A Happy FOURTH anniversary to everyone!

[Yoc]

http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/images/DCM banner12 -2014 B-Day.gif

Anyone curious about the sources of the artwork in the above banner can read this topic -
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,5389.0.html

Hi Gang,
Today marks our FOURTH ANNIVERSARY of staring DCM!
We the staff want everyone to know how proud we are of what it's become and thank Everyone out there that have contributed to the site.  With your support, financial and scans/edits, you have all helped build DCM into a wonderful home!

This past year we've grown leaps and bounds!

Stats for the past year!
Total New Members since our last anniversary - 11669 (over 6175 in this March alone!)
Total New Scans since our last anniversary - 2041!

This year, days after our last birthday, CaptDJ created a great new upgrade to the amazing Preview feature - DROP-DOWN THUMBNAILS!  Look for this symbol at the top of the Preview page to see a drop-down thumbnail display of all the pages within the comic and you can jump right to where you wish to start reading! -

http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/images/pulldown.gif

CaptDJ has recently updated our User_CP section.  Uploaders in particular should appreciate the new sortable Uploaded Files area.  Work continues on this section to hopefully improve the logging in on the site and forum.

We also made it official and RANGERHOUSE was added to the DCM Staff as an Admin and Prime user became a global moderator.  Both have long been helping behind the scenes so Welcome to the fold guys!!  Some here might know Rangerhouse is the main scanner now for the amazing JVJ Project happily started in 2008 in the days of GAC.  Jim's own site is always worth a look - http://www.bpib.com/  and he's now on Facebook here - https://www.facebook.com/JVJPublishing
Speaking of the JVJ Project I was happy to learn that Soothsayr was very recently added to the ranks as a new scanner.  Welcome Sooth!  The approximate total of JVJ Project books on DCM?  2,420 and counting!!   

Around the new year we decided it was time to upgrade the servers DCM is hosted on.  A bump in download speeds and storage space was made.  But like upgrading your OS it created some new bugs for us as the newer server software didn't play nice with the older RWD software that runs DCM.  We eventually ironed out the worst of them a couple weeks back and are now working on improvements!

Likely the Biggest news this year was Carl (Fan777) learning there is a colour scanner in the Library of Congress available and they will let you make free scans from books in their collection!  He was able to supply several issues missing from the site as well as page fills to existing incomplete scans.  A huge thank-you to Carl for the find!  Soothsayr jumped on the opportunity and started scanning piles of books from the collection.  Which dovetails nicely into our next item...

Just after the LOC scanning began we had the First DCM Publisher Spotlight in Sept 2013.  FOX FEATURE SYNDICATE run by the notorious Victor Fox was our first spotlight.  It ran through until the end of November with 200+ scans released!  Following the Fox Spotlight we jumped into our second - HILLMAN PUBLICATIONS which started Jan 01, 2014 and ends today on our fourth Anniversary!  Another 200+ scans were shared during the Hillman Spotlight!  A HUGE thank-you to Soothsayr and Movielover for doing the bulk of the scanning and sharing.

New scanners or comics donors this past year include KaineZ, minotaur, CYAGER69, John Smallberries, Ger Apeldoorn, Jacqueschaj, Heaven4, comics4steve, murky, Phil Barnhart, plasticman6, bluerobe, Diablo, Nenslo, CleeseMcLeod, superbob, jagmor, BillyBatson4360, djingo and Xfiles77 (with their GM scan corrections), Brainster, RoverBoy1899, Operator5 and with his first raw scan just yesterday, (long time financial donor) RustlingsTim!  A special thank-you to rmdavidson for his wonderful Walt Kelly collections he donated this year now in the Archives/Collections section and well worth a look!  Apologies to anyone I might have left off the list.  To all of you many thanks for your contributions to the site!

Meanwhile our own TILLIBAN was busy expanding his empire of Precode Horror comic sites this year.  Be sure to check them out starting here - http://fifties-horror.de/

We have gotten a massive influx of new members starting on 2014-03-03 after DCM got a mention on OpenCulture.com which was picked up by several other blogs.  Over the following four days we gained 2000+ new registrations!  This was our biggest gain in the history of the site even back into the GAC days.  With the huge influx we also had our best single month of financial donations!  Many thanks to everyone who has donated towards our server bill and other overhead costs.  And a big welcome to all those newbies out there. 

