Updates

This is a announcement update of donations and advertising for the General category.

Wow, time really flies, doesn’t it? It seems like 2007 just arrived and we’re already into the holiday season once again.

Starting this month (today in fact!) we are running our annual holiday donation drive. Over the last two years these donation drives have ensured the TFL Network a place on the Internet with Beachcomber, our web hosting provider. Beachcomber is a lot less patchy than previous hosting providers, which is essential for the satisfaction of our visitors. The donation drives also ensure that the Senior Staff isn’t funding the Network out of our own pockets. We love you guys, we truly do – but we’re not made out of money!

At the moment TFL is doing quite well – we have just around $1,000 in Paypal and Text Ads, which is keeping us steady. Despite this apparent good state, we want to ensure that this doesn’t change for the coming year. Our current donations and text ads help keep us going, but we like to keep a bit extra on hand just in case things dry up. You never know when you’ll need an emergency fund, after all.

At the moment, we offer a variety of “web goodies” for our donators. The donation package for any amount allows private messaging on the board with fellow donators, staff members and Senior Staff. Along with this really useful privilege, donators who send over $20 receive a zip package of useful web resources – brushes and textures, even wallpapers to decorate your computer and show your support for TFL!

As many of you know, we also have a banner rotation available for you to advertise your fanlistings, collectives, fansites, etc. For a limited time only, you can sign up for the banner rotation and have TWO sites added to the rotation for the price of just ONE. That’s right, 2 for 1! Just follow the normal procedure for the first site, and then send a 2nd form for the 2nd site you wish us to add. You will receive only ONE invoice charging you for the price of ONE site, but both sites will be added for the length of time that you purchased. So whether you want to advertise for 1 month or an entire year, you will get an additional site advertised for free.

As always, we encourage donations both big and small and we appreciate everything that our wonderful visitors have contributed over the years. (However, please keep in mind that Paypal charges us fees, therefore donations LESS than $1 are generally eaten up entirely by those fees.)

TFL wishes everyone a joyous and prosperous holiday season. We appreciate everything the visitors put into the Network and we are incredibly grateful for your continuing contributions.

This is a announcement update of e-mail list for the General category.

This is just a reminder about the TFL.org mailing list as a way to keep up-to-date with what is happening with the Network.

Any time there is a significant change to TFL (new rules, downtime, category additions) we will make a post to this group as well as the blog and message board. We expect that these announcements will only be made once or twice a month, so the group should not be spammed. Also, only the TFL.org senior staff are allowed to post there, so there will be no off-topic discussions.

This is a good way to have no surprises about new rules, or know what is going on if the Network has downtime. :)

This is a announcement update of e-mail loss for the General category.

Due to a configuration error in our mail server e-mail sent to us between the 24th of September to 12pm GMT time today (September 27) has not been received. To the best of our knowledge all application, finished, closed and update information forms have arrived as per normal.

If you have replied to a troubles e-mail, or e-mailed a member of the category or senior staff between the 23rd and 27th of September please re-send your e-mail.

As always, if you are concerned about the receipt of an e-mail, please contact the appropriate staffer via the message board.

We apologise for this inconvenience!

This is a announcement update of fanlisting requirements for the General category.

We have recently had questions about whether owners are required to update a member’s country if requested. By this we do not mean listing fictional countries such as ‘Middle Earth’, but owner’s taking into consideration changing world events that may not be reflected in a scripts such as Enthusiast or phpFanbase’s countries list (a good example being Serbia/Montenegro splitting into individual countries).

We have decided that as a name, e-mail and country are the requirements for joining a fanlisting, that allowing members to have their country listed properly is something that will be troubles worthy if an owner refuses to edit the country.

Since we cannot expect owners to always know when a country has changed, we will not immediately place you on troubles. You will be e-mailed by the troubles staffer and made aware of the situation so that you can make the appropriate changes. However, if after this is done you still have not fixed the problem, you will be placed on troubles.

