Ink Stained Fingers

ISF Accountability Statement

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:20:06 GMT

Time for the annual accounting statement (July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009):

Annual outgo
$10 - Annual domain registration - inkquill.com (due Aug 1)
10 - Annual domain registration - inkquill.net (due Aug 1)
132 - Web-hosting fees - July 1 - June 30 ($11 a month, paid monthly)
____
152 - Total annual cost for archive at two mirrored sites

Annual income
50 - 3 donations to site
60 - lease of a subsite @ 5 per month
___
110

(The ISF archive is still in the hole to Slashcity for $215 for when we were hosted by that site at $40 a month. They are wonderfully patient, and I hope to start paying them soon - one donation of $5 already went toward that)

As always, any comments, suggestions, etc., are welcome!
ISF Webmaster

Consolidating Sites & RSS Feed

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:04:39 GMT

Since the archive doesn't have the heavy traffic it used to have, and since we are on a system that seems to be able to handle the load, I am going to be consolidating the two sites we have - inkstain.inkquill.net and inkstain.inkquill.com, so that the .net site will be the only accessible site. What this means for you, the viewing audience:

1) if you go to the .com site, you will automatically redirect to the .net site

2) if you post a story (which is on the .net site) it will immediately be found by everyone - right now, those who use the .com site have a monthly delay until I do the maintenance, i.e., FTP into the .net site, manually copy the new files, and then upload them to the .com site.

3) the .com site will still be there, just inaccessible. I will continue to do the maintenance on the site and, should the main site fail, the backup site will be there to take over. However, since they are both on Dreamhost, that would be an unlikely event.

This change will take place over the next week or so, and you shouldn't notice any interruption or problem since it's all taking place behind the curtain.

Another note: I am trying to set up an RSS feed, along the lines of what Yuletide Treasures has, so that people can subscribe to get notice of new stories on the archive. If there is anyone who has experience doing this with the AutomatedArchive software, let me know - my previous attempts to do this have been failures.

ISF Accounting Statement

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:58:25 GMT

Time for the annual accounting statement (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008):

Annual outgo
$10 - Annual domain registration - inkquill.com (due Aug 1)
10 - Annual domain registration - inkquill.net (due Aug 1)
0 - Web-hosting fees - July 1 - Nov 30 (covered under initial referral code)
88 - Web-hosting fees - Dec 1 - July 1 ($11 a month, paid monthly)
____
108 - Total annual cost for archive at two mirrored sites

(The ISF archive is still in the hole to Slashcity for $235 for when we were hosted by that site at $40 a month. They are wonderfully patient, and I hope to start paying them soon - one donation of $5 already went toward that)

Annual income
$15 - 1 subscription at $5 a month - canceled in September (3 payments received)
10 - 1 donation to site
60 - sublease payment for a subdomain of inkquill.com
___
$85

Overall, we're doing well on covering our current fees, although it would be nice to get back-fees paid off as well.

As always, any comments, suggestions, etc., are welcome!
ISF Webmaster

Updates and Questions

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:34:10 GMT

Thanks to the responses to the Dreamhost question - I've gone for the $10 a month solution.

Question: now that our site is 5 years old, is there any interest in redesigning it? I don't mean the back-end - changing from AArchive - because I'm not up to moving 3000+ stories. But do we want a new look? new graphics? different layout? change in menu-bars/menu-location? I'm not a webdesigner myself - I can do the technical side just fine but forget about the artistic side! - but if there is any interest in modifying the look or suggestions for improvements, I'm all ears!

Dreamhost Question

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:34:48 GMT

I just received the site renewal invoice from Dreamhost for $119 for a year. Initially, we had used a referral code and set it up for $22 for a year - does anyone know if that discount is for the first year only? If not, how do we go about getting the renewal for that lower amount instead of $119? If it's only for the first year, that sorta sucks but I've been really happy with the service there, so I guess if we have to pay the higher fee, I will. Or switch to the monthly of $10, which is a little easier to pay.

