Just a reminder that our donation drive is still ongoing since we haven’t reached our minimum goal yet.  As of the time I write this, we have $994.57 and need at least $1600, this will cover hosting at our current levels through the end of June.  If we get another $600 in donations on top of that (for a total of $2200) we’ll add an additional server as well.

For more detailed info on the donation drive please see my original post and if you’d like to donate please go to our donations page.

Donation Meter Plugin

We have a donation meter plugin that’ll let you add the donation meter to your sidebar and have it update automatically.  If you’d like to add this to your blog just save the plugin file and change the extension from .txt to .php.  Now upload this file to your wp-content/plugins directory.  Then you activate it and add the following code to your sidebar wherever you want it to appear:

< ? php dd_display(170); ?>

The number specifies how many pixels wide the donation meter should be, so change the 170 to something slightly less than your sidebar’s width.  The plugin outputs all the necessary code, with the header being an <h2> and the meter itself enclosed in <ul> tags.  (We chose these because they’re the most common.)  If you need to change these you’ll need to edit the plugin code to do so, but it’s really straightforward.  There’s also a set of sayings that the plugin will randomly put below the donation meter itself, here’s the default ones:

$sayings[] = 'Just a bit more guys!';
$sayings[] = 'It can\'t hurt to help!';
$sayings[] = 'Be a pal, a PayPal!';
$sayings[] = 'We need money. Badly. ';
$sayings[] = 'Keep us in business.';
$sayings[] = 'Feel good; lend a hand.';


Feel free to change these or add new ones if you’d like.   (Note: single quote marks in the text will need to have a \ in front of them.)

Demographics Survey

And finally, if you haven’t taken our demographics survey yet, please do, it’ll help us out as we work on selling ads directly.  For full information on the survey check out my post on it.  This is something everyone can do since it only takes a minute or two of your time and doesn’t cost anything.

Here’s a chance for you to help AnimeBlogger.net out and all it’ll take is a small amount of your time.   We’re doing a demographics survey to get a better idea of the make up of AB’s audience.  When trying to sell ads it’s important to have this information as companies will ask about your visitors demographics, so having this information will help us when it comes to selling advertising directly.  Even if we turn the management of the ads over to a company who specializes in such things, we’ll still need to know our audience demographics.  (Ad companies want demographics because they use them to target ads to the audience(s) more likely to purchase the product(s) they’re advertising.)

The survey is short, only 14 questions long, and should take you no more than a minute to fill out.  All results are completely anonymous, we aren’t asking for any personally identifying data.  You can find the survey here.

Also don’t forget about our donation drive, we’re already more than halfway to our minimum goal of $1600! A big thank you to everyone who’s donated so far, it’s appreciated more than I can possibly put into words. ^_^

AnimeBlogger.net has always been supportive of new writers all over the world to establish their blog for free. As we continue to expand and include new bloggers to the anime blogosphere, we have reached a point where advertising dollars are not enough to pay for the hosting services.

Hence, we have decided to appeal for donations to cover the taxes and hosting fees of AnimeBlogger.net. The first goal is to raise US$1600 to cover three months of hosting and the taxes applicable to AnimeBlogger.net. When we have secured that amount, we are looking into adding another server in order to accommodate more writers, which is where the second goal comes in.  If we reach our second goal of US$2200, we’ll be able to add another server.

If you are wondering how you can donate to us, there are various ways. First, you can directly donate to the site via Amazon or Paypal from our donations page. Second, you can buy AnimeBlogger.net merchandise.  As an incentive to those who donate, everyone who donates more than $5 will be entered to win a prize. Currently we have a sponsor that’s paying for two AnimeBlogger.net shirts for winners. You can also contribute any anime-related items as prizes for the lucky draw.

AnimeBlogger.net needs your help. Everyone is integral to the support of AnimeBlogger.net. Every little bit counts to hit our target, be it $1 or $100. You will make a difference. Thank you and please continue to explore our anime blogging community!

