davemerrill (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
davemerrill) wrote2023-07-28 11:12 am
davemerrill) wrote2023-07-28 11:12 am
Entry tags:
mister kitty news
Jeez, I didn't even mention this. So what happened towards the end of May was that our domain registration for mister kitty dot org came up for renewal. We renew it through our web host, GoDaddy. Well, for some reason GoDaddy didn't send the registration in on time, the web address became available, and somebody else grabbed it. So everything that was on mister kitty dot org became unavailable.
This was kind of bad. We've had mister kitty dot org since what, 2006? 2007? A long time. We have a lot of readers for Stupid Comics that we've built up over the years who have bookmarked the site, who check it every week, who, you know, are there for us, and suddenly we're not there for them.
GoDaddy could not get the dot org address back. What they did do is get us a dot net address. We're now at www.misterkitty.net So Shain had to spend a weekend going through the entire site and changing all the addresses to misterkitty.net anywhere there was a web address. It was a complete pain.
Of course it happened right before Anime North so every panel I had a Mister Kitty slide inserted into, well, that had to be changed. The promo postcards all got thrown out and I printed some new ones. Every bit of social media had to get updated.
Our numbers haven't recovered and I don't think they'll ever get back to where they were. The internet was a different place 15 years ago, it was a lot easier to get the word out and get people to look at your site and come back to it on a regular basis. All we can do now is to try to let people know we're now at www.misterkitty.net instead of the dot org.
At some point the .org address might become available (we did grab the .ca address as a pre-emptive strike). Until that day we're going to be constantly reminding everybody that we're at mister kitty dot net now.
It was a long day of conversation about whether or not we wanted to keep doing the site at all. The temptation to let it burn down and start over was pretty tempting. To just publish on the Patreon or just make it a substack or a wordpress blog? It would be easier. But I'm glad we kept a website. Too much of the internet is owned by two or three corporations all churning out the same corporate content, and having a space where we can publish whatever we want is still pretty attractive to old zine-makers like us.
Anyway, remember, we're now misterkitty.net. Bookmark the site, post it on your socials, tell your friends and family. Seriously, tell people.
This was kind of bad. We've had mister kitty dot org since what, 2006? 2007? A long time. We have a lot of readers for Stupid Comics that we've built up over the years who have bookmarked the site, who check it every week, who, you know, are there for us, and suddenly we're not there for them.
GoDaddy could not get the dot org address back. What they did do is get us a dot net address. We're now at www.misterkitty.net So Shain had to spend a weekend going through the entire site and changing all the addresses to misterkitty.net anywhere there was a web address. It was a complete pain.
Of course it happened right before Anime North so every panel I had a Mister Kitty slide inserted into, well, that had to be changed. The promo postcards all got thrown out and I printed some new ones. Every bit of social media had to get updated.
Our numbers haven't recovered and I don't think they'll ever get back to where they were. The internet was a different place 15 years ago, it was a lot easier to get the word out and get people to look at your site and come back to it on a regular basis. All we can do now is to try to let people know we're now at www.misterkitty.net instead of the dot org.
At some point the .org address might become available (we did grab the .ca address as a pre-emptive strike). Until that day we're going to be constantly reminding everybody that we're at mister kitty dot net now.
It was a long day of conversation about whether or not we wanted to keep doing the site at all. The temptation to let it burn down and start over was pretty tempting. To just publish on the Patreon or just make it a substack or a wordpress blog? It would be easier. But I'm glad we kept a website. Too much of the internet is owned by two or three corporations all churning out the same corporate content, and having a space where we can publish whatever we want is still pretty attractive to old zine-makers like us.
Anyway, remember, we're now misterkitty.net. Bookmark the site, post it on your socials, tell your friends and family. Seriously, tell people.