Difference between Facebook Page & Group

The RAF Facebook Page v The RAF Facebook Group

I noticed two wall questions on the RAF Facebook Page, asking what is the difference between the Group and the Page. Here we go:

1. The Facebook Page is administrated by me (Richard).

2. The Facebook Group is not. Adam created it in January of this year.

3. The Facebook Page allows me to send you updates/ notifications directly unto your Facebook home page.

4. The Facebook Group does not allow that functionality.

5. The Facebook Page is accessable via http://animorphsforum.com/facebook

6. While the Facebook Group is not :) 

Animorphsjake Banned

Just to nofify the RAF Public that the member Animorphsjake has been banned for spamming the forum, and 'plotting' to do more.

RAF Chat - Now Open All Week!

The RAF Chat (where members and non-members alike chat about Animorphs in an IM style) will not be closed throughout the week anymore. I've decided to have the chat room remain open 7 days of the week.

To allow you to gauge when there is activity in the chat room, I've placed an online notification at the bottom of all RAF Forum pages.

New Animations from Animorphs Cover Artist

Description from the video:

I am the artist who did the covers for Scholastic Books "Animorphs" series by K. A. Applegate. Here are some of the full morphs stitched together with some nice cloud backgrounds. Enjoy! You can see more of my work at:

www.davidmattingly.com.

In addition to the above, Mattingly made this animation:

This is a short film of me morphing into my cat Henry.
Check out more of my work at:

www.davidmattingly.com

Thanks Truth

Link to Video One
Link to Video Two

RAFipedia - The RAF Wiki

Join the RAF Wiki, RAFipedia or gets details about RAF in this user-editable encyclopedia.

RAF Downloads

Starting with the Animorphs eBooks, Television Series, and newly added Know the Secret PC Game; RAF Downloads will be your one stop shop for Animorphs related downloads.

I spent most of last night creating the two new pages: RAF Downloads (located at downloads.animorphsforum.com) & RAF Games (located at animorphsforum.com/games/) after I noticed persons trying to access our downloads folder, and after Truth from Hirac Delest provided us with the game respectively.

Animorphs: Know the Secret, the PC Game

Thanks to Truth, (of Hirac Delest) the Animorphs PC Game (Know the Secret) has been uploaded for anyone to play. Bear in mind that this game came out in 2000.

Here's a quote from Amazon:

This is an action adventure game based on the characters from the book and TV series. Earth is being taken over by an alien race called the Yeerks, who are using cockroach-like bugs to control human minds. Visser Three, leader of the bad guys, uses a weapon with an ultra-powerful crystal that explodes and shatters reality. Players' task is to lead the Animorphs, a group of animal-morphing teenagers, in their quest to save Earth by piecing reality back together. Game play consists of jumping over obstacles, collecting coins, and morphing into an animal to fight off aliens. Despite nice quality graphics and smooth action, the game can get pretty frustrating. Also, getting past some of the obstacles requires precise timing, which younger children generally can't provide. Testers told us that in spite of their frustration, they want to see what happens as the game unfolds.

How to download  - >

Download Links - >

Profile Additions

Tired of not being in the loop when it regards a member's real name? Or ever wondered who a user was, according to themselves?

Problem solved with the new profile fields:

Uploading Via Attachments

Want to show off your picture? Share PDFs? Or your own song? It's simple:

First. Go to your Post Reply, or New Topic area:



Then click on Additional Options:

From there you can select whatever* you want to upload.

*Please note the Allowed file types: doc, gif, jpg, mp3, pdf, png, txt, zip.

Maximum attachment size allowed: 5120 Kilobytes or 5 Megabytes.
You also get to attach four per post.

Enjoy!

BRB & We're Back!

The forum will BRB.

Edit: 12:23EST

Restart your computer or browser to access the forum.

Uploading of Avatars Temporarily Disabled

Pending move completion, uploading of avatars have been temporarily disabled.

Edit: You are now able to upload/attach files, and avatars.

Bigger Host & Future Downtime

I've found ourselves a new host. Well, incidentally, it was our first paid home (XEHost) back in 2007. They currently host the Blog. So we are simply moving back with a bigger share of their server. Our current host (LiquidNet) while was munificent on the hard-drive space and bandwidth fronts, lacked in what we need the most; MySQL space (or simply Forum space). At our current rate, we would use up all available space by October of this year.