With scripts such as Enthusiast and phpFanbase (and, we assume, any other available scripts) these changes are relatively painless, and we will detail how to do this below. If owners wish to see a full list of countries, they may check out this list or we suggest websites like Flags for more information.

We should point out that we are not getting into a debate about ‘what is a country’ – we do realise that there are districts in countries that people would prefer to be their own nation. We don’t want to cause hassle for owners with grey areas such as this. For our purposes we will be going off sites such as Flags and the current UN countries list.

Editing Enthusiast:
Go into your main Enthusiast folder and find countries.inc.php – this is the file you will need to edit. However, the current Enthusiast build (3.1.2) does have an up-to-date list of countries so you should not need to edit anything if you have this build.

Editing phpFanbase:
Find the file join.php – your countries list is located here. Open and scroll to find the list of countries. Be careful with editing this file as it contains coding, and you don’t want to edit that!

If you have a script that you would like us to list the editing instructions for, please contact the senior staff. If owners have questions about this announcement and what it may mean for them, please feel free to ask :)

This is a announcement update of network policies for the General, Miscellaneous, Objects category.

This announcement is regarding TFL’s stance on e-mail change requests/fanlisting downtime reports and troubles immunity. While we, as a Network, will attempt to respond to requests on a timely basis, we currently can not give you a guarantee that your fanlisting will not slip through the cracks, or that we will be able to inform our staffers/process the request as soon as it is received.

For this reason, we urge owners submitting these forms to keep an eye on our updates blog and also their inboxes. If you have not received a reply from us confirming that we have passed on your downtime information, or that your e-mail address has been changed, within 3-4 days after submitting it then keep an eye out for problems with your fanlistings.

While we feel that as a Network, we have a responsibility to act promptly to requests, things can hold us up. This means that having you keeping an eye out for your fanlistings will ensure that your fanlisting will not be troubled or removed from the Network unnecessarily.

However, in the event that your form is received and not responded to within a reasonable amount of time and you receive a troubles notice for your fanlistings, you are obligated to contact us as soon as possible to inquire about your pending form(s). If it is due to an error on our part (be it a lag-time in response or otherwise) we will remove the troubles issue from your fanlisting’s record. However, we must stress that you contact us as soon as possible so we can begin to resolve the issue for you.

Also, we have been discussing the Network’s stance towards drugs and narcotics. It has been two years since the Network imposed its rule of not re-approving fanlistings for ‘hard drugs’.

We are not changing our current stance towards drugs that are illegal (i.e., heroin), however, we are allowing our staffers to consider subjects that may be in the grey area on a case-by-case basis. For subjects that are legal in some countries or used for medical purposes (i.e., marijuana), we feel that approval is okay. Furthermore, we have relaxed our stance on the approval of drug paraphenalia. We leave it up to the Miscellaneous staffer to use his or her best judgment at the time of the approval regarding whether the subject should be listed in our directory. If you are unsure if your fanlisting would be open for application, please feel free to approach the category staffer (Miscellaneous) or the senior staff for discussion.

This is a update of for the General category.

We are posting this to clarify two of TFLs rules for applying for and running a fanlisting listed at TFL. The first is a clarification of last updated dates on your fanlistings and the second is what you can use as an example URL when applying for a fanlisting.

Rule Clarification: Javascript/PHP date modifiers
This is an addendum to our current rules relating to the use of javascript as a means to automatically change a fanlisting’s update date to reflect the current date of the server or visitor’s computer clock. This technique has been used in the past by some fanlisting owners to create the illusion that a fanlisting has updated (when it has not) so as to avoid it being troubled for not updating.

Currently the rule states that your fanlisting must not use a JavaScript-generated ‘last updated’ date.

We are expanding this rule to include the use of PHP scripts written solely to create a false update date in order to avoid the troubles list.

The rule is now your fanlisting must not use a JavaScript or PHP-generated last update date intended to create an inaccurate and false update date. Update dates must reflect the last member update.

This clarification is effective immediately. Fanlistings suspected of using these scripts will be troubled as per the usual troubles process. Fanlistings will not be troubled unless there is specific evidence to suggest that the update date is not legitimate.

