The Leela Zone

[Reply #440 on:]

O.K. shippers and nonshippers - FM/TLZ now has a PayPal account.  There is no set amount to donate - I just donated $25.00.  If FM/TLZ is important to you, give up a cup of Starbucks coffee this month and donate that small amount to keep the board alive.

Here's hoping that Leandro has found an answer to the site's problems.

HOT DAMNED!  MY THIRD TOTPD!

[Reply #441 on:]

I also heard that they're accepting Paypal donations.  Does this mean we have to pay to write a fanfic or post a picture?  TLZ/FM will keep on running, don't worry, folks.  Although they are kind of negative about it. 

[Reply #442 on:]

"I also heard that they're accepting Paypal donations. Does this mean we have to pay to write a fanfic or post a picture?"

If we ever charged for submissions, then we'd deserve to be smeared with honey and left out for termites to eat us alive (unless that's anyone's fetish). We're only asking for donations to keep the site running, not for putting up fans' work.

BTW, many thanks for those who have donated/made offers. It's uplifting to see that people actually care for the site, its webmasters and those who supply the content. It sure makes it easier to remain motivated, you know. 

[Reply #443 on:]

"I also heard that they're accepting Paypal donations. Does this mean we have to pay to write a fanfic or post a picture?"

...now I think I will have to put a very much longer text next to the donation button to make sure nobody misunderstands... I thought it was clear enough. :P

The reason we're not putting new stuff up is because of the uploading scripts being on the fritz, nothing more, nothing less. Even if you donate right now, I can't guarantee to put your stuff up until that is solved. I'm working in writing a new script from scratch, since it seems easier to write up code and checking when it stops working to fix it then, than trying to isolate bit by bit of old code to see what the blazes is incompatible with the new server.

Fan Art uploading is my priority, since it's what we get the most. After that, I'll work on new scripts for Fan Fiction and Wallpapers, in that order. eCards/Puzzles will be next; after that, everything else. I will take down the rankings system in the new scripts, at least while they get written; once they're in place and running, I'll see about re-adding the ranking system, maybe using cookies, session tracking or something similar to make sure nobody can vote twice. That, or just forget the ranking altogether and just have people browse up for what they need. A new sorting method in Fan Art will be 'by last update date'. That way visitors can jump straight to the artist(s) that got updated most recently, which may even be a better idea than sorting them by rank, after all.

Plenty of ideas for the update script... now I just have to make them _work_.

[Reply #444 on:]

Fanfic and art shall automaticaly be sorted by the number of dollars the person donated to keep the site alive.


EDIT: OK, I've donated my measly $5.  Who's gonna pass me?    

[Reply #445 on:]

 

Originally posted by KurtPikachu2001:
TLZ/FM will keep on running, don't worry, folks.  Although they are kind of negative about it. 

Yeah? Oh, that's... that's swell. Well, I don't know why we were worried. We could've just asked the time-travelling super-genius here what was going to fucking happen.

Hey, any ideas on next week's lottery numbers?

Patronising prick.

[Reply #446 on:]

That was the most worthwhile $25.00 button I have have pressed in some time! It shouldn't take long  for the guys to reach $300...

[Reply #447 on:]

 

Originally posted by JBERGES:
EDIT: OK, I've donated my measly $5.  Who's gonna pass me?      

If 60 users gave $5.00 each, then Leandro would have enough money to keep TLZ on for a year.  For TLZ to consume so much bandwidth monthly, there's gotta be more than 60 users.  Granted, some are kids that don't have money and some are poor college kids, but if the rest of us gives up a Starbucks Latte or an imported beer this month, that's almost 5 bucks there.

TIME TO GO OVER THE TOP (but that's my style)
(Best Sally Strutters voice):  For the cost of one Starbucks coffee, you too can save The Leela Zone.  Won't you please make some poor sci-fi geek's day happier?  Please, donate what you can. (End sappy plea).

To quote a very wise Vulcan:

"The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few, or the one."

Sacrifice that Latte for TLZ!


------------------

[Reply #448 on:]

 

Originally posted by Leandro:
I will take down the rankings system in the new scripts, at least while they get written; once they're in place and running, I'll see about re-adding the ranking system, maybe using cookies, session tracking or something similar to make sure nobody can vote twice. That, or just forget the ranking altogether and just have people browse up for what they need. A new sorting method in Fan Art will be 'by last update date'. That way visitors can jump straight to the artist(s) that got updated most recently, which may even be a better idea than sorting them by rank, after all.