Donation Meter Plugin

We encourage you to let others know about AB’s donation drive, and to help with that we have a Wordpress plugin available that you can use to put a donation meter on your sidebar.  The donation meter shows the the current donation amount in green, a bar extends out to the first goal in red, then the second goal’s in yellow.  The plugin pulls its data from our servers so it’ll update itself as we get donations in.

To install the plugin on your blog, first download the plugin.  (You can also view the source of the plugin.)  Next extract the file from the zip archive and upload that file to your wp-content/plugins directory.  Then you activate the plugin and add the following code to your sidebar wherever you want it to appear:

< ?php dd_display(170); ?>

The number specifies how many pixels wide the donation meter should be, so change the 170 to something slightly less than your sidebar’s width.  The plugin outputs all the necessary code, with the header being an <h2> and the meter itself enclosed in <ul> tags.  (We chose these because they’re the most common.)  If you need to change these you’ll need to edit the plugin code to do so, but it’s really straightforward.  Finally, there’s a set of sayings that the plugin will randomly put below the donation meter itself, here’s the default ones:

$sayings[] = 'Just a bit more guys!';
$sayings[] = 'It can\'t hurt to help!';
$sayings[] = 'Be a pal, a PayPal!';
$sayings[] = 'We need money. Badly. ';
$sayings[] = 'Keep us in business.';
$sayings[] = 'Feel good; lend a hand.';


Feel free to change these or add new ones if you’d like.   (Note: single quote marks in the text will need to have a \ in front of them.)

Secondly, one of our dedicated servers will be down for some electrical maintenance, the transformer that supplies power to the hosting company has to be taken offline for 3 to 5 hours to repair a “high voltage elbow“.  This is semi-emergency maintenance, there was a fire in a nearby building recently, and upon inspecting all the transformers in the area the electric company found several needing repairs.  Work is scheduled to begin around 08:00 CST (13:00 GMT) and will take anywhere from 3 to 5 hours, hopefully more towards the lower end.  This outage will affect the blogs on that dedicated server (which are most of the bigger blogs besides Random Curiosity), the main site and my blog.

We apologize for the inconvenience!

This is just a quick note to let everyone who’s waiting on an account know what’s going on.  Last month we first had server problems which were caused by our combined sites using too much CPU time and crashing the server.  I finally got that fixed (mainly by moving some people off to another server) and then my health took a turn for the worse and I spent about two weeks unable to spend much time on the computer at all.  Needless to say this has got new account creation way behind.

There’s still a bit of a problem with CPU load on the server, adding too many new accounts at once would not be a good idea.  The good news is I think we’ll be able to upgrade our hosting shortly so this will cease to be an issue, in the meantime I’ll be going ahead and creating accounts for everyone who’s already received a reply to their hosting request (you’ll know if you received it, it asks you for the sitename and what type of E-mail account you want if any).  I’ll be sending this reply out to the rest of the pending requests soon, but there will be a delay before I can start actually creating those accounts.

If you know someone who’s waiting for an account that might not read my blog, please let them know about this post.  Thanks!

Figures

I’m selling two large Negima figures, both come with their original packaging and are in mint condition, they do have a bit of dust on them from being displayed but that’s it.   I’m asking $35 for each of them.

• Sasaki Makie (about 18cm tall)
  Picture 1
  Picture 2
• Evangeline A.K. McDowell (about 17cm tall)
  Picture 1
  Picture 2

Manga

I’m selling the following Japanese manga.  I bought these used while I was in Japan back in 2001, each volume is $3 unless otherwise noted.  Each title links to a picture of the cover.

• Love Hina Manga Vol. 01 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 02 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 03 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 04 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 05 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 07 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 09 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 10 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 11 (Japanese Edition)
• Love Hina Manga Vol. 12 (Japanese Edition)

Posters

These posters all came from a couple of Megami issues, all are double-sided (they have one poster on the front, another on the back).  I’ve noted what series a poster is from if I know.  I’m asking $5 for each poster (which includes both front and back).  There’s only one copy of each poster unless otherwise indicated.

