Making life a little bit better...

I learned some basic PHP in a day and scrapped together a PHP script to handle the archive of the strip. Before, I uploaded an updated index page, an archive page for the new strip, and the strip itself when it was time to post. Now I simply upload the strip and add needed metadata to a database. It's not much more work, but it will be an infinitely lesser hassle if I need to make changes later, and it will facilitate a future archive search function, as well as other cool archive functions. The only change you'll notice is in the URLs. The strip is still accessible from the old URL.

Also uploaded a change to the title image I had thought I'd made already.

Well, this is a little creepy.

Twice in three days, e-mails I sent have been re-printed in two completely different web columns. Normally I wouldn't mention either on Da Blog, but...

Okay, maybe I'll be alerting you to new comics every day after all.

I've started to waffle on the issue of whether to post on Da Blog every time I post a new strip. Each strip page is mostly images and the content of each strip does not appear on the page itself, and neither does "Sandsday" (except for, effective today, the main comic page). Although I have noted a growth in readers of Da Blog, it's been fairly uneven; although December 29 was the last day I had no readers of Da Blog at all, I've had two days of only getting one hit since then. Moreover, it hasn't really carried over into readers of the strip, and I may be suppressing the growth potential of the strip by not opening it up to the scrutiny of search engines. And if I'm not getting at least one reader every day, there's hardly any point in me making a strip every day. I made this first batch of strips well in advance, so I'm not exactly entertaining myself with them, at least not on the basis I'm posting them.

Which means it's time for another Da Blog poll! I want to find out if you think - at least for the time being - I should post on Da Blog whenever I have a new strip. It would be more than just a line saying, "there's a new strip", but it would have some sort of background behind it and might serve as a supplement. The exact content would probably vary on a case-by-case basis.

This poll will run until it's time for the 2/3 strip to be posted.

I personally would have preferred a Pats-Packers Super Bowl...

I mean, that would have basically guaranteed the best rating in Super Bowl history, right? A quest for perfection combined with the most popular and revered QB in America who might have a chance to end his career Elway-style with a Super Bowl win? Over a team a significant proportion of the country does not like because they think Tom Brady is too much of a celebrity, Bill Belichick is too inhumanly cold, and the whole team cheats. (As recently as Christmas I got a comment attacking me for my Patriots Run to 19-0, which has been updated by the way. Belatedly.)

Last time you can rely on Da Blog to tell you there's a new strip up

I've posted the new navigational interface. Now you can look at any comic in the short 3-strip history of Sandsday. Of course, it's going to get a little hard as time goes on, so tomorrow I'm probably going to add a way to punch in a number and be taken to that comic. I do not intend to announce that change - it'll be up by the time the fourth strip is up.

Building a brighter future... today!

Okay, in my last post I said I would have a new comic at 11 PM every night. And this is a lot closer to midnight. Well, you see, I'm busy designing a whole navigational interface for the comic (now called "Sandsday") and I was hoping to get it up tonight. It might still get put up later tonight, and it'll be up tomorrow night at the latest. But for the moment, if you didn't see yesterday's first strip, you're out of luck.