Rec Arts Comics Creative

Site Information

Wil will be trying to keep this page up to date with relevant information. In the mean time, click on one of the following links to jump down the page to that section:

Formatting RACC Posts

I recommend anyone who plans on posting to the RACC newsgroup read the very well thought out RACC FAQ. It includes information on RACC, what it’s about, what you can find on it, and how posts should be formatted.

The PHP scripting on this site is using the formatting rules defined on the FAQ. The following is quoted from that file...

The subjects of postings should follow the convention of naming the
imprint the title and the number.  For example:
 
[LNH] System Corruptors #15, The Bard’s Tale
^              ^         ^          ^
imprint        |         |          |
title ---------|         |          |
number ------------------|          |
subtitle/comment/etc [optional] ----|
 
Since the archive mechanism relies heavily on this format (not to mention
the format-accustomed eyes of this group’s readers), please follow this
strictly, including the use of the #-sign.  Subtitles, alternate titles,
and title comments should follow the number if they are used at all.  If
you want to, you can use TAG: instead of [TAG] at the beginning of the
subject; it’s all the same to the archiver.

Good advice! And since there’s no advantage in reinventing the wheel, this site has used the same formatting rules. If you’re posting to RACC properly, your comic and/or news item should appear on this site properly.

The only addition to the above we make is that you can include multiple imprints separated by a slash. Example...

[WE/ACRA] Marlo Vivo #1, Bad Habits Never Die

The PHP scripts on this site, similar to www.eyrie.org, assume the above formatting when separating out the information for display. Each component is used and/or displayed in the following manner...

Imprint(s): matched against a datatable, and displayed above the cover image or news icon. Certain imprints are matched to icon graphics, such as ACRA, REPORT, etc.

Finally, imprints are used to determine which posts are recognized as comics and which posts are recognized as news posts. Example, any post with the META, WWW, or PROMO imprints are immediately set as news posts.

Title: Displayed as the title of the comic/news post, and as the link to the full post at Google Groups. This matched title is also used to create the Google Groups "past issues" link.

For comic releases, the title is also used to find the PNG cover image (if it has been created). All non-alphanumeric characters are stripped out and all spaces are removed. If the title begins with "The" or "A", that is removed too. The result is all changed to lower case. Example:

[LNH] Deja Dude / Master Blaster Special #9

...would have a title of...

Deja Dude / Master Blaster Special

...which would result in an image of...

dejadudemasterblasterspecial.png

Another example...

LNH: The Alt.Riders #44

... would have a title of...

The Alt.Riders

...which would result in an image of...

altriders.png

One addition to the above rules: some authors post trade etherbacks, single issue specials, annuals, etc to existing series. Instead of creating a whole new cover or duplicating an existing image with a different name, this site uses a MySQL datatable to match those single issues to their series’ main cover image.

Number: Numbers are anything directly after the number sign (#) and before the subtitle. It is usually a number, but this site’s script do not enforce this. They collect anything as the issue number. So, yes, if you want an issue #1A, or issue #1/2, or issue #PANTS, you can go ahead

Subtitle: Anything after a recognized issue number is considered a subtitle, and appears under the comic title.

Awards This Site Has Won

The RACC community has been kind enough to award this site with a couple of it’s coveted RACCies. The RACCies are held once a year, and are (usually) presented in a rec.arts.comic.creative special issue release!

A Little About Wil.Alambre.ca

Wil.Alambre.ca is the personal website of Wil Alambre, a web developer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is employed by Visual Lizard, who graciously donates the webspace and bandwidth to his little projects.

Wil moved down to Winnipeg from Thompson in 1995 to go to university. With the dot-com boom in full swing, Wil decided to pursue a trade instead, and became a web developer. He was lucky enough to survive the bursting of the bubble, and has been employed since 2000. Upon joining Visual Lizard in January, 2005, he switched from proprietary systems to open source software, like PHP and MySQL.

Wil enjoys comic books, and discovered the original fiction posted at rec.arts.comics.creative was right up his alley. He even dabbled in some writing of his own, before focusing on his website hobbies instead. He hopes, now that those "fun time" projects are wrapping up, to put fingers to keyboard, and write some more!

Visit Wil’s personal site at Wil.Alambre.ca

Some LNH20 RACC Covers

Just when I thought I was on top of all these RACC covers, the newsgroup launches the brand new LNH20 imprint, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Legion Of Net.Heroes... d'oh :)

New RACC Covers

After a frustrating evening trying to come up with a site design, I decided to switch gears and make a few RACC covers.

Playing Around With ePub Formats

I recently discovered that Pages for Mac can export documents as ePub files, the ebook format that iBooks uses. I'm a big fan of reading on my iPad and have been curious about easy ways to bring some RACC publishing onto the tablet.

New RACC Covers

Added four new covers to site; Captain Sestina, Dev Tripwire Report, Superhuman World 2011, Slim's Scythe. You can enjoy them on the main page or, if no recent issues have been released for the series, the cover gallery. Enjoy!

New RACC Covers

Added three new covers to site; Men's Course Will Foreshadow, Mordecai, and Sonnet Null. You can enjoy them on the main page or, if no recent issues have been released for the series, the cover gallery. Enjoy!

A Few More Covers Added

I have been a little lax in adding covers to the RACC site recently, but my focus on rebuilding the site has spurred me to whip up a batch. You should be able to see them all in the recent issues page or, if new posts arrive by the time you read this, in the cover gallery. Enjoy!

Building datatables and parsing RSS feeds

This weekend, I pushed forward with the RACC rebuild I was thinking about when I sketched out couple rough layout thumbnails. Specifically, I focused on the MySQL datatable structure used to store the issues and posts once I parse them out of the Google Groups rss feed.

Design 101?

Still unhappy with my RACC site design, I try a more basic approach, sketching out thumbnails of possible layouts.

Raccowrimo

I had a thought inspired by next month's NaNoWriMo: a thirty issue challenge for RACC authors, an issue a day.

More Covers and Better Site Layout

I've managed to make more progress on my always-in-progress RACC site, reducing the number of pages, but using the remaining space more effectively (hopefully).

RACC Site Inspiration and Progress

So, in my ongoing attempt to make headway in my personal projects, I'm nearing the finish line with my RACC subsite. I'm experimenting with HTML5 and CSS3, and developing with Mac browsers in mind foremost, so those of you sporting Internet Explorer machines will probably see gibberish. Until I do some proper cross-browser fixes, here's a screenshot of how it's coming along.

RACC Redevelopment, In Progress

Over the long weekend, I found some time to keep working on the redesign/update of my website, including the Rec Arts Comics Creative area. I've had a clear picture of how I wanted it to work for a while now, but I kept getting stumped when I tried to apply a design to it... it just wouldn't come together.

RACC Rebuild Preview

I am working behind the scenes to rebuild my RACC front-end. It's been a long-time coming, and I not only hope to fix a couple functional annoyances, but maybe streamline some usage issues.

Marlo Vivo #2

Marlo's job was shit. Marlo's apartment was shit. Marlo's life was shit. And the straight and narrow path only promised more of the same. Then someone came along with a promise of some easy loot and a chance to run along the wrong side of the fence again... what could possibly go wrong?