Templum Bellonae

You may notice that some of the fandoms listed in the sidebar have gone missing. In an effort to make that list shorter, I’ve deleted some of the smaller fandoms, and moved their recommendations to the ‘Miscellaneous’ category.

Well, I took the plunge and upgraded to WP 2.5. Everything went well, and this new version is pretty spiffy, with lots of improvements.

I took the opportunity to tweak the look of the site a bit, but most of the changes are technical rather than visual. I did make some improvements to the site’s feed, so at least in Google Reader it now works properly—you can see all the information about the story, and click straight through to read the story without having to visit the site. I’m not sure about other feed readers, though.

I also posted a few new recs (only five more in the to-be-rec’d folder waiting to be written up—hurrah!)

As always, if you notice anything that doesn’t work, or have any questions or comments about the site or the recs, leave a comment on any entry.

Happy reading!

To any fanfic authors who happen to use this site,

Please, please, could you remember to include a very important piece of information, preferably on every page of your website and in the header of every story you write?

Your NAME.

Even when you’re posting a story on your own livejournal, it would be really nice to have some assurance that geekgirlslashwriter223 is actually the name you want your stories listed under.

When I read a really great story, it gives me no pleasure to list it as written by “Unknown”, so help me out, okay?

Thanks.

Apparently this site, unknown to me, has been syndicated on livejournal. So if you have an lj, and want recs to appear on your friends page, go to Templum Bellonae’s livejournal syndication page.

Sorry, no new recs right now (although maybe some later tonight—I have a whole load of SGA fics I want to rec, along with some leftover Angel recs I didn’t get around to.) I feel the need to say something about canon authors vs. fanfic, because I’m vaguely annoyed by some critiques of fanfiction as a phenomenon that I’ve read in the past day or two.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a whole bunch of links I’ve been meaning to check out but haven’t gotten around to yet. My “To be rec’d” folder really needed to be cleared out.

The Spander Files

Xander Xtreme

Gundam Wing recs @ crack_van

Smallville slash recs by lizzypaul

Elemental Vision

DVD commentary for Down to the Sea in Ships.

Fang Fetish Awards

Shadowcast’s Buffyverse recs page

Herself Recommends: Buffy fanfic

Snape/Lupin Starter Story List

Gundam Wing recs

Smallville Recommendations Page

Okay, so the site now has a new look. For spring, I guess. It’s still a little rough around the edges, so if you find anything doesn’t work right, or look right, please leave a comment or send me an email about it.

Comments on most entries are still turned off for the time being.

I’m revamping the site right now, so some things might be a little buggy at the moment. I’ve also had to turn comments off for all recommendations temporarily.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m definitely ready for the site to get a new look.

Well, it looks like my fanfic dry spell is over, with 40 new fics rec’d in the last two-and-a-half weeks. Lots of Star Trek (DS9 and TOS), due South, and Smallville, as well as a new fandom (Gordon Korman), and even a Baby-sitters’ Club fic (under Miscellaneous)

It’s been years since I first discovered Gordon Korman’s young adult and children’s fiction, but re-reading a few of his books today (This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall, Go Jump in the Pool!, Beware the Fish!), I realized that they’re just as funny as they were when I was ten. I never would have thought to look for GK slash, so finding it was just an excellent pre-Christmas surprise.

Well, I made the leap and upgraded to WordPress 2. It looks excellent so far. You shouldn’t notice any changes to the front end of the site; the only improvements should be to the back end, the part that only I can see.

If you have any problems with the new site, please leave a comment or email me to let me know about it.

It’s been one year and almost 20,000 visitors since I started this site. It seems like so much longer. Happy birthday, Templum Bellonae!

A few weeks ago, I promised an update with all the stories I’ve been saving up. I’ve finally delivered on that promise, with 22 new recommendations.

I’d like to thank Parhelion and Shirasade for recommending my site; I’m glad you find it useful. Check out Parhelion’s Recommendations and The Reading Room for links to other fanfic and original fiction sites of all kinds. If you like this site, you might like their other choices, too.