Thanks!

ISF Webmaster

New Main site is Live!

Tue, 01 May 2007 19:56:25 GMT

Okay, we've completed the move to yet another host for the Inkquill.net portion of our archive, and everything seems to be working as it should. Over the next couple days, I'll be recoding the menus so that uploads and comments will once again be on the .Net server and the story searches on .Com, as well as some automated copy scripts. In the meantime, peruse, search, and comment, then let me know if you have any problems.

And thanks to those whose donations made the move possible. We appreciate your support.

ISF Admin

Situation on Inquill.net

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:50:19 GMT

I spoke too soon regarding problems. While I don't have any arguments with Netfirms, their way of running CGI scripts means that none of our scripts work, which basically means that the main site is nothing but a backup location of files. I've worked with the auto-archive support people, I've tried all sorts of things, and in order for our site to work, I'd have to go into the code for each cgi form and change location info. Also, every single story would have to be edited because of the Comment link at the bottom of the page. Since we have clsoe to 4000 stories, that ain't happening.

So here's the deal - once again, I need a cheap webhosting company that is reliable and can support our needs (see earlier posts). We currently have the inkquill.com on Dreamhost and, while I can put the inkquill.net there, too, I'd rather separate them in case Dreamhost goes down. We've been with slashcity, ipowerweb, and now netfirms, so those are also out of the picture. And by cheap I mean really, really cheap - I've now paid for a year of inkquill.net on two services that we can't use, I'll have to shell out for another year in this move, we've got domain name renewal coming up in July, and then Dreamhost renewal for another year in the fall. We currently have two $5 a month subscriptions (thank you!) but the rest is my donation to the fandom. So - cheap, allows cgi bins to be set under subdirectories, about 1GB of space and 20-30GB bandwidth, at least 5 email accounts.

Thanks!

We're Back! (Mostly)

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 11:55:29 GMT

Okay, we're back in business, and thanks to those who recommended Netfirms because a) they were very helpful on getting things sorted out and b) $10 a year - who can argue with that? The DNS finished transferring back to my original name registrar this morning and we are back live.

The only things that won't work on the main site are 1) Recent won't be correct as I have to transfer those stories over from the mirror site, 2) Upload won't work until I know that those files are synched, and then I'll be turning it off of the mirror site and on for the main one, and 3) Ditto for comments, and 4) the Gallery on the main site won't work till I turn the search option back on over there. All these should be remedied this morning (depending on how hectic it is at my real job). In the meantime, thanks for your patience!

With both of our sites now paid for a year, I don't anticipate any more issues with outages, unless our hosting services encounter problems. (Crossing fingers now that I said that)

Update on ISF - Main Site

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:02:06 GMT

Spoke with another rep last night (since no one seems to know what's going on) who indicated that they thought the site had been TOS'd. Since I haven't received any notification, I asked for further clarification, which I have not yet received. I'll let you know more as I get it.

In the meantime, the mirror site is up and working. I plan on enabling Uploading on it, although I won't be able to change the comments - I had to recode the comment function to make it work on our split system.

EDIT: More confusion. Yesterday, Ipowerweb contacted me and apologized, and extended my hosting till January of next year at no additional cost. We were up again last night. This morning we are, once again, down. I have put in a Customer Service ticket and I wait. In the meantime, I bought 1 year's hosting on Netfirms for $10, and I've uploaded my backup there which is complete through 1/26. I am waiting now for Ipowerweb to release my Domain registration so that I can either move it back to NameCheap or move it to Netfirms, then update the DNS to get us back on the road. Since the site is down again, I'll change the upload back to allow it from the mirror (I changed it back last night, silly me).