• Poster #2 (Side A (Canvas 2), Side B) [2 Copies]
• Poster #3 (Side A (Kage Kara Mamoru), Side B) [2 Copies]
• Poster #4 (Side A, Side B (Utawaremono)) [2 Copies]
• Poster #5 (Side A, Side B (Kashimashi))
• Poster #6/#7 (Side A1, A2 (Mai-Otome, 2 different posters),
  Side B (Mai-Otome, character info)) [2 Copies]
• Poster #8 (Side A (Fate/Stay Night),
  Side B (Yami to Boshi to Hon no Tabibito)) [2 Copies]
• Poster #9 (Side A (REC), Side B (Rozen Maiden)) [2 Copies]

Update: We’ve had some reports that users were seeing oddities such as a hover border over icons.  If this is happening to you, you’ll need to force your browser to update its cached copy of the Antenna’s stylesheet.  To do this simply hold down the shift key while you click on refresh.  Everything should look correct after that!

Note: Most screenshots have been resized smaller than they appear on the actual Antenna.  Some links will not work unless you’re logged in.

User Accounts

New with version 2.1 is user accounts.  On the sidebar is a new section entitled “Login” where you’ll be able to login after you have an account.  To the right of the User field is a link to the registration page.  Account registration is fully automated but requires E-mail validation.  Below is a screencap of this new section of the sidebar:

Once you’re logged in all the new customization features will become available.

Customizing Your Feed

Customizing your feed and the site works the same way, you just need to add the series, blogs and/or channels you want to your feed.  Below is an example of how this works from the series list.  In this screenshot you can see that I have Lucky Star and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS as part of my custom feed.

To add any series just click the checkbox next to that series in the list, once you’ve selected all the ones you want you simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Update” button.  This will add all the series you selected to your list (as well as remove any you uncheck).  You can also remove series/blogs/channels from your feed from under the “Edit My Feed” submenu of the “User” menu.  This is the page you’ll be taken to once clicking on update as well.

Adding channels works exactly the same as adding series, you go to the Channels section of the Antenna and can select which channels you want as part of your feed.  Adding blogs works similarly, except you’ll need to add them from the Last 2 Weeks section under the “Blogs” menu.  This page lists all the blogs that have posted in the last 2 weeks.

To access your custom feed, simply point your RSS reader to http://antenna.animeblogger.net/feed/user/username/  If you prefer to use Atom then use http://antenna.animeblogger.net/atom/user/username/  Do note that the trailing slash is important, leaving it off will cause you to get a redirect to the URL with the trailing slash each time, making the feed load slower.

Channels

Channels are also new with version 2.1 and offer collections of feeds that are related.  The “Main” channel contains all the feeds that display on the main feed by default, these are all English language blogs and non-hentai.  The “AnimeBlogger.net” channel contains feeds for all blogs hosted by AnimeBlogger.net.  We will be adding other channels as we have time, currently we plan to do Anime (blogs that focus primarily on anime), Manga (blogs that have a significant focus on manga), & Figures (blogs that focus significantly on figure collecting).  We’re open to suggestions for other channels and will add others as we think of them as well.  If you think your blog belongs in a particular channel(s), feel free to let us know which one(s).

You can access feeds of each channel, just point your RSS reader to http://antenna.animeblogger.net/feed/channels/channelname/  Be sure to include the trailing slash.

User Preferences

Under the “Preferences” submenu of the “User” menu, users are able to modify how the site displays for them.  Here you change the number of posts that will be per page, picking either 10, 15, 20 or 25 posts per page.  Also, due to popular request, you can also turn off the display of excerpts as well as the section under excerpts that shows what series a post has been flagged with.  The “Main Page” option controls what feed you will see when you navigate to the Antenna.  If you select “Main Feed” you will see the normal main feed that you’ve always seen, however if you select “User Feed” you will see your personalized feed instead.  Do note that if you click on “Home” while already at the Antenna you will be redirected to the Main channel.  This is done intentionally so that you can still access the main feed even with the “User Feed” option selected.  You may return to your custom feed at any time by navigating to the “User” menu, which will take you to the “My Feed” submenu by default.  Additionally you can change your password and/or E-mail address on this page.