Please note that I have added a new fandom category: Mary Renault. Fanfic for The Last of the Wine, The Persian Boy, etc. has all been moved from Classics to Mary Renault.

I haven’t posted many recs in the past few weeks, but I will! I have a list of stories to recommend; I just have to get around to it. I’ll be doing more around the site when school starts again next week - there’s nothing like having class assignments to make me want to read fanfic.

For anyone who’s interested, I now have a real-life blog at blog.bellonae.com. Mostly, I think it’s going to be a reading journal, but who knows?

For those of you who don’t know it, or for those who, like me, keep forgetting it, www.archive.org is the home of the Internet Archive, which has a very special and wonderful tool called the Wayback Machine.

The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

The Wayback Machine allows you to search for archived copies of particular pages; it’s kind of like the google cache, but without a time limit.

It means that I can post links to stories that have disappeared without warning, but I’m not going to do this if it’s clear that the author has removed the story herself and doesn’t want it to be available anymore.

So, if you read a rec that has a broken link, look for the link to the Wayback Machine for an old, archived copy of the story.

If any authors have taken their stories offline on purpose, let me know and I’ll take down the link.

I’ll have to be quick, since I’m supposed to be leaving for the weekend in 20 minutes. As you may have noticed, I’ve moved the site (again). Sorry for the inconvenience. Please remember to change your bookmarks.

I’m gradually moving everything I host over to BlueHost, which offers excellent service for blogs, something I had a little trouble with over at SimpleNet. The site should be working as well as usual; if it’s not, please drop me a line.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

I went through the site this evening and fixed a bunch of broken or missing links that I or others had found. There were fourteen, which I thought was pretty high. Anyway, thanks to everyone who emailed me about the broken links. I really appreciate it!

Unfortunately, one story has been removed entirely and three are currently MIA. I hope to find new links for the latter eventually; for now they’re filed under Broken Link.

As always, if you spot a broken link, or just have a question or a comment, email me at bellona_3@yahoo.ca or leave a comment on any post. I reply to everything I get, usually within a day or two.

Oh, and a happy belated Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians. I hope your weekend was as good as mine.

I got my first spam on this blog today. I wonder why it started now. I mean, is there some way spammers (or their automated spam-bots) check to see how busy your site is before they make the effort? I’m curious. And annoyed, but - spam. Duh.

On a related note, I’m happy to say that Templum Bellonae has had over 10,000 hits since I started it nine months and two days ago. It’s always nice to know that your efforts are appreciated and, when using the internet, that you’re not the only one reading what you write.

Finally, it looks like all the major changes to the site are finished, and everything’s up and running again as well as it ever did. As ever, if you find a problem, leave a comment on this entry (or any entry) or email me at bellona_3@yahoo.ca.

There are now four different ‘themes’ to choose from, using the dropdown menu in the sidebar. Choosing a new theme changes the look of the site but not the content. The default theme is Ocadia, because I like it the best. The old theme is Green Notebook, which is the only one that I had anything to do with designing (and it shows ;-)). Ocadia, Thirteen and Daisy Rae Gemini were all downloaded from Alex King’s WordPress theme design competition. If you have a WordPress blog of your own and haven’t checked out the site yet, you should - there are a lot of amazingly beautiful themes there. The three I chose were the ones I liked best and which best suited the way my site is organized.

Fandoms are no longer organized in groups (with a few exceptions); all the fandoms which have two or more stories recommended are listed in the sidebar; stories which are unique recommendations in their fandom are listed under ‘miscellaneous’. A few overlapping fandoms are listed together under ‘classics’: fanfic based on greek and roman myth, on the works of Homer and Mary Renault, and on the movies Troy and Alexander. As usual, fanfic from all The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager are all listed together under ’star trek’.

There are very few pairings listed in the sidebar, for various reasons. Most of the pairings on this site aren’t there, so don’t be discouraged just because your favourite pairing isn’t on the list.

The other categories are pretty much unchanged.

I hope you enjoy the new look of the site. Happy reading!