Spilled Milk® Update #23

Sent:  Wednesday 5/29/2002 2:42 AM

·             August 7th, 2002 – Official Release Date
·             Switched Servers
·             Website Changes
·             Other News

I think this is the news that you’ve all be waiting to hear.  The answer to the question…  “When is the series coming out?”  Well if you haven’t been to the site lately then you’ll be happy to hear that the series will start August 7th, 2002.  Yes, that is a Wednesday like today.  Now why tell you so far in advance?  I have my reasons.  You would expect to go to your shop tomorrow like every Wednesday to pick up your comics and the latest issue of Diamond Previews.  But because of the Memorial Holiday you’ll have to wait until Thursday.

Diamond Previews

Now I’m hoping that when I mention Diamond that you know what I’m talking about.  They print a HUGE newsprint magazine that solicits comics that are coming out two months from the date of their publication.  So that means in the June Diamond Previews you will actually see the Spilled Milk listing for the CiCi Miniseries #1.  I thought about making the preview issue available through Diamond, but we’ll see how that goes.  So the CiCi listing will be buried in the middle of the Previews, probably pretty close to Sirius (which is definitely good company).  I felt that since Spilled Milk is pretty much a no-name publisher that I needed something that will pull people into the independent’s section.  So I locked down the INSIDE BACK COVER of Previews.  I figured that I needed to run a full page ad anyway, and for $400.00 more I’d have some placement on the outside of the magazine.  So be on the lookout for that ad where you can check out stuff that you’ve already seen before.  LOL.  But other people haven’t seen it and will hopefully hit the site and check it out.

I also reserved a half page preferred ad, which is one that is typically close to your listing.  Although the new scoop from Chris at Diamond is that Filip wrote up a two column “Spotlight On” section adjoining the ad.  So in a sense I’ve got a whole page to myself with my listing.  That was totally cool and they don’t do that for everybody.  Only those comics deemed worthy enough for the Spotlight.  That was refreshing news on the day I got a “bite me” call from CQG saying that my technical experience wasn’t enough.  Well I won’t go into that here, but needless to say I’m still looking for work.  So it was definitely great news on a totally depressing day.  I had asked Steve, my brand manager with Diamond, what it takes to get the “Featured Item”, “Spotlight On”, or “Certified Cool” stamp on the comic.  It’s all based on what’s selling at the time and who my competition is.  So I was glad to hear from Chris and he totally made my day.

After issue #1 was accepted into the June issue of Previews there was so much to be done (and there still is).  I enlisted in their marketing department to find the top 1,500 retailers of female comics.  Then I packed up 1,500 each of the preview issue and the color sampler and drop shipped 12 boxes to 5 different Diamond locations.  The retailers should have these by now and are hopefully looking them over and checking out the website when they get a chance.  So PLEASE, talk to your comic retailer and ask then to buy multiple copies.  I did the alternate cover in a 50/50 split so as not to piss off the fans like you.  I also made 7,000 copies of a flyer (front and back) which will go to every Diamond retailer account.  It may take a month, but they will be distributed eventually.

Well that’s about it for Diamond.  They’ve been a great resource.

Switched Servers

Yep.  I finally did it.  I switched servers.  Remember waaaay back when the old server shut me down for “spamming” somebody?  And that they couldn’t even identify where the e-mail came from?  They just assumed it came from their servers without even looking at the e-mail headers.  So I guess I held a grudge for a while.  But the crowning blow was that they didn’t support IIS which in turn runs ASP.  So I ended up switching to www.Interland.com .  So far they’ve been great.  The upload of my new site only took about 45 minutes (transfer time over 256 kbs for cable).  They gave me my new IP address and I could test away even before the SpilledMilk.com domain was transferred.  And even transferring the domain was an extreme pain because the people at Network Solutions had such outdated information.  The only problem so far with this server is that I have to send out my update via my cable account because the Interland servers restrict the “To:” line to 50 addresses.  I suppose this cuts down on SPAM.  But it’s too late because these servers are already on the SPAM “Black List”.  I can’t send e-mail to Monte through normal channels.  I have to use my cable account.  Monte’s server knows about the Interland servers and has blocked all e-mail traffic from them.  I ended up going with Interland because of their ASP support.  I’ve only rewrote the Site Map in ASP which significantly reduces the source for that page.  The source generated isn’t pretty to look at, but I’ll most likely fix that later.  I’ll eventually rewrite many of the pages using ASP with arguments in the QueryString.

Website Changes

There are too many to name.  I successfully migrated the site from Front Page to HTML.  When I did this the HTML was totally unreadable because of all the crap Front Page inserts into the source.  Since I was also migrating to FRAMES, I had to gut out all the Front Page code that sets up their “pretend” frames.  You can set up “borders” within Front Page and not really have frames in your code, because FP will automatically make that page look like it has frames.  The end product is a single page that uses shared code, but it all scrolls up at once rather that only having pieces of it scrollable.  I was also pretty proud of the “Powered by Microsoft” animated icon GIF file I created.  Also the piece of JavaSript that creates the frames even though you’ve entered the site through a “back door” (like the link above).  Those new margin menus took quite a bit of doing too.  The site still needs some work, but it’s coming along nicely I think.

Just check out what’s new for all the latest goings on here on the site. I can’t believe that there have been two press releases between this update and the last!!

Other News

Well if you’ve stuck around this far then you’ll be happy to know that Dave Finch, Joe Benitez, and Keu Cha will be attending the October Majesticon here in Denver.  This is actually phenomenal for Joe, because when I talked with him he said he doesn’t like doing shows and typically doesn’t go to the San Diego Con or anything like that.  So we are lucky to have him here at our show!  I think Dave and Keu are just coming for the snow boarding.  LOL  But I don’t know how much snow we’ll actually have here then.  Either way, it will be great to see Dave again (although I may see him in San Diego ) and I’m looking forward to meeting Joe and Keu in person.

In San Diego I’m planning to have a corner booth, a nice vinyl backdrop, and a cool Flash presentation.  So I had better sign off and get to learning Flash and wrap up issue #3 so I can submit it to Diamond.

Thanks for all your support!!

_______________________________
Parker D. Smart
President - Spilled Milk, Corp.
psmart@SpilledMilk.com      http://SpilledMilk.com
Copyright © 2001, Spilled Milk Corp., All rights reserved.

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