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STAR WARS: WILD SPACE - fan fiction, character bios, gallery art, and more!

Discussion in 'Archive: Fan Sites' started by Jedi_Mathan, Mar 1, 2009.

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  1. Jedi_Mathan

    Jedi_Mathan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2009
    Hi thanks for taking your time to view my post.

    I have a site, with the help of a couple of friends, that is dedicated to Star Wars fan fiction - I know the forums have their own section for that. But what we have at our site is a series of stories that continue on, kind of like a TV series, and new stories are posted approximately every week. Currently we have two stories posted: The Five of Ilo(5 series in and part 6 is soon to be published) and The Legend of Chalon Ko.

    Aside from fan fiction, there is a section dedicated to characters from the stories and also options to view existing ones from different eras and expanded universe, but mostly emphasizes the ones in the stories created by our writers. This will basically be an area to read the background stories of characters and a profile and image will be shown there.

    The gallery section features drawings of characters and some fan submitted pics which are viewable to all visitores

    We currently have three people working on the site including me, the "Admin" guy, our main writer, and an artist to make drawings to go with the stories.

    The site was started the end of January 2009, but the site has a complete layout, no broken links, and we really try to make sure it looks presentable at all times and minimize any errors. The site is party powered by Blogger, but it is not a blog.

    Check it out if you wish and hope you like it, and do please leave a critique, comment, complaint, question, or any feed back as we are constantly trying to improve the site. Thanks!

    http://www.swwildspace.com/
    [image=http://swwildspace.uuuq.com/images/wildspace.gif]

    Edit: we now have our own custom domain :D
     
  2. Trika_Kenobi

    Trika_Kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 1999
    Hey, there! I took a look around and browsed the characters and the first bits of Five... it seems like you three are off to a great start! The work and time that go into complete projects, the art and writing in addition to the upkeep and promotion, is extensive, so kudos to you all and the good foundation you've got going. :)

    On a cursory glance, I stumbled upon a mistake on your Gadine Kiim character page. Her homeworld is incorrectly labeled, likely the result of having copied the information over from Melandi Tolome, whose name is also hyphenated differently on the main characters page. There's also a few capitalization issues that are done differently on different pages. Small bits, but something to maybe encourage you all to run over it again to ensure consistency throughout your edits.

    Otherwise, congrats on the huge undertaking! I'll look forward to keeping an eye on your site!

    Trikes
     
  3. Jedi_Mathan

    Jedi_Mathan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2009
    Thanks for your feed back and glad you liked it! Yeah, you're right about me copying over from Melandi Tolome; I just noticed the Homeworld doesn't match with Gadina Kiim's character profile. Also going through the site again to make sure everything remains consistent with the fonts, colors, and everything. Thanks again and we'll be sure to keep working to improve the site.

    Mathan
     
  4. Jedi Gunny

    Jedi Gunny Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    May 20, 2008
    Looks good from what I have seen so far. :)
     
  5. Jedi_Gabrall

    Jedi_Gabrall Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2009
    Dude. OMG. I totally love your site. :D
     
  6. Trika_Kenobi

    Trika_Kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 1999
    LOL. And you would be... the writer? Amirite? Amirite? :D

    Do you three know each other in real life or did you get together through some online means?
     
  7. Jedi_Gabrall

    Jedi_Gabrall Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2009
    Hahahaha. You caught me. :p

    Yeah, we all know each other. Mathan and I have been friends since High School. The other guy is my younger brother.

    Thanks for the feedback btw. Much appreciated. We really do try to make it good. Well Mathan actually. He does most of the work you see. I just write and come up with characters. I will be writing again once my midterms are done. I hope you check out my stories again and I hope you like them. :)
     
  8. Trika_Kenobi

    Trika_Kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 1999
    So it's your younger brother who does the art? That's really neat that you all know each other and can work together on this. :)

    Big projects can be really rewarding. They're a rather big passion of mine... the culmination of hard work and team work makes for a wonderful end result that is usually admired and worthy of being shown more than an individual's efforts. Kudos to you all for that. Be sure to keep us posted when you update the site and make changes. I'll look forward to keeping up with you all.

    Additionally, if you'd ever like to chat about wrangling big projects and managing their creation, maintenance, and promotion, I'm always game for that. Shoot me a Private Message if you're ever interested in talking about the behind-the-scenes stuff.

    Trikes
     
  9. Jedi_Mathan

    Jedi_Mathan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2009
    Hi!

    We've made some new improvements to the site. Visitors are now capable of leaving comments, rating stories, and we are now opening our doors to other writers who wish to add their own stories to our site and will be part of our team. If you are in any way interested leave a reply here or send me a PM and I'll be more than happy to add you as one of our writers. You don't necessarily have to be a good writer, as long you love to write than you're at the right place :).