Preempting that inevitable, and rapid use of all available forum resources, I began looking for a new home. XEHost was generous enough to provide us with relatively cheap hosting with enough MySQL disk-space to last us for over 1,000 months. (Of course, their plan expires anually, so keep donating).

The actual move will take place sometime in the near future & will likely result in some downtime. But I'm trying to devise ways to keep downtime at a minimum. I will post again when I have everything in order and am ready to move.

On some other, but related news: Our main domain; animorphsforum.com is now secured until 2011.

Edit: Move Complete with only a few minutes of Forum downtime.

Detailed Member Ranks / Groups Info.

I have never detailed in one place, a comprehensive list, the difference between each member group / member rank. So here they are:

• Lurker | 0 Posts
  

1 Star - Can't applaud or smite. Allowed 10 personal messages.

• Newbie | 1-9 Posts
  

1 Star - Can't applaud or smite. Allowed 10 personal messages.

• Jr. Member | 10-49 Posts
  

2 Stars - Can applaud or smite. Allowed 50 personal messages & Can attach files.

• Full Member | 50-249 Posts
  

3 Stars - Same as Jr. Member. + Allowed 100 personal messages.

• Sr. Member | 250-499 Posts
  

4 Stars - Same as Full Member + Can edit display name.

• Hero Member | 500-999 Posts
  

5 Stars - Same as Sr. Member

• Jr. Xtreme Member | 1000-1999 Posts
  

6 Stars - Same as Sr. Member

• Xtreme Member | 2000-4999 Posts
  

7 Stars - Same as Sr. Member + Can modify custom title

• God | 5000+ Posts (black color)
  

8 Stars - Same as Xtreme Member + 500 personal messages + Can move & lock own posts.

• Elite | 5000+ Posts (black color) -Alternate to God-
  

8 Stars - Same as God Member

• Donators (position lasts for 1 year)
  

9 Stars - Same as Gods + 1000 personal messages + 10 Karma Points + access to D-Lounge

• Gold Member ($50+ in donations - gold color - lasts forever)
  

10 Stars - Same as Donators + unlimited personal messages + 50 Karma Points

Home Page Link Added

A little tweak I made to the RAF Forum navigation.

I've added a link to the home page. Previously you could, and still can go to RAF's home page by clicking on the RAF logo atop all pages.

In addition to the Home link addition. The RAF Forum home link has been renamed to Forum Home, and the RAF Blog link is now beside the newly created RAF Home link.

RAF's New Facebook Page

Our presence on Facebook has been updated. You can now get updates directly on your profile/home page when you become a fan of the Official RAF Facebook page.

2/6 Staff Members Dropped

Adam/TheEllimist left RAF a few weeks ago. Now, personal friend of mine Ricardo decided to step down from his staff position. He will continue to participate in RAF though.

There are now 4 persons in total on staff.

1. Me (Richard)
2. Esplin 9466 (Russell)
3. Phoenix004 (Mike)
4. Druid (Raphael / Isuru)

Staff List ->

RAF Should Be Back Up

Sorry for the extended downtime. I didn't even accomplish what I set to. I'll have to do that at a later date. If you're still unable to access RAF restart your computer, and try again.

Hide Your Online Status

The following groups now have the option to hide their online status:

1. Donators
2. Gods (5000 posts or more)
3. Xtreme Members (2000 posts or more)

To hide your online status, go to your profile, select "Account Related Settings", then untick "Show others your online status?"

RAF TV Links Back Up!

The Animorphs television series is back online after an all day (and 3.8 gigabyte) move from File Crunch to File Factory.

The files are no longer available in .wmv format. They are in .avi format.

Download & Watch Animorphs Here ->

Member Groups & Personal Messages

Members who have 5000 posts and more (Gods) now have the capacity to host 5 times more personal messages. They can now hold 500 messages. All other member groups can only hold up to 100 messages, except for Donators who can have unlimited messages in their inbox/outbox.

Member Group & Custom Titles

Members who have over 2000 posts can now edit their own Custom Title. 

Internal Server Errors

10:30AM EST: RAFians, I have contacted our host again, (30 minutes ago) asking what's up with the internal server errors. I'll post back when I have more information.

11:40AM EST: I received a reply from a supervisor:

As I'm sure you have noticed we have been having quite some problems with this server which are finally to end. Our administrators had to change few Web server options as well as to recompile the Web server itself which caused this error to appear. Please note that this can happen few more times today.

