A Few Cutbacks
(source: starwarsfanworks.com, 01-23-05)

Just a heads-up for Fanworks visitors out there:

Star Wars Fanworks is hosted by the very gracious (and supportive) folks over at Nexcess.Net. It's a great relationship, and we've been blessed with a great deal that helps keep Fanworks and the other StarWarz.com sites going. Every so often, though, we take stock of our current file storage usage and try to find ways to cut down on that use, so that we're not over-burdening Nexcess.Net. They don't complain, but we consider it part of common courtesy to do so when they are being so gracious to us.

Thus, it's come time, again, to start looking into ways to save some space. You'll notice a few things taking place that may have already gone through by the time you read this.

First, now that we're told that the TFN Fan Films links for Digital Llama Radio (both pre-TFN and TFN-aired) and Digital Llama 2.0 are now no longer pointing to the long-defunct DigitalLlama.com, we no longer need to host mirrors of the shows. Thus, the DLR and DL 2.0 pages have reverted to having an episode directory, with a link pointing over to the official download site, as we already do with Star Wars en Direct. (You'll find that Digital Llama Players Guide, which is not TFN-hosted, is still all available here, since no other download locations exist these days.)

Second, in order to lighten the load on his server (not ours, but we'll note it here anyhow), the video recording files of the Dragon*Con 2003 fan audio panel have been removed from the Convention Coverage area in the Features section. The audio version of the panel, just like with Dragon*Con 2004, remains available via the Fanworks webspace.

Both of those changes are already done. However, there will be more pruning taking place by next weekend.

1. The jewel case inserts for Second Strike, Anthology, and Resurrection will be removed.

2. The audio trailers for completed projects that are currently hosted on the Fanworks account, rather than the creators' own websites, will be removed. That includes Resurrection, Smuggler's Run, and Betrayed Federation.

3. The "proof-of-concept" and trailer for non-completed projects (like Gold Squadron) will be removed when those projects are completed, so they remain, but only for now.

4. Several files for the first-ever fan audio drama (and thus the longest already available, so most people should have what they need already), Second Strike, will soon be removed as well. This includes the "Call on Me" musical file, the Jaren Valkan Blooper Reel, and, most importantly, all of the individual scene files that are currently up to make CD-burning easier. We will keep the full act files available, but since those are the most frequently downloaded versions of 2S, there is no sense in using double the space to keep up the individual scene-by-scene files as well.

5. The Jedi Duel proof-of-concept file for Anthology will be removed, as it was proof of mixing prowess for Steve Fluharty, who has now proven that several times in the Anthology series, Holo-Advertisements, and Nothing Changes.

Not all of these changes are set in stone yet (particularly those for projects not directly under the auspices of Fanworks operator Nathan P. Butler's Rayzur's Edge Audio), but this is the most likely outcome of the "pruning" process. Thus, if you want any of those trailers, jewel case inserts, scene-by-scene Second Strike files, and so forth, you'll need to get them before next weekend. They should be disappearing right around that time.