More info as available

Main site down

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:04:53 GMT

It just came to my attention yesterday that the main Inkstain site (inkstain.inkquill.net) is down. After contacting our provider, Ipowerweb, I have learned that they have screwed up our records once again. Despite my proof via credit card transaction that I paid in November for 6 months, they insist that I owe them quarterly fees (that's how I was initially set up). I have to mail them a copy of the credit card statement before they'll look at it, and I have to pay the quarterly fee plus a reinstatement fee to get the site back up - which they say they'll refund once they get the copy of the statement. I have attempted to transfer my domain registration back to Namecheap where I got my registration originally, but they've got it locked. Fortunately, I got my tax return Friday so that's more than enough to pay the fees and get us back up, and then I'm looking for a new provider because this just sucks.

So - long story short - the main site is currently down but the mirror is up. You can search for stories but not post. Everything except for the last week's worth of stories is on the mirror site - Recent Stories won't work, but everything else (except commenting) will. From experience, I know that after I pay the fees, it'll take them a couple days to get the site back up so don't expect it before the end of the week.

I am looking at Netfirms or Fan St. for hosting (we have the mirror on Dreamhost), so let me know if you've had any problems with those or have any other suggestions. Cheap is the main object - we need about 1GB of space and 20GB transfer, but nothing fancy like php or MySql.

We have moved!

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:45:29 GMT

The move to Dreamhost was successful, and everything appears to be operating correctly. If you have any problems with anything on the site, please let us know.

Thanks!

Webmaster - ISF Archive

Moving Inkquill.com

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:06:25 GMT

Over the next two weeks, there may be some disruption on the mirror site of http://inkstain.inkquill.com as well as the hosted site for the AD/SS archive at http://snapledore.inkquill.com . I am moving our site from media-cow, who has graciously hosted us for the past year free of charge, to Dreamhost. Thanks for all your recommendations and to auctasinistra for the donation that enabled the move.

During the move, there will inevitably be outages on the mirror site until the DNS gets sorted out. The mirror site hosts the Search option, but the Quick Lists, Uploads, Comments, and stories themselves housed on the main .net site will still be available. The outage will be of short duration.

In January, I will more than likely move our main site to another host as well, as I have been unhappy with Ipowerweb's down-times when both our domain name renewal and site hosting renewal came up. I am currently looking at Fan St, but if anyone has other ideas, let me know. Again, we need a host that doesn't object to NC-17 stories and artwork, slash, underage characters, violence, and bestiality (I think I've covered the biggies - and my, we're a lively bunch of pervs, aren't we!). Our main site is 500mb in size with 30GB transfer per month, with 5 email accounts for administration, so keep that in mind for your suggestions. The kitty will have $15 after the current move, so cheap is good and preferably no set up fees.

As always, we are grateful for the support of the community and that the HP fandom is still going strong. Hopefully, there will be an influx of stories as the new movie comes out, and we will be ready to host them. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for changes and/or improvements.

ISF Webmaster

Inkquill.net back, Inkquill.com needs new home

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 18:10:08 GMT

Okay, so inkquill.net is back - it turns out that someone at Ipowerweb mistakenly put a redirect on the account. We're good for 6 months, unless they do something else to screw us up.

We are in the process of looking for a new webhost for our inkquill.com domain. Although I may end up putting the two halves together, I do like the option of having a mirror site if there are problems. Squidge is out because of the chan issue, and so is populli because of the incest/bestiality stories. Slashcity is too expensive. If anyone knows of other hosts, let me know. We need cheap, about 1GB of space, and at least 10GB bandwidth.

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks for your responses and suggestions. It looks like we're going to go with Dreamhost and Fan St., moving Inkquill.com to one of them now and then Inkquill.net to the other when the Ipowerweb hosting is due again.

When it rains...

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 23:28:06 GMT

I've just been informed by Media-cow, the nice people who have hosted our mirror inkquill.com, that they are moving at the end of November to a less-costly service but with less space, and they will no longer be able to host our domain.

