Rec Arts Comics Creative

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:

• How do I format posts for  RACC?
• What awards has this site won?
• What is Wil.Alambre.ca?

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!

• "SPIDER SPINS!" LITTLE LULU WEBPAGE AWARD
  2002 RACCies
• "SPIDER SPINS!" LITTLE LULU WEBPAGE AWARD
  2003 RACCies
• "SPIDER SPINS!" LITTLE LULU WEBPAGE AWARD
  2004 RACCies
• "SPIDER SPINS!" LITTLE LULU WEBPAGE AWARD
  2005 RACCies

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