(From this – which I couldn’t actually bring my self to watch, parody it may be)

Some of this is redundant from a forum post I just made, so I’ll quote that first:

Since a recent update in the plugin code, I’ve had one email about the avatar uploads not working (that I fixed for the user via ftp) but I’ve since noticed that a lot of profiles seem to have broken avatars. They hadn’t been posting, so I hadn’t caught it (though maybe if their avatars worked they would have! oh no!)

I had to go in and fix the code myself – apparently there was a problem with the way the plugin author was calling the root directory for the upload script.

The avatar is showing up correctly in that post, so I think the issue is resolved. Unfortunately, I was unable to fix any avatars that didn’t work during the problem period. They had never been uploaded to the avatar directory, so I don’t have the files to re-associate with the user accounts.

Please try again! Let me know if you run into any problems and I’ll get right on it. Now that I know what the cause of the issue was, we should be able to resolve them quickly.

On a side note, since you have to finish your profile on first log in after account creation, I’ve made it so you no longer have to visit your profile page on first visit to the forums. You should now be able to post right away.

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The following books have been updated or placed:

Plastic Man Archives Vol. 6 (Position Corrected)

Starman Omnibus Volume 6 (Updated Contents and Dates)

Superman: Our Worlds At War Book 1 (Changed from a 2 book entry, split to book 1 and book 2. Info changed to reflect this)

Superman: Our Worlds At War Book 2 (Info updated, placed)

Deadman: Deadman Walking (Placed)

We’re currently at about 500 Marvel books with info complete. It’s slow going, but it’s much quicker than updating the DC list is going with it already online.

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Some people have asked how they can help support the site. Well, now that we’re part of the Ebay Partner Network, all the ebay links on the site pay us a little back if someone makes a purchase. So eventually, if we become useful enough to shoppers, we can get that private server we’ve talked about! For now, at least, we’re hoping it pays our monthly shared hosting fees. (We are absolutely committed to always being free for users and as useful as possible – so affiliate programs like Ebay and Amazon are great for us, because it’s the most use for you while letting you support the site!)

I’m a voracious ebay shopper myself, and I’ve got a few favorite sellers. I though I might start a bit of a on again off again column that showcased some amazing ebay deals I’ve found, but which I won’t be going for. Now that I’ve got a lot of the books I’m looking for, it’s time to share some of my ebay hunting knowledge!

First, I want to say – always bid at the last second. It may seem a little shifty, but it’s the only way I’ve found to win on a regular basis. Figure out what price you are comfortable paying and bid that exact price in the last 10 seconds of the auction (minus whatever the shipping cost is, remember that’s usually listed under the item price!)

That way, it won’t go over your maximum price and you will usually get the book for much less than that, since others won’t have much time to respond. It’s called Sniping, and people hate when it happens to others, but watching that clock tick down in anticipation… and then getting the win, well, that’s a good feeling. For rare items, it’s the only way to get what you want, unfortunately. If it goes over your maximum price, just let it go – save a search for the item and wait for it to come around again!

The picture at the top is a lot going on right now from my absolute number one favorite seller, tzbastuff. I’ve gotten every single Showcase Presents volume, all my chronicles, and tons of hardcovers from this guy. Him and I have actually built a relationship over time where he’ll let me know if he’s got something on my pull list – so don’t worry too much about buying something out from under me with him. (Although I’ve actually got half an eye on this complete 100 Bullets lot, though I can’t really afford it.)

His showcase lots were my favorite – you get 8 500ish page books for about 50 bucks plus shipping. Really good deal, and he reposts them on a regular basis. He currently has one Showcase Presents lot, a Batman Chronicles lot, Crisis on Multiple Earths, and Blackest Night, all for bid, so they could go for very cheap. I got my Batman Chronicles books from him for about 30 bucks for the lot – an amazing steal.

Another seller I’m liking a lot right now is fearlessreadersonline. He’s got a bunch of Marvel and DC trades up for pretty cheap. I already got the ones I wanted from him so feel free to go crazy. He had trades up from around 2.50 and tons of hardcovers for under 10 dollars, including some pretty rare ones. I bought my books from him the first day they were posted, and they’ve already gotten here before the other auctions have even ended! Definitely a guy to save in my favorite sellers.

That’s it for this post, but I’ll have more of my favorite sellers to share as I see good deals pop up.

I’ve done amazingly well with collecting through ebay and I’m really happy to be able to share the wealth in a way that supports this site as well! Hopefully you’ll find some really good deals and we’ll all be the better for it.

Any click to Ebay helps (though purchases help a lot more, I think!) and anything you buy on Amazon after you click one of our Amazon links sends us a 4% kickback. I think this system is preferable to donate button or something, because you get a book or two for your trouble!

I’m going to start a forum thread for ebay finds, so feel free to ask me any questions you have (or your own hot ebay tips!) in the comments here or over there!

Visit Sweet Ebay Deals in the Forum!

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Just a little update to note some changes to the front page and some content. First of all, I corrected a couple minor typos in Crisis For Infinite Nerds – bigger revisions will be coming later at some point.

I added a little thing that notes how many entries there are from the blog right on the little blog header on the front page.

I also increased the amount of featured content in the featured content bar to 8 and made it so reviews are included in the rotation. We’ll see how that works for now (I haven’t quite decided if it’s too distracting or if it’s a useful feature.)

I’m thinking about making it so the most recent two entries show up instead of just one – let me know if you guys think that’s a good idea. I don’t want the homepage to be too cluttered, but if we often have a couple updates a day when we’re running strong and I don’t want people to be required to go to the blog archive just to catch up on the most recent news. Best way to get it is still the RSS feed, of course.

Finally I added the lists, filtering, and drop down tag boxes for characters and creators to the sidebar on the home page.

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The first item to deal with today is the Monster Society of Evil collection that was published back in 1989. This book (though titled similarly to the modern Captain Marvel trade) collected Captain Marvel Adventures 22-56, so it’s been placed when they came out around 1943-1945. This book is really hard to find, and it’s one of the few I’d kill to have in my collection – but can’t pay the going price for (currently over 400 dollars in most places!)

Second, I’ve placed a couple books from the Focus Imprint:

Hard Time: 50 To Life

Kinetic

These two trades aren’t really in the DC universe, but the Focus imprint never really took off and I have a feeling they will be the only stuff collected from it. As such, I’m treating the two books much like other Elseworlds or Out of Continuity collections and just placing them by date. If they were a significant ongoing series, I might give them their own list or include them on Self Contained, but since we’re including stuff like Watchmen and Camelot, we misewell include the modern experiments as well, to give an idea of what DC was up to at the time.

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