February 3, 2010 update: Lots of updates today!!! First of all, Due East is going exclusive! That's right. This has been a long time coming, but it's time for dueeastcomic.com to be Due East's main home. I am seriously considering making our one mirror at Rampage Network, because I like the setup they seem to have, but that will require some more research. In addition, a number of our friends from Drunk Duck host their comics there.

I'm not going to go on some rant about Drunk Duck. Due East had its first real "home" there and the community and admins welcomed us. We even won "Best Spiritual Comic" and were nominated for "Most Profound Comic" there in 2008. Due East developed a group of loyal and wonderful readers there and we hope they will join us here! We would like to develop a new DE Community right here! But we'll need your help and, of course, time.

I was interviewed! Yes, on January 22, 2010, I was asked to be on a weekly webcomics-related podcast called The Villain's Corner (TVC). TVC is named after the hosts' webcomic "The Villain Next Door" and they interview all kinds of webcomic creators. We had a great time! During the 90-minute Q & A session -- in which callers, who were themselves comics creators, freely interacted with me and the show's hosts -- I had the opportunity to talk about what makes Due East the kind of comic that it is as well as my testimony and views on a wide range of topics. I was pleased and honored at how respectful the hosts and the audience was. Please give it a listen (click the player below). You won't be bored!

Website updates: I took out the cbox (chatterbox) system because it was just sitting there collecting cyberdust. Instead, I'm going to focus on interactive commenting for the site.

I'm in the process of adding a new commenting system, however, that I think will be a nice addition. As appealing as Comic Press is, I just don't have the patience to implement it right now, even if it is free. We were using Haloscan for our comments but Haloscan is shutting down and reimagining themselves as something called Echo because their old coding system was breaking down.

From my initial look through their website and tinkering with their product, Echo is a lot better! It's much more integrated, easily installed, customizable and only $12 a year to implement. We're using the 30-day free trial right now, testing it on Due East Book One as an experiment. I should have it in place by the end of today (pages 1 - 10 are transitioned already), so feel free to give your input on the new commenting system. It does require a login but you can use Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, Blogger and a number of others. There should be an easy way you can log in to comment and this will help deflect the spambots from the lower depths.

It does take a few seconds (up to about 15 seconds at the most) for pages to load, so I know about that already. Hopefully, Echo will clear that up in short order. I'll give them some feedback on it.

In other news, I'm starting to think DE Blog may not be necessary. This little spot right here on the front page should do the trick, unless we get a whole lot busier than we are right now. If that happens, we'll still have it available to us and I'll use it again. As far as DE Forum, I'll have to get back to that. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week...I can't do this all at once, ya know! (Heh.)

I'll continue to keep you updated as things develop...

Sincerely,
Allen Steadham