    Mathan

    Edit: forgot to mention new writers will have ability to publish own stories on their own and when they want with just a click of a button.
     
  10. Trika_Kenobi

    Trika_Kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 1999
    That's a pretty nifty addition to your site. Are you thinking it would be more like stories of all eras or stories related to what you've got up there already? I guess that would be like "fanfiction for fanfiction," or something. :p
     
  11. Jedi_Mathan

    Jedi_Mathan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2009
    We encourage fanfiction from any era, even though most of our stories are during the Clone Wars Era. In fact, we would actually rather have stories far from TCW and have more diversity in story selection. Also, potential writers are more than free to post news related to Star Wars on the home page and add their own art to the gallery. We want them to contribute to the site as much as we do, and of course this is done when ever they wish. There's no quota to how many stories you have to make. If you submit one or one hundred, that's great!

    The way this works is since we our operated under Blogger, if you already have a Blog*Spot or a G-Mail account we would just need to send you an invitation to be part of the WS Team. If not, it would just take literally a minute to make an account and then we'll add you as one of our Blog Authors.

    We're just trying this out, see if any one is interested :).

    Mathan
     
  12. darth_nemisis

    darth_nemisis Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    May 15, 2004
    I like what you have going on. It's definitely something I have not seen before.

    On how the site is run first: It's definitely cool, but I think if this gets any bigger, especially with the addition of having anyone be able to sign up and write, the home page could get very confusing very quickly, especially if you have them write from any era. There are ways around that, like having the era of the fanfic and such in the title, but I still think it might be a bit confusing. I don't really know how blogger works, but perhaps you could implement a tagging system for easy searching?

    Unfortunately the character bio section is down, so I can't comment on that. What I would like to see in that, however, is something similar to wookieepedia. That's my preference, however, and you might want to take a different route in order to be unique.

    On the layout of the site: I hope you don't take this wrong, but it's kind of plain. The white on blue with the black and yellow logo doesn't really flow very well. Perhaps you can add a style that matches your logo. Create something that will catch the users attention because the first thing someone sees when they go to your site is your layout; if they do not like it, they may not stay regardless of the content.

    But, all in all, I definitely like what you have going on! :D
     
  13. Jedi_Mathan

    Jedi_Mathan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2009
    First I would like to say thank you for your feed back! We are always looking for criticism, bad or good, and this really helps us improve the site.

    The Characters section is now up. We are currently writing more background stories and they will be added as soon as they are finished. Also, the actual pages that make up the Characters section is hosted by another host which I have almost completely withdrawn from because there systems don't seem to hold up all the time. I am looking at other ways to set up this section as Blogger will not work with the way it is set up. So in the mean time it will be on that hosting.

    For the layout of the site, yes I do admit it is quite plain but it took me awhile to format it from HTML/CSS to Blogger's at first confusing format. But no worries, I am now quite familiar with their code and would now be comfortable switching to a different layout. But for now, I'll try to make small changes to the current layout to match the logo and see how that works.

    As for the Stories section, we actually have a tagging system in affect. It's just not quite organized yet. Thank you bringing that subject up by the way because I realize now that the more stories we add, the more harder it will be to find specific fan fiction visitors may be interested in. But as way to get around the bush, our search box on the upper right hand corner is working pretty good and if you would like to search for something quick that would be your best option. But regardless, I have taken note on your suggestion.

    Thank you very much for your feed back and we really appreciate all the comments we are receiving. :D
     
  14. darth_nemisis

    darth_nemisis Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    May 15, 2004
    No problem! I am glad to help. I had looked around for a tag feature, but did not come across one, that is why I mentioned that. And you're right, the search function you have will help out a lot.

    I understand how confusing it is to understand the CSS in a system such as that. I have tried many times to make some styles off of pre-made software like that and have failed the majority of the time. I am eager to see what you come up with for a style! :)

    I took a look at your character section. Very nice. The layout of it is nice and neat. I, who have written a few fan fictions and participated in countless text-based RPGs, appreciate the detail you put into your characters. Very nice!
     
  15. Jedi_Mathan

    Jedi_Mathan Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Feb 12, 2009
    Forum launched!

    Check it out at http://swwildspace.com/.

    Mathan

    P.S. This is just a beta version. We are new to forums and would like to test it out. Currently there is no requirement to register. Just post what's on your mind!
     
  16. Trika_Kenobi

    Trika_Kenobi Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 1999
    I'll have to see about checking it out every now and then. Especially if you happen to talk some sports, you'll see me around. :p

    Not sure how much traffic you'll generate without a lot of direction on the boards, though. Have you checked out Fandom Comics? They work in fan comics and role playing books, and their boards are sort of tailored to that sort of thing. They've got a thread in this forum you might want to check out, or just Google search them. On their boards they can give updates on their work or talk about the different products they produce. In any case, that might be something you might be interested in mimicking for your own site. :)
     
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