Regarding Example URLs
We would just like to remind those of you applying for fanlistings that when you apply the URL you submit must be your own work (both graphics and HTML). We have nothing against owners that hire/ask other people to build their fanlistings, help them out and so forth. However, when you initially apply for the fanlistings, it is a requirement of TFL that you show that you have web design abilities.

Applications that submit URLs that are not their own work will be rejected.

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please feel free to ask at the message board, or contact the Senior Staff.

This is a update of for the Academia, Actors, Actresses, Adult, Advertising/TV Channels, Albums, Animals, Animation, Arts and Design, Authors/Writers, Awards, Calendar Events, Characters: Book/Movie, Characters: TV, Comics, Companies, Computer Miscellany and Internet, Directors/Producers, Episodes, Fashion/Beauty, Food/Drinks, Games, General, History/Royalty, Hobbies and Recreation, Literature, Magazines/Newspapers, Miscellaneous, Models, Movies, Music Miscellany, Musicians: Bands/Groups, Musicians: Female, Musicians: Male, Mythology/Religion, Nature, Objects, People Miscellany, Personalities, Places, Politics and Organisations, Radio, Relationships: Book/Movie, Relationships: Real Life, Relationships: TV, Songs: Bands/Groups 0-M, Songs: Bands/Groups N-Z, Songs: Female Solo, Songs: Male Solo, Songs: Various, Sports, Sports Entertainment, Stage/Theatre, TV Shows, TV/Movie/Book Miscellany, Toys/Collectibles, Transportation, Webmasters, Websites category.

As you may know, TFL has been having a number of problems with sending e-mail to Hotmail.com addresses. After further investigation of this problem we have decided to ban the use of Hotmail.com addresses (and its sub-services, hotmail.co.uk; msn.com; live.com). This will affect all applications sent after Sunday May 20, 2007, and all future forms sent by Hotmail users.

Our issues with Hotmail are long-standing and no satisfactory resolution is currently in sight. Since we can not guarantee that TFL e-mails will reach our visitors, and because we have tried all viable solutions to fix this problem, we feel that banning Hotmail addresses is the only solution available to us.

We are in the process of informing fanlisting owners with Hotmail.com e-mail addresses of our problems with the service and how this will affect future interaction with TFL. If you do have a Hotmail.com e-mail address we request that you update your e-mail address at the Network as quickly as possible and supply us with a valid, working non-Hotmail address to list your current and upcoming fanlistings under.

To do this, please e-mail us at emailchanges@thefanlistings.org FROM your current Hotmail.com account, and include your new e-mail address in the body of your e-mail. Please do not use the Change E-mail forms — there is no guarantee that they will send you the appropriate verification e-mail. Please e-mail us directly from your TFL Hotmail account.

If you choose to keep your fanlistings under your Hotmail.com address:

• You risk not receiving important network notices regarding your fanlisting and network changes.
• You will not be able to apply for new fanlistings. Hotmail.com addresses will be rejected by our application form.
• TFL will not take responsibility for non-delivery of TFL e-mail to your inbox. For example, if your fanlistings are troubled and the troubles notice does not arrive in your inbox due to our problems with Hotmail, TFL will not be held responsible if your fanlistings are removed from the network when no troubles response is received from you.

Please Note: We have done our best to contact the 890 Hotmail users listed in our database. If you have not received an urgent notice from TFL regarding Hotmail usage, then your e-mail address bounced for reasons related to: account inactivity, full mailbox, or invalid address.

We have included a full text copy of the e-mail behind the cut for those of you who have not received this message.