11:45AM EST: A announcment was issued:

To the attention of all customers. With regard to the laboured performance your server has been showing lately due to overload and other difficulties, we are glad to inform you that final resolution the problem has been found and your websites will be working flawlessly again after we take the necessary measures.

The procedure will consist of addition of new Hard Disk Drives to the server and re-organization of the customers' web hosting accounts, so as to better consume the server resources from this time ahead.

The maintenance will be carried out in the next two days. Several very short downtimes might be experienced during the hard disk addition, however we would like to reassure you that those will be worth your patience bearing in mind the final positive result.

Thank you very much for your understanding in this matter. We firmly hope that after this maintenance procedure the server will no longer experience problems of that kind.

RAF TV Problems

I am aware of the invalid download links for the Animorphs TV show (RAF TV). File Crunch must have eaten the files. If you are in desperate need of the Animorphs TV series, feel free to download our torrent containing all episodes. (torrent file)

Insight into RAF's Uptime

This weekend for RAF has not been good as it relates to the website's uptime. According to statistics, RAF: The Animorphs Forum since last year April has been online 99.227% of the time. Sounds like a lot? It is. 

But as of June, and we are two weeks in, our uptime has fallen to 97.305%, while for this month we've been offline 2.695% of the time. That's a statistic I'm not proud of.  Granted, for May 2008 / last month, our downtime percentage was mearly 0.067%. There was only once instance of RAF being down. We have been offline 11 times this month.

You can keep up-to-date with our uptime, and percentages, by following this link.

RAF's Continued Problems

Not to worry, our host is still experiencing problems at this time. The below screenshot details that there is something wrong. But rest assured, it's just our host acting up again. "Technical Problems" They call it.

RAF Blog Moved!

Our host is experiencing problems, and as a result I have decided to move the blog to http://blog.animorphsforum.com. This move will give me the option to inform you guys when RAF is down.

Some Questions Regarding Move

I've been asked a number of questions ever since RAF Classic went offline on May 30. Here are a few common questions regarding the move and the new RAF.

1. Why move?

- We have been with Conforums (the host) for 5 years. Their forum system has not changed much in that time. In addition, being hosted by them, restricts us to abide by their Terms of Service. SMF, the new board system, does not have rules, we abide by the rules we want. Moving from Conforums gives us autonomy, and with that comes full control over matters. Further more, the Conforums board system lacks modern forum features which we now enjoy over at the new RAF.

2. How do we transfer threads/members?

-Because of how Conforums works, there is no easy way of transfer any data from the back-end. You the user have the task of re-registering, and re-creating the threads on the new RAF so as to continue discussing the book we love the most: Animorphs.

3. I don't want to loose my post count, can I get it back?

-Sure. After registering to the new RAF, feel free to post in a thread I've created on that matter.

4. How long will RAF Classic (the old RAF)  be online?

- I have no intentions of removing RAF Classic. It will be online as long as Conforums is, and serve as a reminder of our achievements and discussions for anyone who wishes to view them.

5. Is the Animorphs Audiobook & E-Book Project still active?

- It is. Our Animorphs eBook project has been online for anyone who wishes to read Animorphs online. See RAF eBooks for book downloads. Please see the new RAF for information on the Audiobook project and if you find errors in the ebooks, feel free to post in their respective boards.

RAF is Moving

RAF: The Animorphs Forum has finally moved from Conforums to SMF after 5 years with them. The old RAF has been renamed RAF Classic, and is viewable to anyone who wishes to. Posting though has been restricted to push members to the new forum, simply called RAF.

This board system is fully hosted by RAF, allowing The Animorphs Forum to wholly host the entire website. 

News Relating to RAF being Down

I surmised that RAF / Conforums is hosted on a service provider called The Planet. Here is news regarding their problem:

Faulty transformer blamed

A fire at The Planet's H1 data center in Houston, Texas on Saturday has taken out thousands of websites.

In messages posted on the web hosting firm's forum, the company blamed a faulty transformer for the fire. No servers or networking equipment were damaged, but the data centre remains without power, after The Planet shut down all generators "as instructed by the fire department.

About 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers are affected by the outage. B3ta.com, a popular British comedy site, is a high profile casualty.

The Planet is posting hourly updates on its forum. It has five other data centers, which remain up and running.

Source: The Register

RAF (the forum) is Down. UPDATED!

Conforums is down. 

June 4 Update: the Old RAF is back up.

May 31 Update: I have uncovered some details that most likely is related to RAF's forum being down. There has been a fire on the computers  (severs) that Conforums' files are stored on (and RAF). As a result the severs had to be shut down. More details when I have them.