This means, I'm either going to have to look for a new place to park inkquill.com or drop the mirrored option. I'm reluctant to drop it because, as you can see, we are having issues with ipowerweb every time renewal comes around on our site.

So I'm looking for a new low-cost place to park our mirror site. If anyone has any suggestions, please comment here. We currently are using 800 mb of space and we average 7-10GB of bandwidth monthly. We need a place that isn't going to care that we have stories and artwork with 1) underage characters (12-17), 2) violent content including rape, 3) bestiality, 4) BDSM. Also, since I hadn't budgeted for this, it needs to be inexpensive. I have about 2-3 weeks to make this happen, or else drop back to just one site.

Thanks for your help!

Inkquill.net down

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:03:38 GMT

I am in the process of sorting out the problem with own domain host for the main site at inkstain.inkquill.net - they seem to have screwed up the billing (again). Despite my paying for 6 months' hosting last week, they suspended the account on Nov 1 and no one seems to know why. I have let them know I'm not happy and considering moving elsewhere when my next renewal comes up - this is the second time they've screwed up.

In the meantime, you can use the mirror site at http://inkstain.inkquill.com - the only thing you won't be able to do is upload stories or comment. Hopefully, this will be resolved before the end of the day.

ISF Webmaster

Financial update

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:50:05 GMT

Just to let you know - thanks to the recent donations, the Nov 1 web-hosting fee of $60 has been met. We appreciate your support of the archive. We also now have $5 towards the back-payment of our Slashcity debt of $240, which I'm hoping to pay-off by the first of next year. After that, it'll be May 1st before we have another web-hosting payment due, of which the current subscription we have will pay half.

ISF Accounting statement

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 21:42:40 GMT

I've been asked by one of the archive supporters to provide an accounting statement for the archive so here it is:

Annual outgo
$10 - Annual domain registration - inkquill.com (due Aug 1)
10 - Annual domain registration - inkquill.net (due Aug 1)
120 - Annual web-hosting fees - inkquill.net ($10 a month, paid bi-annually with $60 due on Nov 1, $60 on May 1)
0 - Annual web-hosting fees - inkquill.com (Media-cow hosts us free at present time)
____
140 - Total annual cost for archive at two mirrored sites

In addition, the ISF archive is in the hole to Slashcity for $240 for when we were hosted by that site at $40 a month.

Annual income
$60 - 1 monthly subscription at $5 a month

ISF Webmaster

Just an FYI

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:15:15 GMT

We are coming up on the 6 month renewal of Ink Stained Fingers on our main site and I wanted to make readers aware that there's a possibility of a brief disruption in service. I don't expect there to be any problem, but when I renewed the domain name 3 months ago, there was some confusion and we were "off the air" for a couple days. However, our mirror site at http://inkstain.inkquill.com will be fully functional and standing by for our readers.

Thanks!

Questions and Opinions

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:47:06 GMT

Okay, so we are coming up on 6 months at our new host of ipowerweb.net and I want to know if anyone has experienced any problems with accessing the site (other than the outage at the beginning of August, which I know about). I had purchased 6 months with them, which comes up in October, and before I shell out for a year's worth of service from them, I want to make sure we're getting our money's worth and that no one is having access problems.

Also, are there any issues with the site either at the main or mirror site that anyone is having? Problems with the menu? Problems with commenting or reading or files being cut off? Let me know even if you already told me - I'm trying to sort out what I've fixed and what still needs work. Also, suggestions on changes to the layout or the look, or any other aspect about the site.

And I'd like to once again thank the people who have supported the site in the past - I know HP fandom isn't the hot-ticket item anymore and we may not get as much traffic, but I like to think we still fill a niche that people need. Your present and future support - suggestions, referrals, donations, stories - are what we need to keep going. Thanks!