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This is a announcement update of TFL Updates for the Academia, Actors, Actresses, Adult, Advertising/TV Channels, Albums, Animals, Animation, Arts and Design, Authors/Writers, Awards, Calendar Events, Characters: Book/Movie, Characters: TV, Comics, Companies, Computer Miscellany and Internet, Directors/Producers, Episodes, Fan Works, Fashion/Beauty, Food/Drinks, Games, General, History/Royalty, Hobbies and Recreation, Literature, Magazines/Newspapers, Miscellaneous, Models, Movies, Music Miscellany, Musicians: Bands/Groups, Musicians: Female, Musicians: Male, Mythology/Religion, Nature, Objects, People Miscellany, Personalities, Places, Politics and Organisations, Radio, Relationships: Book/Movie, Relationships: Real Life, Relationships: TV, Songs: Bands/Groups, Songs: Bands/Groups 0-M, Songs: Bands/Groups N-Z, Songs: Female Solo, Songs: Male Solo, Songs: Various, Sports, Sports Entertainment, Stage/Theatre, TV Shows, TV/Movie/Book Miscellany, Toys/Collectibles, Transportation, Webmasters, Websites category.

Good news! After several test e-mails, TFL e-mails are finally getting where they belong! We are expecting TFL updates to get back up and running shortly. We do apologise for the extended delay with resolving this issue – as Ally said earlier, we were waiting to hear back from e-mail providers and were unable to hurry them along. The senior staff is very grateful to Ally for all her work on this issue!

A warning to all Hotmail.com users – while e-mail is getting through, Hotmail is placing the e-mail into the “Junk Mail” folder. Please be sure to check your Junk Mail folder regularly for TFL mail! Should you find any TFL e-mail in the junk folder, you will need to select “Not Junk” on the e-mail to ensure future e-mail is sent straight to the Inbox.

Staffers will be re-sending e-mail to Hotmail.com users that was sent in early April (before we realised TFL was being blocked).

It will be good to be back up and running again; we have all missed the updates! Be prepared for a busy updating period! :)

This is a announcement update of e-mail problems for the Academia, Actors, Actresses, Adult, Advertising/TV Channels, Albums, Animals, Animation, Arts and Design, Authors/Writers, Awards, Calendar Events, Characters: Book/Movie, Characters: TV, Comics, Companies, Computer Miscellany and Internet, Directors/Producers, Episodes, Fan Works, Fashion/Beauty, Food/Drinks, Games, General, History/Royalty, Hobbies and Recreation, Literature, Magazines/Newspapers, Miscellaneous, Models, Movies, Music Miscellany, Musicians: Bands/Groups, Musicians: Female, Musicians: Male, Mythology/Religion, Nature, Objects, People Miscellany, Personalities, Places, Politics and Organisations, Radio, Relationships: Book/Movie, Relationships: Real Life, Relationships: TV, Songs: Bands/Groups, Songs: Bands/Groups 0-M, Songs: Bands/Groups N-Z, Songs: Female Solo, Songs: Male Solo, Songs: Various, Sports, Sports Entertainment, Stage/Theatre, TV Shows, TV/Movie/Book Miscellany, Toys/Collectibles, Transportation, Webmasters, Websites category.

It has been brought to our attention that mail to hotmail.com, for some accounts, has been bouncing back to TFL with the notice that hotmail.com is blocking it. As hotmail.com is a huge e-mail service, we are holding all TFL updates until we can have TFL unblocked. The senior staff is also currently looking into confirming with other large free e-mail hosts (Gmail; Yahoo) that the Network is not being black-listed.

All TFL updates are being held. Please do not worry about troubled fanlistings being removed or whether your form has gotten through at this stage. Once we have figured out and resolved the e-mail problems, forms will likely be re-sent, or we will have a leniancy period for those e-mail addresses that have recently had problems.

We apologise for these recent problems, we’ve been rather surprised by them too. We will update you as we gather more data about the problems, as well as what solutions we will be seeking (there are several that are free, but a few that may cost the Network financially). Thank you for your patience!

We have a thread over at the board about this issue. Please see here if you have any questions.

This is a update of for the General category.

We’ve just found that Comcast is blocking any TFL e-mail from getting through due to the Network being identified as spammers. We are contacting Comcast to hopefully get TFL unblocked, but we wanted to give a warning to anyone using Comcast that we cannot send e-mails or reply back to you.

