The Chat Room is Back!

September 25, 2022

Things are taking longer than expected on the website front, but one thing that is already back… is our chat room!

Once upon a time, we used IRC for the chat room, but that technology has faded and is not really supported by the current model of the web. So we’ve gone over to Discord, and have just relaunched the Chat Room there!

If you’ve never used Discord, but were a staple of the old chat room, a member’s kid who shall remain nameless refers to IRC as “Discord for old people,” which made us all look for a bottle of Geritol on the spot. 😆 But trust us, if you liked the old IRC chat room, you will love using the new Discord room. We hope to see you there, and to keep updating you (here and there) with more information as we get it!

Things are still slow on the development end here, largely because our tech staff finally shed both Long Covid and unemployment and have a lot fewer hours to devote to the rebuild. But we are still working on it, we promise!

Love,
The AoVD Team

We haven’t forgotten you…

April 7, 2022

Things have just been taking longer than we had hoped. We will have more information soon, but we’re still a few months away from a relaunch. We are, however, now able to reveal what’s taking so long, because it’s gone live on one of our sister sites. We’re rebuilding the archive in an ultra-portable form, where you can read it online or download any/all of the stories as printable PDFs… or as full-fledged eBooks that you can load into your Kindle or other preferred eReader and take with you forever. That way, if the site ever goes down again, you’ll always have them.

To see this in action, you can check out Ardath Rekha’s website, which officially relaunched the other day. It took about a solid two-month period of coding and preparation to get her site ready to launch, and she only had 44 stories and articles. Between the materials that we had already archived, and those we were planning on archiving before the site went dark, we have almost 700 pieces to work with, so it’s going to take at least a few more months. We may bring some other, smaller areas back online in the interim, if we can. But that’s where things stand. We haven’t forgotten! We’re all just dealing with the demands of our daily lives, and the crazy pandemic situation, while trying to bring the site back in a truly exceptional form.

We’ll post again soon when we have more information.

Love,
The AoVD Team.

AoVD will return… this fall!

July 18, 2021

Hi there! Remember us?

It’s been a while. Years, probably. Our core staff got hijacked by life (our main tech person went off to grad school, and our other admins launched new careers and expanded their families… you know, that sort of stuff) and the site fell into disuse. One by one, the programs that we used on here became non-functional, until all that was left was a handful of static pages leading to error screens. Twenty years after the site originally launched on its UK webspace, it had almost completely disappeared.

But none of us could really let go. So when we had to make a big decision this spring — whether or not to close the site down for good — we realized how much it still meant to us even if our lives had moved on, and decided it was time for a refurbishment.

Relaunching is going to take a bit of time, because we have something special in the works. More about that later. The relaunched site will focus strictly on the elements of AoVD that we talked about missing most of all: creativity and community. So our fan fiction archive will be returning in a very special new format, the fan art galleries will be restored, and we will be bringing back our message board and a chat room. We will have space for Lilith’s original biography (still the basis for Vin’s IMDB page!) and a few other nostalgic items, but that will be it.

We expect our relaunch to take place mid-fall, once the fan fiction archive is ready. That’s our big, special project, involving a new format and a brand new delivery system, and we’re very excited about it. As the relaunch gets closer, we’ll have more details for you.

See you soon!

Love,
The AoVD Team