Below is an example of what the site looks like with both excerpts and series turned off:

Blog & Series Icons

Another new feature for version 2.1 is blog and series icons.  Each series has an icon and these icons will appear on the right of the series section along with the text links to series.  Up to 4 series icons can appear, if there are more than 4 series then the top 4 ranked series are used for icons based on our series rankings.  For each blog that has submitted an icon, one will appear on the right of the blog name/post title section.  Blog icons link to the page for that blog, which I’ll cover in the next section.

If you have turned off the series section then none of the series icons will appear.

Blog Pages

Similar to our individual series pages that the Antenna already had, each blog aggregated now has a blog page.  On this page there is a description box that appears if that blog has submitted an icon and/or a description.  In the description box the full-sized blog icon is used (128×128px) with the description text to the right of the icon.

We’d love to have icons and descriptions for every blog listed with us, please submit yours to antenna dash submissions @ animeblogger dot net.    (Replace dash with a – dot with a . and remove all spaces.)  Icons must be 128×128px in size and in PNG format.  Upon approval your icon will be installed and show on all your posts on the Antenna.

Blog Cloud & Last 2 Week Views

Under the “Blogs” menu you’ll find two different views, “Cloud View” and “Last 2 Weeks“.  In “Cloud View”, ranking is currently determined by a custom measure of consistency in posting (both how often and how many posts made).  Once we have more users we’ll also be considering how often a blog is added to custom feeds in our ranking formula.  Only blogs with a ranking of 0.1 or higher are shown in this view, so depending on activity levels only blogs from the last few days may be represented.  In “Last 2 Weeks” view, the blogs listed here are only those that have made a post within the last 2 weeks and they are are ranked according to how many posts they’ve made.

XML-RPC Ping Server

This new feature is useful if you’re wanting the Antenna to pull your new posts faster.  To use it simply add http://rpc.antenna.animeblogger.net/ to the list of update servers your blog pings when you write a new post.  In Wordpress this is in the Dashboard under “Options” | “Writing” | “Update Services”.  You most likely will already have http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ filled in here, simply add our Ping Server to the list on the line below that one as shown in the screenshot below:

Any other blogging software can also use our Ping Server as long as it supports XML-RPC Pings.  When using our Ping Server the Antenna will receive an XML-RPC ping whenever you publish a new post.  It will then pull your feed and update the listings with any new posts.

Code Validation

We’re pleased to announce that the Antenna fully validates as Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, Valid CSS, Valid RSS 2.0 and Valid Atom 1.0.  Occasionally we get a post that has a bad character in it that causes the RSS & Atom validators to fail, but all content we control is valid.

FAQ

More of a minor addition but we’ve added a “FAQ” (Frequently Asked Questions) page to the Antenna.  Currently there are only a couple of questions up but we’ll be adding more in the near future, especially as we receive more questions.

Finally a couple of features that aren’t new because they were in Antenna v2.0 but since we didn’t announce them back in July when we switched over to 2.0 now’s a good time to point them out.

Series Cloud & Last 2 Week Views

“Last 2 Weeks” view lists only the series posted about in the last 2 weeks ranked by a custom formula that tracks how actively a series is being posted about.  This view allows you to more easily see what series are the most popular.  Series “Cloud View” displays a cloud view of all series with font size varying depending on ranking.  All series are listed here, not just those with posts from the last two weeks.

Entry #7: Jeremiah

Entry #8: Chizuri

Entry #9: Nemo

Entry #10: Ran

Entry #11: Atashi

Do note that comments won’t be taken into consideration when deciding the final winner, and please keep your comments positive and/or constructive.  Saying you don’t like a particular entry is fine, but comments insulting an entry and/or the artist will be deleted.

Once again thanks to everyone who entered!

Entry #1: Aurabolt

Entry #2: Sarah

Entry #3: Karura

Entry #4: Fenel

Entry #5: Cherry

Entry #6: Xephonia

Do note that comments won’t be taken into consideration when deciding the final winner, and please keep your comments positive and/or constructive.  Saying you don’t like a particular entry is fine, but comments insulting an entry and/or the artist will be deleted.

Once again thanks to everyone who entered!