June 1 Update: There is a possibility that RAF may be back online Sunday evening EST.

No data should be affected.

June 4 Update: It has been 4 days since the old RAF, the forum, has been offline. To get your Animorphs fix, feel free to visit the new RAF, over at animorphsforum.com/forum.

RAF is 5 Years Old!

RAF, the Animorphs forum is officially 5 years old. Read a synopsis of our history here.

RAF Front Page Updated

I have streamlined the RAF Home page. Instead of a ported RAF Forum Logo unto the home page, I've created a simple flash logo. In addition, the RAF eBooks and RAFtv logos were removed from the home page. In their places, roll over images of the Animorphs books, and screen-shots from the Animorphs TV-Show were placed respectively.

RAF Pages links at the bottom were also edited. This is the first update of RAF Home since it was introduced on March 9, 2008.

15 Members Removed

I have removed 15 19 duplicate members. Expect a smaller member list in
the coming days. Coming off the heals of our 1800 member announcement,
at this time the count has dropped to 1790.

Email Service War

With 1790 members, I decided to run a search to see which email service RAF members prefer. Here are the results.



Hotmail/Live - 505 Members


Yahoo! - 489Members


Gmail/Google Mail - 396 Members

Other - 398


Edit: Numbers updated to show new member list as of May 13 2008.

2 Members Banned

Two members were banned today. One, you probably are familiar with. The other just came today to troll/spam the forums.

1800 Members

After removing about 7 members yesterday, we've hit 1800 members. Our 1800th member is OrangesofDeath.

Leigh Leaves

After three years and tens of thousands of posts later, Leigh , our top poster, is deciding to take a brake break from RAF. Here's his post, made today, May 5 2008:

For all those that remember me, lol, pretty much life has changed recently and time for coming here has shortened.

I've got other things to do, things that mean more to me now.

I thought I'd be courtious, who would've thought I'd be that, and let people know I'm leaving.

Nothing against anyone here, except maybe Tyler :P Lol, kidding, life has to come first.

So goodbye! I may pop in occasionally but I won't be around anymore.

I still hold the record for the first person to reach 10k posts AND 20k posts ;) Lol, have fun!

Read ->

Anna Takes the Top Spot

Member, Anna has taken the top spot from Phoenix/Mike, who resided atop the list from March 8. The list pretty much shows member dedication, as it records on a first come basis who visits the forum.

RAF - 2 Million Hits

Ah yes, according to trusty StatCounter, our primary hit tracker, RAF, the forum itself, has crossed the two million hits mark today. We started tracking on February 23, 2005.

To view the number, just visit RAF's main page.

Remnants e-Books (1-4)

Following our Remnants Forum, member Dameg (who also provided us with the Vegemorphs book) uploaded the first four Remnants eBooks for your reading pleasure.

Enjoy!

Vegemorphs E-Book Online!

Dameg, member of RAF has provided us with the lone Animorphs parody; Vegemorphs. Please click the image above, or visit the RAF eBooks section to read Vegemorphs: The fungus Among Us along with all the other Animorphs books.

Forum Makeover?

Go here to read and discuss a post created by Ricardo which asks whether the forum needs a makeover.

New Boards for RAF

Now you guys have specialized areas to talk about Everworld and Remnants, both K.A. Applegate authored books. In addition, Michael Grant's (Applegate's husband) upcoming book series Gone now has a board for itself.

The new boards are called Forums on RAF because I noted the lack of forums for the currently over two series.

To discuss Everworld, click here.
To discuss Remnants, click here.
To discuss Gone, click here.

You now have a re-launched board, More Books..., to discuss, other books.

Web Host Issues

Hello,

There appears to be a problem with that server. Our administrators are working on that, but for the moment we have no news what is the cause of the issue. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience caused. You websites and services will be up and running shortly!

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best Regards,
Victor

That's the word from our web host providers.

1700 Members

RAF's latest member, brings our total member count to 1700.

RAF Donate - Now Live

RAF Donate is now online. Powered by PayPal, RAF Donate allows you to send money via Credit Card, PayPal to the RAF Fund, which will go toward paying for the hosting services of The Animorphs Forum.

Members who dontate will be promoted to the prestigious Donator group on RAF. In addition, there will be a top list for all those who donate.

The Bored Board

...has been disabled. My entire feeling toward a spam board changed a few minutes ago.

