All New Comics – Page 4

Secret Project part 2: The Live Beta

July 17, 2008 by Brian Garside

When last I left you, I had secured hosting for my little secret project, and I had created a wireframe for it. I settled on a technology, a content management solution, and had a really rough business model in mind. Well late last night I launched the beta version of the site.

Presenting: Comic Lift, the user generated comic book news website.

Comic Lift is a website where comic fans can submit and Lift stories they think are noteworthy. Good stories will get promoted to the front page, and stories that are “Lifted” by other users will get priority.

Please visit the site, create an account, and start promoting some comic related stories!

Secret project part 1: Hosting

June 30, 2008 by Brian Garside

I’m working on a new little side project which I should be able to announce next week at some point. My plan is to create a Web 2.0 Digg style site and do it in under 20 hours from start to finish. This whole venture will be detailed here on RadicalHive, but I won’t let anyone know WHAT the project is until I’m done it. It is vaguely related to All New Comics, but different enough that it’s going to live on its own enviornment.

I have the technology down, this site will be using PHP and mySQL, and I want it to be able to handle large traffic loads with relatively little downtime. I have already selected a content management solution for it, and I’ve started creating the basic template for HOW the site will look (complete with ads and such). – UPDATED July 1st @ 9:24pm!

Free Comic Book Day…costs a lot

May 4, 2008 by Brian Garside

Free Comic Book Day. I’m not sure if it’s a success or not. If we measure success by “We spent lots of money and didn’t get see any obvious returns, but people got free stuff”, then it was an overwhelming success.

If we measure success by sales, it was about as unsuccessful as anything could be.

If we measure success by introducing our brand to new people…it was a minor success.

Frankly, Free Comic Book Day might be an idea who’s time has come and gone.

What got me hooked on comics

April 30, 2008 by Brian Garside

In honour of Free Comic Book day (this coming Saturday May 3rd at All New Comics), I thought I’d talk about what got me hooked on comics.

Here they are…these pictures are of the three comics that first got me. I had read comics before, my uncles Donnie and Ronnie had comics, but it wasn’t until these that comics really got into my brain.

Of comic shows and hometels

April 16, 2008 by Brian Garside

This past weekend was the Toronto ComiCON Fan Appreciation show on Saturday and Sunday at the Metro Convention Centre, Pete and I were there with All New Comics and four tables of our stuff. It was also a chance for Kaylin, Char, and I to have a little mini-vacation in downtown Toronto.

Friday night I took the train down to Toronto and spent some time building the new All New Comics. Here’s a live sample of the work in progress. I’m still going to Tab-Ify the navigation, and tighten the cart area on the top, but I’m pretty happy with this overall.

Whither All New Comics?

April 9, 2008 by Brian Garside

The new All New Comics is indeed still coming soon, but it’s looking like a mid-April launch at this point. Right now I’m trying to clean the site up for a server move, and the redesign took a little longer than last weekend. I was in good shape until the “hack attack”, and that’s put … Read more

Comic books are dead

April 1, 2008 by Brian Garside

Printed comic books have existed for most of the 20th century, and in one form or another probably since the invention of the printing press. There is anecdotal evidence of comic book like art forms throughout the ages, with even Egyptian hieroglyphics being distant cousins of the modern comic.

So it may be presumptuous of me to say that comic books are dead, but bear with me, and I’ll tell you why.

All New Comics hacked

March 30, 2008 by Brian Garside

First off, don’t these stupid little script kiddiez know who they’re dealing with??? Seriously.

Yesterday morning someone who I assume to be Charles Eckholdt or
ceckholdt@comcast.net (and yeah, I hope the spambots harvest your stupid little email address Charles) changed the “send payments to” address in my shopping cart program from the regular All New Comics address to ceckholdt@comcast.net and changed the dollar value to US Dollars.

What I’m working on – The web edition

February 11, 2008 by Brian Garside

I’m working on a ton of cool stuff at work (as always) including a totally revamped search engine, a new version of our Vendor site, and a new sales process, but at home I’m working on a couple of web projects as well.

One of them you’re reading right now, Radical Hive is progressing, although not quite as quickly as I’d hope. I’m also building out a brand new Version 3 of All New Comics which I would like to go online with by the end of the month.

Hating my hosting provider

January 15, 2008 by Brian Garside

All New Comics has been up and down more often than a kid on a trampoline lately, and this week I finally had enough with some serious database troubles. After quite a few years with my server sitting in Florida, I’m finally moving it back to Canada where it belongs.