I added new links to both the main Links page and the Info page of the Blue Planet to the Legends of Localization articles about the FFIV translation types.
I've gone through and restructured the chapter archives of Runne to be easier to browse, and did some behind-the-scenes code clean up because... I may start posting Runne chapters in the near future!
The content for all of Runne has been transferred, and the sub-site is now complete with all posted chapters and art!
I've completed the site template for Runne, and have begun moving the site off of WordPress to this host. I've added a link to the new site in the menu above, though not everything is there yet! So far, there's no art gallery and not all the chapters have been migrated yet. I'll be working on this over time!
I noticed that the blog entries on the Nefol page had lost their titles and post dates (funny things happened to the blog code when Neocities changed how URLs resolved). I went in and just stuck all the title and post dates in manually, so those should look right again!
I realized I still had a Twitter box on the main page of Dreigiau, which no longer works thanks to everything going on at Twitter. I spent some time reorganizing the main page of Dreigiau and simplifying the layout there. No more Twitter box!
Sadly, I removed the Yesterweb Ring from the front page because the ring is no longer running. Instead, I've added a new Fanfiction Webring to the front page (just below these updates)! Check it out - lots of cool fanfic sites there!
I noticed that comments were broken on both Coming of the Darkstar and Shadows of Zot due to the change in domain name. I've spent some time the past couple days fixing this for both sites. I also noticed that both sites, while they were semi-responsive, were not looking how I wanted them to on a smaller mobile device. So I've fixed that all up as well.
I'm excited to announce the final piece of the Sygnus.org sites is now hosted here - Shimmer Webcomic! With this complete, I am currently flipping the switch to point the Sygnus.org domain a new home on Neocities. I still have one final story to move, but the bulk of the sites are now here and complete!
I made a few more updates to the Nefol Dev Blog today. I found some missing comments that I was not aware of and restored them. In the process of doing that, I discovered a couple of blog posts that didn't get migrated over. So I fixed that as well. I think this is a pretty complete archive of that content now!
The Flames of Bedlam story has a new site - see it here!
I've moved the defunct posts from the old Nefol Dev Blog to a new home here on Neocities!
I know it's been a while, but I'm still working on moving content from Sygnus.org to the Neocities webhost. I finally finished the long project of moving Wayrift, so I decided to work on something a lot smaller – which turns out to be Shadows of Zot.
I’ve moved all of the chapters, comments and art to a new section on this host. You can now find it linked in the menu above!
The Coming of the Darkstar site is now complete and ready to view! I've moved it out of the "Sister Sites" section to the main menu on the site landing page because Darkstar is now fully hosted on Neocities!
More updates for the Fan Archives Official Art Gallery today! I’ve added three new pieces to the Other Artwork section. I’ve also created two new sections: SD Character Artwork and Nation Crests!
I did some work on the Fan Archives today. Namely, made the page viewport taller and got rid of the sidebar on the left to give more viewing room. I also added a new Japanese character relationship chart to the Cast page.
The Official Art Gallery section has had a small makeover - I've implemented a new modal pop-up for viewing images. I also replaced a couple of the smaller pieces with higher quality images. I'll be switching out other galleries for a modal pop-up in the future as I really like how it works!
Aside from that, I've discovered a lot of hidden goodies in my old files that I hope to be bringing to the Fan Archives soon!
I'm very happy to announce that I've finished moving over the content of the first full project to this site. You'll find a new section for the Nefol Game Project - a page dedicated to an attempt for Syn and I to create our own RPG. The project is on hold for the time being, but we had a lot of fun and learned a lot from the experience. All of that is captured there.
I know it seems quiet around here, but I'm actually hard at work moving over the Darkstar section of this site. I'll reveal it once it's all ready and done! Other than that, I added one lovely new link to my Mutuals section. Thank you for linking me!
I've begun work on the Darkstar section of this site. I just learned that you can export WordPress comments to Disqus, so I might just be taking that leap to move all of Sygnus.org here to Neocities. It'll be a big job, however.
More updates to the Links page today! I added links to Neocities page that shows who I follow, who follows me and my Nocities profile. I also added a new link to another site recreation Mystik Haven.
Perhaps the biggest news of it all - I removed the Under Construction gif above since all sections of the site are fully functional. That doesn't mean I don't want to add more to it in the future, but for now, the site is no longer just under construction! Yay!
It's happy linking time! This page was accepted into the Yesterday Webring - you can find the webring right here on the index page. Sygnus Star was also added to the Anilinks directory - I've added a button link back in return on the Links page.
I've finished the layout rework for the Fan Archives Official Art Gallery! So now, all galleries have thumbnails and each piece of art has its own page. The two setions that I completed today were the Nintendo Power archive and the Other Artwork section.
I still have plans to add more art - sprite and SD pieces in particular - but the overall work on the original sections of the Fan Archives is complete!
I've started the first part of the Fan Archives Official Art Gallery overhaul today. I updated all of the Amano artwork section with thumbnails and individual pages for each image. Much improved! I'll be tackling the remaining two sections before adding new images to the gallery!
The first part of the gallery reconstruction is complete! I've updated the Playstation CGI Movie gallery of the Fan Archives to use thumbnail images instead of text links, and given every screenshot its own page. I hope to continue to revamp the rest of the galleries in a similar way going forward!
I finished up styling all the existing pages in the Fan Archives. This was quite a bit of work, especially in the Fanfiction section where many of the pages needed to be run through an HTML cleaner. The upside to this is that I found a couple chapters of an unposted piece from all those years ago. So...