We will not be troubling/removing fanlistings under the Comcast e-mails until this problem is resolved, so don’t panic! But you may want to change your e-mail address used at the Network. Also, we are not sure how long TFL has been blocked, you may want to check your currently listed fanlistings as you may have missed some approvals.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the senior staff :)

This is a update of for the General category.

We have recently noticed that approving more popular subjects can take a longer period of time than other applications, especially when staff members require other staff members helping out. This can take a few days to decide and may mean that applications are sent in when the ‘approval process’ has begun.

To ensure that applications are not sent in when the staffer is already deciding an approval, staff members will now list the subject in the database (as an upcoming fanlisting) as follows:

Subject – Approval in Process

So, it would appear: “Winchester, Dean – Approval in Process”. This will make things easier for you, our visitors, to see what is available, rather than spending time on your application if it is already being decided.

Please note: This does not mean we are limiting the time a subject is open. Applications for popular topics will be available for at least a week, if not longer. All we are doing is ensuring that applications are not sent in when subjects are already in the process of being approved.

This is a announcement update of volunteer form problem for the General category.

We have just realised that there was a small problem with our staff volunteer form that meant that forms were not going through. If you volunteered to join our staff between December 21st, 2006 and today, please re-submit your application.

If you want to check if your form has been sent please e-mail us to check.

This is a announcement update of shiny new layout for the General category.

No, you aren’t seeing things, this is TFL’s brand new look! We are pleased to re-launch the network with a fantastic layout made by Emma-Jane of AudioHype. We are thrilled to have such an awesome new look and hope that you like it as much as we do.

As you will notice, there are a number of skins in various colour schemes that you can use. Longtime visitors to the network will remember the days when we allowed visitors to choose their preferred skin, and we loved that idea as much as they did. Therefore, we are thrilled to have this option return!

We’d also like to say a big thanks to our Developer guru, Julie, for her help in getting the layout and skins to work.

We also have new links and the board will be re-vamped shortly. We hope you enjoy the new look and have fun settling on which colour scheme is your favorite. :)

If you notice any technical problems, please let the senior staff know as soon as possible.

This is a reminder update of TFL Layout Competition for the General category.

This is just a final reminder about the TFL Layout Competition. Entries are due by the end of the 15th of January. If you have an entry in the works but it isn’t quite complete yet, please send it in anyway. We realise that extra work will need to be done, so the winning entry will be allowed time to tweak the layout and of course, work with us to ensure it looks fantastic on the main page :)

We look forward to seeing all the fantastic work you have done! :)

This is a update of for the General category.

This is another reminder about the TFL Layout Competition – there is a week left to get your entries in! If you have any questions, please contact the senior staff or ask on the forum thread :)

Also, on the 10th of January TFL celebrates its fourth year of the big re-opening of the Network at our .org home. A little celebration, but still a milestone!

This is a update of for the Companies, General, Personalities category.

For some time now the Senior Staff has contemplated creating a new Companies category. Some TFL visitors may remember that TFL had a Companies/Franchises category several years ago. The decision to create this new category stems from our desire to continue to keep our categories as neat and maneuverable as possible. All further applications for companies should be directed to this new category.

The following subcategories have been moved to the new Companies category:

- Animation: ‘Companies’ subcategory
- Comics: ‘Companies’ subcategory
- CMI: ‘Companies’ subcategory
- Directors/Producers: ‘Companies/Studios’ sub-category
- Games: ‘Game Companies’ subcategory
- Music Miscellany: ‘Record Labels’ subcategory
- Places: ‘Restaurants/Stores/Boutiques’ subcategory

Fanlistings for brands (such as Toyoto cars, fashion brands and toy brands) are still found in their respective categories (Transportation, Fashion/Beauty and Toys/Collectibles).

In addition to this, we have also re-named the “TV/Stage Personalities” category to simply, “Personalities” so the category can cover more than people from TV or the stage to things such as Youtube celebrities etc. We hope this will make this clearer for our visitors. :)

This is a update of for the General category.