Edit: It's back. Didn't know people liked it that much...

K. A Applegate Goes to Comic Con?

Any of your group going to Comic Con in San Diego this summer? There's a chance we'll be there.

- K. A. Applegate

It appears, according to correspondence with our admin Adam, the author of Animorphs, K.A. Applegate (and husband Michael Grant), might pay a visit to this year's Comic-Con.

If they decide to go, will you be there?

Katherine and Michael away for awhile...

Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, are going to be away from the forum for an undetermined amount of time. This is because they are moving to Italy! I (TheEllimist/Adam) sent them an email about coming back to answer questions, and here is what they sent back.

Hi, Adam:

Sorry we didn't get back to you sooner. We are just neck-deep in work. We're selling our house, moving to Italy, writing and rewriting,(accepting awards in K's case) dealing with kids, selling cars . . . it's as busy as we have ever been.

So maybe down the road. But right now life is crazy.

M and K

So that is why they aren't here. The two topics have been locked and put away in RAF's Attic until they notify me or someone else that they are ready to make their return. But nothing is for sure. They said "maybe." But let's all hope for the best and pray/hope that their trip is safe and they settle very nicely in Italy.

E-Books Under Construcation (Again!)

I'm reworking the pages under RAF eBooks, so please bear with me while I take my time to change the layout on all pages. You can access the pages, but some may look different from the others.

Monday update:
I just finished editing all the pages by hand, hope you enjoy.

RAF Search

Adding to the usability of RAF, I have added (thanks to Google) search capabilities to all primary RAF pages (index/ blog / tv/ ebooks). This search box will be able to search all pages outside the actual forum. To search the forum, use this option.

Update: RAF Search will now be able to search everything on RAF. (Excluding RAF Classic)

RAF's Front Page

Only recently did I decide to create a front page for RAF. Actually, it was a couple of hours ago. I've always thought about it, but never had any reason to. But lately I realised that our newly created pages (TV / Blog / eBooks) because of how Google works, never appeared on the search giant. If they did, they had very low rankings.

So I decided to knock up a basic front page, linking you all to the forum's Conforums sub-domain, among the other important sections of RAF that are newly created or important. The main link, of course RAF: the actual forum

The aim, to ultimately open Googlebot's eyes as to our website. Hopefully the additional click when one visits animorphsforum.com, won't bother anyone.

Esplin 9466 Dethroned

After I fell ill in late 2007, Esplin 9466 (Russell, our staff member) over took the #1 position on the User's Online Today box. Since then, he has been there... until yesterday, when RYTX took the position for the first time.

How the box works?

Think of it like this: If I log in today, my name will appear, if someone logs in after, their name will show up after mine.

So if your name is first, you've been online every day for a long time. Because if you don't log on in 24 hours, your name disappears.

 

Since this box was added, only three persons have been #1, myself, Russell, and now RYTX.

Edit:
Phoenix004 has, for speculative reasons taken the top spot, hours after this post was made...
Congrats to him.

See this thread for more information and chatter.

1600 Members

12 days after our 1500th member registered, our 1600th member superunderline, decided to register.

I'm Back + Chat Open

I'm back from my little trip... and the weekly RAF Chat is now open... enjoy!

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 %

Is Tyler Still On Strike?

Since Adam / The Ellimist was made an Admistrator of RAF, a few weeks ago, a thread surfaced. It was protest time, by longtime member Tyler / Hush / Fastest RAF Poster.

He seems to be posting now, so I wonder if he's still disgruntled...

2 More Years

Hopefully I was not jumping the gun when I ordered 2 more years of the animorphsforum.com domain. The animorphsforum.com domain is the first of 2 paid domains which I currently own/rent in relation to RAF.

This main domain, as you can see from the whois record, was created on a special day (April 14), 2006, two years ago. It was set to expire this year, but I thought hey, what the heck? I think we'll still be talking about Animorphs for two more years.

I am also contemplating upgrading our host for that domain (which paves the way for moving from Conforums, if needs be). Hosting expires in 30 days (not to be confused with Conforums' hosting of the actual forum, and the forum only), so we'll see.

The other domain theanimorphsforum.com, was purchased late last year after I changed the name of the forum to RAF: The Animorphs Forum, is currently active, and will be extended in time.

1300 Members

15 days after we saw 1200 members register on RAF, 100 more registered 15 days later. Our 1300th member (after I removed a number of invalid member accounts) is Sam, registered yesterday, January 29 at 20:01:52 EST.