I like the 'last update sort' idea - it seems like it would encourage people to send art in more often. Someone poor kid pencilling up their first few arts and getting ranked as 'Stinker' isn't really gonna encourage them to keep at it and improve. And it doesn't help the other end of things either - I remember TheVoices getting rid of most of his art due to problems with the ranking system. I dunno, the system bugs me since there's a lot of good stuff buried in the red/yellow zone and it makes an artist look good or bad before people even click on the their name and see it. Scanart tends to get quite a high ranking since people mistake it for actual artwork, and the wonderful collection of soft porn art is also way more popular  . As an add-on the ranking thing is fanastic, but I just think it's too much of a prominent feature within the fanart section at the moment. Art isn't a competition, but the rankings plastered everywhere make it look like a giant league table. Even if no-one ever clicks on the 'Sort by ArtistRank' tab, there's still a [very bright] status bar behind every artists name showing whether it's "worth" clicking on them or not.

Perhaps have a random sorting page as the default? I have no idea whether that would be possible to code, but it's the only way I can think of get an unbiased list that gives some variety.

Of course, sod any new stuff until the site's running smoothly and taking updates. How's the situation with getting new webmasters going? I always felt kinda guilty sending stuff to Graham since everything got sent his way. All the work you guys put into the site is much appreciated (well, by me anyway). Good luck on raising that $360 within a week.

 

Originally posted by JBERGES:
Fanfic and art shall automaticaly be sorted by the number of dollars the person donated to keep the site alive.

*donates*
Ha! My crappy fanfic is now six times better than anything you could come up with  .

[Reply #449 on:]

Don't get rid of the ranking system! How else will i know what fics to not waste my time on?

[Reply #450 on:]

You know, I have to agree. It would be kind of a relief not seeing how bad some of these stories are but really, I need to know. But I guess we'll just have to post triple the power in the Fan Fic Review thread.

[Reply #451 on:]

fanfiction.net has a comment option, were you can leave comments on stories. That would be great for TLZ. Not just instead of the ranking system, but with the ranking system. Cause then you could know why a story was ranked the way it did. Was it rated poorly because it contained a Mary Sue, or was it ranked poorly cause it was out of character? It'd be nice to know.

[Reply #452 on:]

Isn't that kind of what the comment section thing on the homepage is for? Well, it's not like anyone is 100% honest. Cept that one guy who didn't like my dog picture. He was very honest. But yeah it'd be good to be really specific with the ranking system. It would help both the writers and the readers.

[Reply #453 on:]

the homepage comment system is pretty much for whatever was posted that day, but as far as i know those comments aren't easily found months later. I'm talking about a comment page attached to each story like at fanfiction.net.

[Reply #454 on:]

Well, I might have the new guide pages for "I, Roommate" to update with at FM:TLZ very soon actually. They don't require any script to upload with. I'd have had it up sooner, but I'm also working on all the between-episode pages at the moment as well. 

[Reply #455 on:]

So what's TLZ staus at this point?  I'm kinda hoping that now the weekend is over, a dozen of so people would donate 5-10 bucks each towards the cause.

[Reply #456 on:]

what he said - any joy, guys?

[Reply #457 on:]

By the way, Gort just told me TLZ is now sometimes displaying popup ads (I didn't see them, I use Firefox with strong blocking filters). That is NOT OUR DOING. It's just something the current host added due to our increased bandwidth. More of a reason to ditch them. Current donation amount: $243; Still looking to get a Jaguar account atm...

[Reply #458 on:]

$243? Whoo-hoo! Great news! just a few more enlightened folk dip into their accounts and you're there 

Happy news, just the thing you need on a Monday 

[Reply #459 on:]

Actually, the pop-up adverts originated from Nedstat, the thing that's added on many sites to give details about visitor numbers, etc. It seems that they're now foisting pop-ups upon sites that use their service, which they did without warning us. I've removed this feature now, so you won't get those pop-ups.

[Reply #460 on:]

$243.00 - that's kinda of a strange number - I would think that most people would donate in $5.00 increments - but every single dollar helps, so I won't complain.  that's not bad for just 4 days of the donation drive.

Keep on keeping on.

[Reply #461 on:]

Yes, a great response so far.

So I thought I'd write from sunny Hawaii, enjoying the attention of ten beautiful girls rubbing oil on my tanned body, while servants bring me and a hundred friends champagne and caviar, to thank all donators for paying out for our life-insurance.

*raises his glass*

Cheers.   

[Reply #462 on:]

How much do you need to raise before you can change your server to Jaguar?

Never mind. Just re-checked the previous pages, $300 right? So you $57 short, thats about... £33? Well at the moment I'm bidding on a few thing on eBay once those items end I'll see how much I've got spare, then I'll make my donation. Does anyone now if Paypal charges to convert GBP to USD?

[Reply #463 on:]

I don't _think_ they do - I've made a few payments in foreign currencies, they don't seem to take a bigger fee for currency conversion charges in international trading.

In other news, hey big spender! 

