Changes…

As you all have doubtless noticed, this site is changing in ways that I hope will provide larger, more vivid images, make text easier to read, and generally be more aesthetically appealing. Obviously it will take a lot of work to make the all the changes fully backward-compatible and I shall be working on that diligently for the next few weeks (yes, I know the screenplays are now messed up). Kindly bear with me here.

Possible site design overhaul

For the first time since I started this site more than two years ago I am considering a design overhaul. I am hoping to achieve a couple of things.

A wider main panel, with substantially wider image sizes, to make the Bespoke Art more visible and the Tales of Gnosis College more vivid and easier to read.
Provide higher contrasts and make the site more visually interesting.
Add a left-hand sidebar and a footer area, possibly with the aim of posting advertising. I still honor the ideals involved in amateur creation, and please make no mistake, I intend for the content here always to be free. But the costs of creating and promoting all this content are considerable, and I can do more here if I can recoup at least some of them. Think of it this way — earnings can be plowed back into the Erotic Mad Science project, and that will mean more art for everyone.
Due notice of adult content. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t ever feel tempted to do this. But we don’t live in an ideal world. There are just too many people out there who can’t stand to see someone else having a good time, and I need to at least try to ward them off.

Nothing is set down in stone right now, but I do have a proposed draft site, using a customized version of Sayontan Sinha’s remarkably powerful and flexible WordPress theme Suffusion. Here’s a sneak peak:

You can click for larger. It’s set up with examples of different kinds of posts I do, as well as a sample page and a sample comic, and even dummy ads where I think they would be likely to appear. You don’t have to limit yourself to just the picture, though. It’s set up in a subdomain of its own and I invite you to head on over and take a look around. Let me know what you think, either by leaving comments here, there, or just getting touch with me directly. All sincere and non-abusive opinions will be very welcome.

The “nonspoiler” tag

A loyal reader of both this blog and the Tales of Gnosis College wrote in to tell me that he would like to read the Tales on a monthly basis and read the blog only for other content, such as reviews or teaser material for forthcoming chapters. However, it’s hard for him to read only this material, since he has to skip over the daily post-outs of the Tales to do so. Can I do something?

No problem! For many people, reading a complete chapter every month is a more natural experience than reading a page every day. I am happy to accommodate you, and the magic of WordPress makes it easy.

I have create a new tag called “nonspoiler,” which will be added going forward to posts that are not daily posts of the comic. It will include teaser material for the comic and other material for Erotic Mad Science (like book reviews, movie reviews, found imagery, site link announcements, and so forth). If this is what you would prefer to read on your main page you can either just add this URL to your favorites:

https://eroticmadscience.com/tag/nonspoiler/

Or you can just click on the “Nonspoiler” link, which you can find on the right-hand side of the site, just below the search box.

I hope you find this functionality useful. As always, I welcome feedback on the reader experience.

Some site upgrades

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to fix or improve some things here at Erotic Mad Science. You should notice the following.

CSS weirdness now fixed. In the past you might have noticed that whenever two posts containing custom Per-Post CSS (normally posts containing paracinematic or paracomix scripts with their special formatting elements) appeared on the same page, things would get a little screwed up, with the fonts being thrown into Courier and strange messages appearing at the tops of pages. I noted this problem before. I have now fixed it by adopting site-wide CSS standards for these elements. Stupid of me not to have noticed it before, but at least it’s fixed now.

Broken search function fixed. If you tried to search from the box that came up when you got a “Page Not Found” message at Erotic Mad Science, in the past, it would direct a search to Michael Janzen‘s site instead. There’s nothing sinister about that: Michael Janzen is the creator of the clean, neat Basic Simplicity template that Erotic Mad Science uses. But it led to a glitch in the code for the site, which I have now found and fixed.

Parascreenplay font weight changed. If you look at the various scripts found here at Erotic Mad Science, you’ll find that I have thickened the font weight globally. The previous Courier New font had the advantage of being a monospace font (a must for screenplays) and globally supported, but was thin and pale-gray under most browsers. I hope the new font weight is more visually pleasing and readable.

Tag cloud added. I’ve added a tag cloud on the right-hand sidebar.

Tags improved. I am in the process of re-tagging many old posts to allow readers of the site to find thematic threads more readily. If you have any suggestions about tags you would like to see, by all means please let me know either by commenting on this post or by contacting me.

A note on editorial policy: as I go back and improve the tags on old posts I do occasionally spot and correct typos, as well as other editorial mistakes. Sorry I have to do this; I confess to not being the world’s greatest self-editor. As a matter of policy I won’t call attention to corrections of mere errata, but if any substantive updates are made, I shall definitely identify them with test noting the time and nature of the update.

Thank you and now back to regularly-scheduled mad science.

Some housekeeping items

It’s time to bring people up to date on some minor site policy items here at Erotic Mad Science.

Comments and comment spam. In an ideal world, there would be no need to moderate comments at all. We do not live in an ideal world. There are a lot of comment spammers out there, and unfortunately there are also some people who troll or otherwise behave abusively In order to keep this blog from being spammed up, first-time commenters here at EroticMadScience.com are moderated by default. I will be as prompt as I can about approving bona fide comments, but please keep in mind that it will not always be possible for me to respond immediately to all comments. Good things come to those who wait…

Also, please note that there appears to be a new trend in comment spam in which someone (or, far likely, some bot) leaves an utterly generic comment on a post (e.g. “I really liked this post which was really interesting and I have bookmarked your blog to visit it in the future.” The comment then contains a link back to some spammy website. This tactic appears to be an attempt to escape moderation by making the blogger feel good about verself and let the comment through. The comments are clearly spam to a discerning eye, and I intend to be aggressive about deleting them. I do not want to delete bona fide comments unnecessarily, of course, but getting rid of spam is necessary both to preserve my sanity and the reader’s experience. So a suggestion: if you are a first-time commenter, it would be a good idea not to write a purely generic comment, i.e., try to write your comment in a way that refers to the post and shows that you are a human being, not a bot.

Trading links. I have received a few requests from commercial sites to trade links. I’m sorry, but no. My policy is that links here serve two functions: either to show the source of material and give proper credit to those to whom it is due, or to provide something that will be of interest to readers of this blog. When I provide a link, I want my readers to be able to trust that I am doing it because I’ve looked at the link and have formed my own judgment that what’s there is at least potentially interesting to someone reading a given post, or page, or the site as a whole. To provide links simply as a part of a quid pro quo, even one that might benefit this site by raising it in search-engine rankings, is at least slightly abusive of my readers.

The rule is this: if you’re interesting to me or my readers, I shall to link to you, plain and simple. If I am interesting to you or your readers, then you should link to me. Plain and simple.

Thanks, and now back to your regularly-scheduled mad science.

Added 10a: With respect to the “show that you are a human being and not a bot” remark above, I should note that as a thaumatophile and sci-fi fan I would remiss in not adding, “unless of course your are such an awesome bot that you can convince me that you are human.” In that case, you’re more than welcome to comment!