area of RAF designed to help the ease of new Animorphs fans to discover the series. It contains all the hard work by the members of RAF, scanning, OCR'ing and uploading. It features general Animorphs book information such as Pages, Author, Cover Morph, and so on.

Of course, since I did the pages by hand, there may be errors such as incorrect links, etc. If you do find errors on the pages or even in the books report it here.

Check it out: http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks

RAF TV - Too Hot!

Since I uploaded the TV show unto our host, in 10 days we've ate 270GB worth of data... leaving us/me with a problem. We only have < 30GB left for the month... I've put access to easily downloadable and watchable tv show on hold for now, while tomorrow I'll redirect you guys unto a host that won't kill the forum.

---

February 13th Update: We're back up, and I've added a preferred download link option.

February 15th Update: I've had to remove all direct download options because we're down to 4GB left. Hopefully the direct download links can be re-added next month, and be a permanent fixture on RAF TV.

Bibliomorphs

Some members of RAF have started a new project, which is just for fun, called Bibliomorphs. What this project is trying to do, is translate all of the books into Bible-type talk. here is an example that VenomSymbiote wrote:

And Jacob of the Californians did decree "SCREW YOU, EREK!" as he led the Holy Valley troops towards the maws of death, deceiving and invading the heathens and turning soul against soul!

The Blue One slaughtered the newest disciples, and he did laugh mightily! Traitorous Thomas did escape his Lord with his own apostles, planning the apocalypse of the Empire true!

So sayeth the Lord, Angel Rachel slew the traitorous pagan with animal spirit in tow, meeting her own fate at the hands of Polar Bear Goliath.

Blah blah blah, Marco dwelled in riches, gold and spoils, fame of his conquests reaching the Chosen People! The 6th Disciple, Aximili Of The Otherworld, flew to the heavens to fight in His name. Cassandra cared for all of God's creatures, as Tobias hid out in the Garden Of Eden wasting his days.

So sayeth the Gospel of Applegate, The Year Of Our Ellimist 1996 A.D.


You can find it at: http://bibliomorphs.wikilot.com/wiki/Main_Page

They need help editing it. So if you think you can help, join, and help!
So sayeth the Admins of thy forum!

...tired...

I am. I've been up all day in front of my computer...

Pages for the ebooks will be up by the end of the week.

1400th Member

Our 1400th member registered moments ago, 11 days after our 1300th member registered.
At this rate we're gaining about 9 members per day!

RAF TV (up soon)

The Animorphs Television Series will be back up tomorrow (Feb 3 08).
I added some pages with some information to make the Animorphs TV Show experience better for new Animorphs fans.

Not to be confused with any video sharing service, RAF TV is simply a section of RAF that will allow you to directly download the Animorphs TV show. In the future, one hopes to expand the file formats to be compatible with media players such as iPod and Zune.

Feb 03 Update: RAF Tv is now open.

http://animorphsforum.com/tv

Downtime Expected

Ok guys, RAF is going to be down today February 1, 2008 as I move all files etc over to our new host. The forum itself shouldn't be troubled, but because image, css, and javascript files are located on the animorphsforum.com host, I'm going to put the forum in maintenance mode. Only staff will be able to access the forum.

In addition, we'll begin to host the Animorphs TV show (in addition to the E-Books).

I'm not sure how long it will take, because DNS resolution varies. I will be on MSN / Windows Live Messenger to keep you guys updated.

FEBRUARY 2 UPDATE: Move complete with no interruption.

January Stats

The first month of 2008 was statistically a good one for RAF. The numbers show that RAF is growing...a lot.

The graph below shows page views/ hits from January 1 2007 to last month / January 31, 2008.

Some other useless techie statistics include

Operating System usage:

Windows - 94 %
Macintosh - 4.6 %

Browser Usage:

MS Internet Explorer - 64 %
Firefox - 30.1 %
Opera - 2.8 % (Recommended)
Safari- 1.6 %

Keywords:

animorphs - 38.6 %
animorphs ebooks - 4.2 %
animorphs forum - 4.2 %
animorphs ebook - 3.7 %
read animorphs online - 3.2 %
watch animorphs online - 1.8 %