Stay tuned for later today when I will be releasing some anniversary presents from our members!

Take care,
-Yoc

BTW, anyone curious about the source of the artwork in the above banner can read this topic -
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,5389.0.html

[tilliban]

Love the birthday banner!
Proud to be part of the gang, though I'm just a scanner.

My congratulations and heartfelt hugs to all you guys actually running the show!

You do amazing work!
And I'll go on spreading the word.

[Yoc]

Thanks T,
and you are an important part of the family.
Don't forget you're also a member of the JVJ Scanners project and one of only two scanners to meet the great man himself.

[CBpop]

Congrats all round to the DCM team for a great resource site. A lot of talented people who donate time, effort and even money to keep DCM the place to be for those 4 color memories.  Thanks to all for yet another year of great scans.  A super thanks to CaptDJ and the IT team that keep the site up and running... a very hard task -  done well.  Thanks and Happy Anniversary
Ed (CBpop)

[Yoc]

Thanks for the kind words guys.
You've both been very generous to the site.

The 'Gift Section' is now up and running with new goodies.
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=1110

[John C]

Because it can't be said enough and I've been quiet of late, I'll take any opportunity like this as a sneaky way to repeat what I've said before:  Any group of bozos can keep a site running, if they really want.  These days, it's not even hard to get people to crowd-source a collection of anything, whether it's public domain publications to knowledge about an unending number of topics to pictures of buildings that used to be a Pizza Hut.

Those of you who visit make it worth keeping upright.  As I'm sure most of you know, it's a roll of the dice what kind of community you'll get, and we have just about every risk condition you could imagine:  A nerdy hobby related to an industry (1) whose tiniest motion polarizes people (2), crowd-sourcing (3) files for public download (4) in cases that deal with judgment calls on copyright (5) and material that plenty of people try to use to get rich quick (6).  The material is even, in many cases, sexist (7) and racist (8 )!

The bar is basically set at "I hope we don't deal with a bunch of know-it-all jerks."  Instead, we have a huge community of mature, sharp, polite, and generous people.  You're making the rest of the Internet look bad, guys.

That includes the scanners, editors, uploaders, and donors, of course.  We literally couldn't do this without their backbreaking work and generosity.  But it also includes the people who drop by to shoot the breeze, just as much.

(I mean...not the guys who drop by at four in the morning to shoot the breeze about places where you can get Nike sneakers for cheap and every word is a link somewhere completely unrelated to footwear.  Those guys, we hopefully eliminate before most of you see them.)

[Captain DJ]

Just want to thank the users who keep on coming back to the site every day plus big thanks to the staff members who don't get paid but all do a great job.

I don't believe in celebrating a birthday over a day so I'm treating it as a birthday month so hoping to give my gift back to members before the next 30 days is up. (yes I missed the target date and little behind)

[Astaldo711]

Happy anniversary! Wow! Can't believe it's been 4 years already! Seems like only yesterday we were all trying to guess the name of the new site...

[Yoc]

Ah yes.  I recall it well.  I suggested 'Crunchy Frog Surprise' but the gang shot it down.

[Geo (RIP)]

Yes, Happy Birthday, a 4 year journey that has made us bigger and better. A big thanks goes out to all the scanners and those who provided there collections for this project. Also thanks to those behind the scenes that you sometimes forget are doing all the work to keep this site running smoothly and going in the direction that is decided we are going, so you can see and download all those exciting books and learn about the history of those publishers that made those books available to read from generations of the past, before some you out there were even born.

So Happy 4th Birthday Digital Comics Museum!!

And thanks for letting/counting on me to work here with all the wonderful people here.

Geo

[darkmark (RIP)]

Happy birthday to the site, and congrats to all the contributors and members.  This is a site I visit every day.

[KingFaraday]

Happy 4th Birthday. Keep up the good work guys!

[rangerhouse]

Happy 4th,  so so so busy,  these days,  but I'm still scanning..  Facebook Page is growing,  and I'm pretty much keeping up..

The PD Comics just keep flowing in....   Everything has been Amazing...    (could their be a day when their is nothing left to scan?)

Thanks Rangerhouse

[Yoc]

Thanks Brian, you've been a big addition to the site and hobby!
And I doubt we will ever scan them all... but if we do there's a Lot of them that could use an upgrade or fills!

[Drusilla lives!]

Happy anniversary people, keep up the great work.