ficdom.net

The Writing Center and Ficdom.net is running under a new server.

We went from a single core server (1.7GHz Intel Celeron) with 512 Mb of memory to a 4Gb, 4 processors and 500 Gb server (Intel Core2Quad, Quad Core) and a half terabyte of diskspace, which must be filled very soon.

I hope that the server is at least faster (which is).

And of course someone needs to pay for it and that will be the new sponsor of WC4, who hates commercials, just like I do. I remove the advertisements here as soon as possible (the coming weekend). But I can't avoid it, his messages will be added later at the sites. You will see. No flashing banners and all that other terrible commercials anymore.

In order to get the sponser, I was forced to increase his website traffic for a 2 months and now his traffic is up with 45%, he came with his part of the deal and we have a new server.

• Did you read many stories here in the ficdom? So yes, test it. Join the Quiz Fan fiction League.

I can't help it. Here are some amazing numbers about Internet usage and it is growing by the day.

EMails

• 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
• 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 100 million – New email users since the year before.
• 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
• 92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
• 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
• 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam)

Websites

• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
• 47 million – Added websites in 2009

Web servers

• 13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
• -22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
• 35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
• 384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
• -72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names

• 81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
• 12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
• 7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
• 76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
• 187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
• 8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users

• 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
• 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
• 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
• 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
• 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
• 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
• 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
• 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social websites/media

• 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
• 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
• 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
• 4.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 350 million – People on Facebook.
• 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
• 500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Images

• 4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
• 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
• 30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos

• 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
• 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
• 924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
• 182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
• 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
• 39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
• 81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Data sources: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet...

Alright, here we are going to have it!

Harry Potter SLASH

I moved this category to the top (out of Harry Potter universe itself). That means everyone who wants to browse through Harry Potter fics, can choose or Harry Potter or Harry Potter slash.

The category list at the top of this screen defines which Most Recent will be displayed (those of the active Universe (Universe in that combo)).

I'm preparing several new blocks, which makes life interesting for the visitor of the Ficdom.net, I think.

1. Story Score - this block will display the best stories based on several criteria with a monthly winner (this will be automatically calculated based on an formula of rating percentage (input of the readers) and the number of readers. This block will support overall, monthly and weekly best scores
   
2. Author Scores - similar as Story Score, except it displays the best author overall, monthly and weekly. The formulas used are those of the stories. The Author scores is integrated within the Story Score.
   
3. Quiz Block - Instead of the current poll, we will have an advanced version, a block, which supports multiple quizzes and the most important one is that authors of fics can add the quizzes
   
4. Link Block - A block with related hyperlinks to locations in the Internet
5. Emo-Ratings - The current ratings rates a story with a number between 1 and 10. The Eco-Rating represents a certain state or emotion, similar as the rating idea of FicWad, only not as limited as they implemented it. The Emo-Rating block will be integrated within the Story Score. Here everyone can rate the story he or she is reading in another way then a stupid number between 1 and 10.
   
6. Shoutbox - A new shoutbox is being developed with the icons, colors, hyperlinks and fonts and not to forget the larger capacity
7. Category List or Universes list - The old version of this block has only two levels, the new one has three levels, much better for this ficdom.net and most of the fics here.
8. Most Popular Stories - This block displays a list of maximum 10 fics, which are sorted by the number of reads (hits). It has an extra option where you can see what the most popular stories, which are updated within a given period (i.e. today or last week).
9. Privacy in the online block - I'm testing a change in the online block, where every registered member can indicate if his or her username (penname called here) is visible or not. If not, his or her name is changed into (Hidden).
10. Personal Info Center - An important block, which is already installed here. This block is firstly a personal info center with currently only a short-cut combo (where you can jump to certain functions on the site) and Most Recent, but per universe.

All those blocks or mods or what ever you want to call them are in the http://development.ficdom.net subdomain.

And as you see, images are now allowed in the news, reviews, and of course in the fics itself.

I guess  everyone can add their fics into the site if they want.

Before we have relationship filter, if you don't want to see a particular relationship, go to "Advanced Search", and exclude the relationships you don't like in "Relationships to Exclude" section. Remember to hold down CTRL key when you want to select multiples of them...

I removed the old skins and replaced them with the skin Dark. That skin is the same as Blanc, except reversed colors.

In two weeks we have other skins ...

In the mean while, there is a special site for skin development. Stanger wants to play with skins, as I also like to try. Everyone can take a look to the skin testing- and development site, which is located at http://skins.ficdom.net

The development of mods and blocks will get its own place. Fred will be regular fooling around there, as I will as well. You are free to take a look at that site as well. You can take a peek in the kitchen at http://development.ficdom.net

For both sites (skin and development), it is possible that they are offline or that they will crash. Nothing to do about, because that's why those sites are there, not to endanger the ficdom.net. The policy is to implemented new skins and mods, blocks and other code changes only when it is tested.

Chad reopened his site, that means that I can focus on the development of this site.

It looks like that he is going to change the submission rules and decided to keep the registration of fics open for everyone.

In the mean while, when I have the energy, I place the community mods online when I'm finished with it. That will be the weekend, unless Chad decides to close it again.

I don't know what to do with the fics already imported, but I will ask you guys later about that.

Wim