This is a big reminder about the TFL Layout Competition! Despite a good deal of interest, we haven’t had any submissions, and the closing date has come and gone. We know that many people are pressed for time during the holiday season, so we are extending the entry submission date until the 15th of January.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the senior staff. Downloads of the current TFL layout can be found here.

This is a update of for the General category.

Hello all!

We apologize for the slight delay in posting this message, but as we hope that most of you are doing as well, we have been busy celebrating the holidays with friends and family.

The attached is just a very small token of appreciation from the staff to all of you for making 2006 such a successful and fun year at TFL. We truly appreciate all of you and without our visitors, TFL would be nothing!

Happy holidays to all, and we hope to have another great year with all of you in 2007.

You can view the attached holiday card at the message board here.

This is a reminder update of number of fanlistings on upcoming for the General category.

We are wanting to remind applicants that TFL limits the number of fanlistings an owner can have on upcoming at any one time. The limits are:

- 6 fanlistings per category
- 20 fanlistings across the Network

These limits are to ensure that owners will finish their fanlistings in the alloted time, and to make life easier for everyone at the Network. Please remember that these limits exist and it is smart not to apply for more than 7 fanlistings at once, or more fanlistings when you already know you have reached the upcoming limit.

Also, if you apply for more fanlistings when you are at your limit the staffer may hold you applications until a later date (meaning you may not be approved at all if it is a popular subject) or ask you to chose which applications you want first.

The best thing to do is be aware of your number of fanlistings on upcoming. It will make it a lot easier for both the staffer and you.

This is a update of announcements for the General category.

We’ve decided that TFL needs a shake up! The current layout has been up for some time now, and while it works fine, we’d like to have a bit of a make-over. Instead of creating a new layout ourselves, we thought it would be fun to ask you, our visitors, to come up with a layout for us.

What is involved:
We want ‘contestants’ to submit a layout for the senior staff that is currently set up on a host (their own domain or free service). The entry should include styling as the layout would appear if on the Network. We will provide all entrants with the current TFL layout (headers; CSS and PHP) as a starting point.
Entrants must keep the current content of the main page intact (i.e., the button rotation; advertising, menu options etc). Styling may be changed (i.e., if you can find a better way to do the menu, you can re-vamp it). The layout does not need to retain the three-column set-up, however it must be functional for the needs of the network.

Things to keep in mind:
- The layout needs to work for everyone – don’t create a layout that will look fantastic in 800×600 resolution, but horrible on anything else.
- The layout must be cross-browser compatible and preferably XHTML and CSS valid. If you are unsure how to make your layout compliant with these particular guidelines, please feel free to ask for help on the forums.
- Keep the colour-scheme viewable! You don’t need to stick to the grey/maroon we have now, but don’t blind everyone with highlighter pink/yellow (unless you can really work it :)).
- Perhaps use a ‘theme’ that TFL can have to promote itself (i.e., we’ve got the globe right now). Keep in mind that we still need to look professional to attract advertisers, but it doesn’t have to be bland or boring!
- Be careful of using fandom images – this is going to be the primary TFL layout, it needs to cover lots of different interests.
- If you want, you can also create a header image for the message board (which we will update to suit the colours of the main site) and link buttons for the Network.

Dates:
The competition is open until the 31st of December. Once entries are closed, the senior staff will go through the entries and select a short-list that will be put to a public poll.
If the votes are close, we may decide to skin the site with several winners.
Winners should be announced early in the new year, along with TFL’s new look! :)

Submitting your design:
Entrants should e-mail the senior staff (seniorstaff@thefanlistings.org) with the following:

Name
Contact E-mail
Domain/Collective URL
URL to the Entry URL
And any comments/information they wish to provide about their entry.

Entries MUST be recieved by the 31st of December. Late entries will not be accepted.

For the Winners:
Apart from seeing your work every time you visit TFL, we will also give the winner credit on the footer of all TFLs pages and on the Credits page. We will also give the winner 3 free months on our button rotation for an eligble site of their choice.

The current layout is available at the message board in this post.