April 22, 2018
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – 2 comments
Hey guys!
Some of you have already heard the news that Wikispaces is shutting down its service. This means that the current Savage Dragon Wiki will be shut down and gone by the end of July. I just wanted to give you a quick update about the future of the Wiki…
Exporting the Savage Dragon Wiki
In the last couple of weeks, we have been trying to find a solution to save all the current data onto some new wiki platform. Unfortunately, it’s not easy. There are a lot of different wiki “languages” – all using their own kind of formatting. And while it’s easy to export and import data within one system it get’s really unpleasant if you try to take data from (in this case) Wikispaces to – for example – MediaWiki. Unpleasant meaning it simply doesn’t work. Unless you know what you are doing and fiddle with the exported code on 1300+ files…
The solution for now
In order to at least save everything before it’s gone I made a complete standalone copy of the whole shebang and put it in its new place: wiki.savagedragon.com. So once Wikispaces is gone the Savage Dragon Wiki will be part of the Official Savage Dragon website which I think makes a lot of sense.
The problem
Right now our backup of the Savage Dragon Wiki is classic static HTML which means it’s harder to maintain and edit. It’s not impossible, but definitely not as easy as before.
The goal
Eventually, the Wiki will get a new editing system that’ll allow easy access for all who wish to participate. Whether it’s a real wiki software or simply a huge WordPress page has to be determined.
In short
The Wiki is safe and secure and has a new home but it might take some time before it’s a real Wiki again.
I’ll keep you up to date
Stay tuned
Stef
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November 2, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – no comments
Just a short notice that we have added the link to the Savage Fincast Discord channel to our Links Section. The guys from the Fincast came up with the great idea to use Discord as a chatroom where we can text or voice chat about the latest issues or everything else Savage Dragon related.
You can simply use Dicord in your browser but there’s also a free software with some additional features (like alerts when people start chatting) and there’s also an app for your smartphone.
Stef
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October 13, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – no comments
Years ago, when Erik’s Board on the Image Comics Forum was pretty much the only place to talk about Savage Dragon comics, members would often chat about all the variant issues that existed and what they were missing from their collections.
I could get confusing. What was that issue again with the Matsuda cover? Which variants were newsstand editions? Why are there two wizard #½ comics and which came with a COA (Certificate of Authenticity)?
At one point I came to the conclusion that we needed a complete overview of all existing variants and so I gathered all the covers and made a thread that became a sticky at the top of the forum. The Savage Dragon board is unfortunately gone now and although Erik does have all the covers on his Facebook page I still think it’s cool to have the Savage Dragon Variants Overview back on the official site.
You can find it in the Comics section. Have fun hunting those issues down – some are very hard to get. In fact, I recently realized I’m still missing one myself…
Enjoy
Stef
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October 2, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – 5 comments
Well, it’s come to this: savagedragon.com finally got a redesign. It was long overdue and it took me way too long, but here we are. In with the new, out with the old.
I took over reins as webmaster in early 2016 and had initially planned to just keep things up and running and a little bit more up-to-date. I soon realized though that the old page was a pain to work with. No wonder, the last relaunch happened 12 years ago. The website used ancient HTML, frames, tables and you had to manually save files in different sizes and places to make it work. It wasn’t pretty…
Getting started with the savagedragon.com redesign
I checked with Erik if he was OK with a savagedragon.com redesign – his reply was pretty much: “Do with it what you will…”
I talked with Raven Perez, who’s running Dragonfan.net and pretty much does what an official Savage Dragon website should have been doing. I took some inspiration from his page and made some layouts. And then nothing…
Life got in the way and things just lay there. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I finally sat down and seriously started to work on the page. I’m a graphic designer by trade and I had some pretty good basics in building websites but I had my work cut out for me. Eventually, I made this WordPress theme from scratch. It’s responsive, so you should be able to browse the page on your smartphones – I hear smart people do that…
Optimizing the Site
It’s still work in progress. Most likely it has a couple of bugs. I already know about a couple of things that need improvement. Let me know if there’s anything that doesn’t work or if you have any suggestions.
It’s still missing some content. I need to put all the crossovers and collections into the comics section and I’m also thinking about implementing the classic variants overview (now that the Savage Dragon forum on the old imageboards is history). Eventually each issue is supposed to have its own page with a short summary and a link to the wiki. As you can see I already have the layout for that but it will take some time to fill in all the content. And I might bring back the sketches collection from the old site. I know Erik has a huge collection on Facebook but I’d love to have that on the official website as well.
For now, I’m glad the savagedragon.com redesign is finally online and it’s still in time to celebrate Savage Dragon’s 25th anniversary. What better way to say thanks to Erik for 225+ issues of the best superhero comic on the stands.
Stef
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