[Reply #464 on:]

 

that's kinda of a strange number - I would think that most people would donate in $5.00 increments

PayPal charges fees for every transaction funded with a credit card -- even if you pay via PayPal using your credit card (does that make sense? didn't to me, but I can't dispute the fees :P), so  $5 becomes between $4.50 and $4.55 (no idea why the difference between fees for the same amount). I was ditching the cents, as well.

Right now there's $266.46 in the account, and there's an uncleared eCheck for $25 that should be useable soon. If we can't raise enough for a yearly payment by tomorrow, I'll open the Jaguar account in a monthly payment basis; we're about to deplete our bandwidth in Smoove, can't wait more than that unless we want a downtime.

[Reply #465 on:]

It's nice to see that TLZ will survive another year.  Hoepfully over the next year, users will send a few bucks at a time to finance the site.

Leandro - thanks for not letting the site go down.

[Reply #466 on:]

I'm confused, I don't see any paypal donation thing on the site. How is that working?

[Reply #467 on:]

 

Originally posted by GenocidalSmashr:
I'm confused, I don't see any paypal donation thing on the site. How is that working?

They have enough to make the switch. Kudos to those of us that made it happen 

[Reply #468 on:]

I don't care about any recognition, but I was one of the people who offered to sponsor the site for a year.  Leandro refused, instead wanting to include the Futurama comunity.  I hope that the movie to DVD gets approved soon so that there will be a renewed interest in Futurama - there are only a few sites left with PEEL and TLZ being the two major sites.  Both are fantastic sites, but they are different enough that they offer a diversity to the fans.

If we as fans don't assist these site administrators occaasionally, then they'll go down and never come back.

Well, at least TLZ is safe for another year.

[Reply #469 on:]

Just a heads up -- the site will go down tonight, and won't come back until monday at the earliest. Don't panic -- it's just the server switch taking place. I'd hoped for no downtime, but unfortunately it's not going to happen...

[Reply #470 on:]

 

Originally posted by Leandro:
 Don't panic -- it's just the server switch taking place.

Like Farnsie would say; "Good news everyone!"  Hope the move goes smoothly Leandro! (crosses fingers)

[Reply #471 on:]

Yay! I can't wait till the updates come back!

[Reply #472 on:]

Great to see FM:TLZ ready to get up just like a phoenix!

[Reply #473 on:]

Daddy likes... daddy likes...

Account Disk Usage
Usage: 32.00 KB
Limit: 2,000MB
Remaining: 1.95 GB

Welcome back the framegrabs, the sounds, the videos that will no longer be split in parts... that's over twice the space we currently have in SmooveNet 

The one thing that bothers me is that I can't seem to find the bandwidth usage monitor anywhere. But the account has 200GB of transfer available, which should be more than enough 

Thanks to everybody who made this switch possible.

[Reply #474 on:]

Well, I wish you guys the best of luck with the server switch, I see that the site has gone down while it's taking place. Hopefully it won't be down for too long.

[Reply #475 on:]

Hopefully Monday at the earliest, but since Leandro and company are going to be giving us access to framegrabs, sound clips and e-cards, it may take a little longer to make it fully functional.

I think Leandro is thrilled with the new servers capacity and storage space - in an email to me, he said the had 'tons' of material to place, but the old server was limited in space.  He doesn't have that problem with the new server.

[Reply #476 on:]

Well I don't mind waiting, as I've said before, good things come to those who wait, and from what you said it sounds like the wait will definately be worth it.

BTW, how are the donations going to done from now on? Are they going to leave the donation button up all year, or is it just going to be put up when the time comes for another payment to be made?

[Reply #477 on:]

It's just going to be put up, say, a month before we run out of the money we currently have. I don't see the point in having the donation button put all year and gather money we _won't need_ for quite a while. Hosting isn't really _that_ expensive when you think about it; sites that have the donation buttons up all year are getting _way_ more money than they need for hosting -- they're just trying to make a profit out of the donations.

And yes, at first the site's content will be the same we had at the moment of the server going down, and we'll be re-adding everything as soon as possible. First priority is getting the Fan Art, Fan Fiction, Wallpaper and other scripts working, so we can add the pile of submissions that haven't had a chance to go up due to the new server being incompatible with my scripts. Once _that_ is done, we'll be putting up the tons of videos, sounds and framegrabs we had to take down because of lack of server resources.

[Reply #478 on:]

I like the sound of that! I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like when it's eventually finished.

[Reply #479 on:]

 

Originally posted by Futurama-Madhouse/The Leela Zone:

We will be back shortly.

If you can read this, it means the domain name servers are now correctly pointing to our new host. The site will be fully working again as soon as we tranfer several thousand files into this new server.

Once again thanks for putting up with us during this server move... it's been a big PITA for us, too

2 server moves in 3 months.  I hope that Leandro and company have plenty of Valium and beer available.