As posting time, Sam has not posted, so we'll like to welcome him to The Animorphs Forum.

My Animorphs Collection

As promised, here's my Animorphs Collection video.

"Keep Your Fingers Crossed" for Animorphs Movie

There is a reasonably serious move under way to do a big budget Animorphs movie. By that we mean that a producer has contacted us and let us know that he would be pitching the idea to the studios -- as soon as the WGA strike is over. The producers are serious guys. The studios they are going after are people who could actually pull it off. But right now it's still probably a 20 to 1 shot. Keep your fingers crossed. I'll say this: the producer is a serious Anifan.

-K.A. Applegate, Yesterday January 19 at 11:37pm

Author of Animorphs Answers Questions

Since K. A. Applegate registered on RAF a few days ago, Adam decided to create a thread in our Animorphs Discussion board which directly asks Ms. Applegate questions. To my surprise, the author of Animorphs decided she'll spend some time with us and answer quite a number of questions.

Ever wondered where the names of the Animorphs came from?

As far as either of us can recall it was the usual process of going through a baby name book and going, "how about Dirk . . . how about Jason . . . Okay, let's try something in the M's . . ."

How about our E-Book Project?

We're not sure how to feel about that. We've never had a problem with fanfic like some writers do. Rather the contrary. It's flattering and fun and good practice for aspiring writers.

But there is of course a legal problem with distributing copyrighted materials in this way. We obviously aren't going to be suing or threatening or any of that. In fact, we think on balance it's probably a good thing.

But you should understand that Scholastic also has rights here, and they may take a more aggressive position. And you need to understand that we can't "tell" Scholastic to let it go: they have their own ownership rights, and they've invested a lot of money in Animorphs. So we couldn't give you permission if we wanted to, we don't have the legal right to do so.

Read & post questions here!

1200 Members

It took 15 days for RAF to gain another 100 members. Our 1200th member is molecrabs,  who registered today 01/14/08 at 16:56:57 EST.

Welcome to RAF.

K.A. Joins RAF

Our 1,196th member is the author of Animorphs, K.A. Applegate.

This comes hours after she posted on Claire's video, and it was confirmed to be her.

Well, no doubt it's an honor to have the author of the series join RAF, we hope to hear from her.

K. A. Applegate on YouTube?

Well, while strolling through a few videos, I realised that someone claiming to be K.A Applegate replied to Claire's video.
Could this be Queen Applegate for real?

The comment that was posted:

"Hi, Claire: Thanks for keeping the flame alive. K.A. Applegate"

Edit: Confirmed as K.A Applegate. 

RAF Shoutout (by Claire)

Send her a comment... click

School's Back

Well, I've been on break for over a month (thanks to exams finishing the first week of December), and it seems it's time for school to resume. Beginning Monday Jan 14, I'll be back to University life.

I can only hope it's not as semi-stressful as last semester...

RAF's Facebook Group

Adam / Mr. Ellimist has created a group for the members of RAF on popular social networking website Facebook. Feel free to join.

http://animorphsforum.com/facebook

RAF on YouTube

Oh yes! It's true. blackpanther / Claire has created a promotional video for Richard's Animorphs Forum / RAF / The Animorphs Forum / I Don't Know, The Name Has Been Changed Couple Times.

Check it out below.



Discuss Claire's video here.

Looking Back Stats... '07

Well, first off let me say thanks to all RAFers for their continued participation with us. You guys have made RAF the most popular, most active Animorphs forum on the internet, and I thank you.
So, me being a statistic buff, I'm going to go over every statistic I can find in relation to RAF.

Offical StatCounter stats show that this year RAF was viewed 399,379 times, by 38,300 people.

The most popular month of the year was December where RAF was viewed 89,889 times in that month.

There were 259 members registered on RAF on December 31 2006/January 1 2007. 365 or so days later there are 1,111 members. This undoubtetly due to the e-books.

December's top 5 keywords were:

1. "animorphs"
2. "animorphs ebooks"
3. "read animorphs online"
4. "animorphs ebook"
5. "animorphs books"

20,000 posts were made last year. I don't have official numbers on this, but who was the top poster of the year? Well, let's put it like this, Leigh has 10859. lol.

Not bad for a forum that's all about Animorphs...a series that has been dead for, uhm, 6 years. 7, when RAF turns 5 years old.

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone. Hopefully you all enjoyed ringing in the new year. Let's hope 2008 is more prosperous for us all.