Webmaster for ISF

Back in Business

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 22:50:57 GMT

Sorry we were briefly down on the main site - ipowerweb screwed up. They were supposed to renew the inkquill.net domain name for another year, which they did, but somehow they also messed something up so that it looked like the site fees were due now instead of in another 3 months (I bought 6 months at the start). So everything is fixed, we're good for 3 months, and then I'll probably renew for a year if they're treating us okay.

And the problems on the mirror site have been resolved. For some odd reason, the programs weren't reading one of the variables for the home path, so I had to manually encode the path into the main file. No biggy since the site will always have this name and URL, but confusing while I was sorting it out.

So as far as I know, we're good to go on both sites, at least for another 3 months, barring some sort of server problem. Thanks to those who let me know when you couldn't access the site and stories.

ISF Web Status

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 02:22:52 GMT

The domain http://inkquill.net is now live on our new provider, ipowerweb.com and you should be able to see the general splash page for the domain. At present, the link to our archive is still waiting to resolve
through the various DNS servers, but I have uploaded all the content we had through March 8, which was our last backup before our previous provider disappeared. There might be a few hiccups while I test permissions and such, but hopefully 24 hours from now, we will be live on the main site.

In the meantime, the Uploading capabilities have been unlocked on the mirror site at http://inkstain.inkquill.com to allow those whose stories disappeared during this time period to reupload. Please let me know at webadmin@inkquill.com if you have any problems. Also, you will note that we have implemented a new menu bar with drop down menu options - let me know if you experience any problems with that.

Thanks for your patience and support while we sorted out this mess, and feel free to pass this information on to others.

Diana Williams - ISF Webmaster

Inkstain Archive Down

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:15:12 GMT

It appears that our host server is having problems today at http://inkstain.inkquill.net . However, the mirror server at http://inkstain.inkquill.com is working fine so use that site for the present. You will be able to do everything except 1) read the most recent stories posted, and 2) upload new stories. However, all the archive links and searches will work just fine.

I will update this message when the main site is available again. Feel free to pass this message on to others.

ISF Webmaster

Inkstain.net down

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 02:00:44 GMT

Our primary site, http://inkstain.inkquill.net is currently down, and we don't know when the service provider will have it back up. However, our mirror site at http://inkstain.inkquill.com is up and functioning. You will be able to access the archives and search for stories, but you won't be able to view any of the Recent postings or upload new stories. We'll let you know as soon as the main site is back up.

Thanks!

EDIT: The main site is back up now. Thanks to the people at Papillonhost.com for their hard work in achieving this.

Possible new look!

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 15:49:13 GMT

We're testing a new look! Go to this page and take a look at the idea so far. I will be making some changes to it today, putting up both the Splash page and the Main page (currently it is a combination of both), and also experimenting with drop-down menus.

Let us know what you think. Also, if you have any ideas for changes, and suggestions for improving the site, and problems you've noticed, now is the time to let us know.

And, as always, donations to help with the site expenses are welcome.

EDIT: After looking at all the comments and reviewing the site look, we've decided to stay with the old look for the most part. We'll be adding the drop-down menu system and cleaning up some of the "look", but for the most part we're going to retain the more free-form style.

Thanks for all your opinions!

Poll results

Tue, 03 May 2005 18:47:00 GMT

Underage stories: Change archive rules to allow stories with characters under puberty in sexual situations:
Yes - 46%
No - 54%

So we will not be changing the archive rules. Characters involved in sexual situations must be starting puberty, at the youngest. See the FAQ for more information.

There was overwhelming agreement for more information on Underage levels. I will be changing the warnings to:

Underage (11/12-15)
Underage (16-17)

Let me know if you think the 11/12-15 bracket should be broken down further, but it appeared to me from the comments that the deciding factor for most people was whether they were younger than 16 or not.

Ratings change
While the majority were in favour of discarding the ratings, a number of people indicated that the use the ratings to select stories. So I will not be discarding the ratings system. I am considering replacing the ratings codes with something that is more applicable, but for the moment, the ratings system will stay as it is.