There’s one thing I do not like to see in a literary webzine: a contributor finds his story, poem or article listed in the index all right but then has to wonder whether anybody has read it and what they think of it. It’s like dropping a stone down a well without hearing a splash. The Readers’ Guide, the Challenges and the Letters tell our readers that someone has read what you’ve written and has found a reason to encourage others to read it, too. They do their part to make us interactive.
Mark Koerner has sent a nice e-mail saying he likes the way his contributions have been presented and will scout about for more ideas he can share with us. I appreciate Mark’s compliment very much, and I think I can even help him with his idea search.
As our veteran readers know, letters are now set off in a distinctive format: in a tastefully-bordered block quote in monospace style. (The fonts you see in Bewildering Stories are normally those specified in your web brower’s preferences; feel free to experiment) Letters almost always receive a short reply, in normal font style.
We may ask new contributors, as a courtesy, whether the message should stand alone or can be followed by a reply. One can’t be too careful. Don Sullivan said go for it; our format is fine with him. So I started to reply... Only, my reply became much too long, and I had to split our discussion into two separate files. A fruitful conversation!
Bibliographies are now the norm.
Thomas R. earns our special thanks for providing us with the titles and genres of his bibliography. Take a look at it, and you’ll see why: it’s too long to include in his biography. In fact, it will have to be reformatted yet again into two or even three separate files. If the old saying “practice makes perfect” has any meaning, then Tom is well on his way to it.
You’ll also notice that the Biographies and Bibliographies index has changed appearance: it now reflects that bibliographies have become the norm rather than the exception. If you would like to add your bibliography, you need only e-mail us the titles, genres, file names and issue numbers, all of which can be found in one search of the Archive. Then those readers who appreciate your writing can follow the links from your bibliography to your stories, poems or articles.
We have two more Big Projects: making a linked bibliography of reviews and getting rid of the frames on the home page. The second is by far the more important: we desperately need to move to a frameless website.
The advantages are incalculable: as long as we are stuck with frames, Bewildering Stories remains practically impervious to search engines on the Net. In fact, it’s a wonder that we’ve been as successful as we have, considering that the frames have served only as unwanted camouflage.
Making the change is much easier said than done. Our database is now rapidly approaching one thousand files, the vast majority of which are text. Now, those text files fall into five main categories:
Several templates have been developed by experimentation, and we think we have achieved a sleek, reader-friendly format.
We need to have the menu appear as usual, but not as a frame. Rather, the plan is to use a “server-side include” to insert the menu into a table cell on the home page.
So why don’t we just go ahead and do it? Some time ago, Jerry brought up the idea of moving to the new format with links to the “old” Bewildering Stories. That’s fine with me, but the long-term problem remains: how do we standardize all of our issues and make them accessible to Net indexers?
Suppose we make the change to the home page alone: no “new” and “old” websites, just erase the frames and take the consequences. Okay, click on any link in the home page and what will you see? Texts at full-screen width. That is not reader-friendly! And no menu! That’s even worse.
No matter how great or small the change, any structural modification of the home page means reformatting every single file in the database. And not always in the same way.
It is possible, but what a job! Theoretically, it can be done with software that does mass find-replace runs in backup files, which would then be re-uploaded to the server. Now to find out how that’s done... Wish us luck!
Copyright © 2004 by Don Webb for Bewildering Stories
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