I added three chapters of Dark Guaridian written by Cyhirae to the Library.
This completes the website styling that I wanted to achieve. Now, I just want to jazz up some of the art galleries, and I feel like the Fan Archives restoration is pretty well complete! I have another HTML project on Neocities that I'm ramping up, so this is a good time to be putting a pin on this one.
Last night I messed around with scrolling CSS and got a jazzy background going on the Links, Rings and Affiliates section. I'm overall pleased with that page, so I'm going to leave it be for now.
This did, however inspire me to work on a CSS stylesheet for the Fan Archives. Stylesheets were just starting to become a thing at the point I was getting out of hand-coded web design, so all of my style code was stuck in the header of each page. Not very nifty for making changes. I began building a stylesheet today and went through applying it to the header of every page that already had styling on it. Happy about this.
I also started applying the stylesheet to pages that haven't been styled yet - namely some of the writing pages in the library. I've only just completed the Novelization section, but what a doozie that was! Several chapters were pretty mangled HTML code, probably because they originally were converted from Word files. I had to run them through a HTML cleaner to fix all the issues, but said issues appear to be fixed.
I will continue to append the stylesheet to pages throughout the site. This is a timely job, but it really needs to be done.
Sygnus Star has earned its first link in the Times Square Neighborhood! Due to this, I've spent this afternoon revamping a Links, Rings and Affiliates section, which you can find in the above menu. I went through and hunted down semi-working links for all of the exchanges I made for the original site. Most of these are in the Wayback Machine or the Geocities Gallery. A few links still exist, though!
I hope to be collecting buttons from Neo sites out there and spreading the link love!
Now that the content is fully online for the Fan Archives, I'm turning my attention to tweaks and improvements for the page. Today, I recreated a number of thumbnails in the Fanart section to make images more consistent.
It seems like some of the earliest thumbnails may not have been originally sized the same as all the rest. So to make the tables consistent, I just slapped the existing thumbnail image on a bright teal background instead of remaking the thumbnail like I really should have. I've fixed all those now, though. Note to self: do things right the first time or you'll end up fixing them 17 years later...
More improvements to come, especially in the art gallery sections!
The Character section of the Fan Archives is now available and complete! See information about the FFIV characters as well as cast interviews written and submitted by fans!
I'm also working on going through the pages and making the colors match properly. The old site was apparantly purple while the new site is blue. I'm making fancy blue scroll bars and updating headers and tables to better fit with the blue theme. This is going to take a while, but all of the content parts of the site are now fully here to view!
All of the art in the Fan Archives Gallery is now uploaded and ready for viewing! This was really a blast from the past for me, especially looking back through all the fanart that folks submitted to the site so long ago. We have:
The Music section of the Fan Archives has arrived! Featuring a library of over 100 FFIV midi files that I've saved from way back in the day, and including fan-written information on sountracks and soundtrack reviews. Back in 2004, these Final Fantasy soundtracks were some of the few that were out there, and all of them had to be imported from Japan!
Sadly, I've discovered that HTML5 no longer allows you to click-to-play MIDI files. Boooo! I did look into some java files on creating playable midis, but it seemed too complicated. Besides, I figure folks would rather download them and play them on their native music players anyhow now days. So the music library is there for you to enjoy!
Again, it's been far too long since I worked on updating this project. I think I've found some of my inspiration to come back to this thanks to the new FFIV Pixel Remaster version, which I have been playing.
Anyhow, site updates! I'm trying to tackle setting the foundation of the Library section on the Fan Archives page. This is turning out to be a much bigger job than I anticipated because I actually had quite a huge library before this site went into hiatus. While I do have all the files uploaded properly, in order for the fiction pages to scroll, I'm going to have to work on updating the CSS and HTML. This means I need to touch the coding on every page in the library, and likely need to see if I can update the stories that are coded in text files, too.
You'll find the following pages working in the Library so far:
Yikes! It's been far too long since I've updated here. My apologies - things came up IRL suddenly after Christmas.
I haven't forgotten about this restoration project, however, and here's proof! I've uploaded the entire Guides/FAQ section to Fan Archives. Nothing screams 1992 like a bunch of ASCII art and .txt file Game FAQs, am I right? And these legit came straight out of the 1990s! I've left everything in tact on this page, including the old contact information (which I can't promise is still relevant). And all of the text files are the originals.
Also included is a link to the translated Japanese guide, Final Fantasy IV Settei Shiryou Hen by RACapowski!
Not bad for a first update!
Merry Christmas Eve!
I was a busy bee yesterday, rearranging the organization of the landing page of this site. I added 88x31 buttons, a guestbook with the old animated quill-book gif I used to use, and topped it off with a sparkle trail on the mouse (which won't carry over to the rest of the site).
I also fixed up the landing page for the Fan Archives section and updated the graphics to higher quality images for the menu and the border. None of the links are working yet, but this will be the first section I restore, bit by bit.
I've only just discovered Neocities. My first thought: restore my old Final Fantasy IV fan site that I used to run from 1999-2007ish. Actually, this site is still up and running today, but it's taken the form of a WordPress CMS rather than a hand-coded site of yore.
And so, I dug up all my old site backups - yes, I saved my old HTML coding from 20 years ago - and am beginning to cobble together a page that used to exist under the name Sygnus Star/Sygnus.org.
Not everything is here yet. Most links don't work. I'll be adding to this over time and posting updates as I go!