The website's name comes from my bestselling novel.

...about the Misenchanted Page.

Why is it called "the Misenchanted Page"?

It was my wife's idea, actually. When I first got my own webpage back in 1994 the World Wide Web really seemed magical, so calling it "enchanted" seemed reasonable -- but given how sloppy I am, and that I'd written a novel called The Misenchanted Sword, we went with "Misenchanted."

What all have you got on here, anyway?

Damned if I know; it's accumulated for about a decade now, and I long ago lost track of what's here. There's no real sitemap anywhere, no complete list of contents -- it's a mess. I've started redesigning it half a dozen times and never completely finished the job; I no longer even pretend it'll ever be consistent, let alone up to date.

I really am trying to get it cleaned up and better-organized, but I'm not going to promise anything.

I remember seeing something on here once before, but now I can't find it; did you take it down?

No. Or probably not, anyway. I move stuff around and update it, but I almost never completely remove anything. If there was an article or image on here, it's almost certainly still here somewhere -- but I probably don't know where any better than you do.

Pretty much the only stuff that actually gets removed is broken links (when I notice them), or dated announcements that are replaced with more current ones, and even then I'll usually keep the images around, even if you can't find them anymore.

I keep hoping that someday I'll get it all sorted out and provide a proper directory, but don't hold your breath.

So where'd the Guestbook go?

Okay, that I did remove. It was averaging at least three spam posts for every real one, and the delete mechanism wasn't particularly convenient to use, and I just got fed up. So it's gone. I hope you'll use the Discussion page instead. (You may want to try the "Blog View" button, if you don't like the default set-up there.)

What's that little doodad I see up in the corner sometimes?

You mean this?

That's the "Remove frames" glyph -- it's supposed to be a lightning bolt breaking a picture frame, and it's loosely based on one of the logos used by the Manhattan Project during World War II, depicting a lightning bolt shattering a chain.

The glyph means that if you've gotten the page in a frame somehow, you can remove all the other frames and get only that page by clicking on it.

There are one or two pages on the site that use javascript to force the removal of frames, but generally I prefer to leave it up to the user.

What about that big image of the word "Placeholder" that shows up a few places?

What that means is that I haven't yet written up the page that's supposed to be at that URL, but I wanted to show something better than a "404: Page Not Found" error. Usually I've pasted in an old file in addition to the "Placeholder" logo; these files are out of date, but do have some of the basic information and relevant linkage.

I do intend to eventually bring these all up to date, but there's no set schedule; it'll get done as time permits.

So what's with the "Spiffy" and "No Frills" stuff I see mentioned some places?

Some time back I came across a website pointing out that the visually-impaired do use the web, and that most websites aren't designed to accommodate them -- designers rely on their visitors being able to see images, to distinguish red from green, to see text on a colored background, and so on.

I like to think I'm sensitive to the needs of my readers, so I decided to split off a black-on-white, text-only version of most of the Misenchanted Page, providing the same content in a form that would be accessible to the blind, the color-blind, people using Lynx or with really slow dial-up connections, etc. And about that time I was also starting to get more interested in seeing what could be done with tables, frames, colors, and fonts -- up until then I'd deliberately kept everything on the Misenchanted Page very simple, for the benefit of people using outdated computers. By providing the "No Frills" version, I felt I had done enough for them, and could afford to get fancier with the regular version, which I therefore called "Spiffy."

It seemed like a good idea at the time -- but then I found out that some users who were not visually impaired or running '80s-vintage equipment were using the "No Frills" side because they falsely assumed that "Spiffy" would involve Flash animations or other bandwidth-hogging nonsense.

I don't use Flash or Shockwave, and I resented having readers actively avoid my design work. Yes, the "Spiffy" side used frames and javascript and had a few fairly large image files, but I didn't consider it excessive. It certainly wasn't as gaudy as most corporate sites.

The "No Frills" side had already gotten badly out of date, since it's staggeringly boring to work on, and I knew I was never, ever going to keep it as current as the "Spiffy" side, so that discovery convinced me to abandon the whole idea.

I think I've killed off the "No Frills" pages completely now, except for having pages at the old addresses that send you to the current version. These days I use cascading style sheets for colors and layout, and the visually-impaired can get stripped-down content by turning off images and using browsers that don't insist on using the style sheets. (If your browser doesn't let you turn them off, check out Opera, which has really good style control.)

I've also eliminated the use of frames, replacing them with style sheets, as well, as I know some people find frames annoying. Frames have their uses, but I did run into esthetic problems in designing with them, and style sheets usually work better. If you find anyplace that still uses frames, or that's still a "No Frills" page, please tell me.

The javascript stays -- but most browsers can turn that off. (You'll miss some pretty pictures if you do, and possibly some small text bits, but nothing very important.)

I'm using Konqueror/Safari, and on some pages the text is dark blue on black, which is very hard to read. Why did you do that?

I didn't. Konqueror and Safari have something wrong with the way they parse the style sheet on some pages, but I can't figure out what they're doing or how to fix it. That text is really a very pale yellow.

I'd suggest switching to Mozilla/Firefox, or Opera, which are available free (albeit with unobtrusive ad support in Opera's case) for both Linux and the Mac OS X, and which have no such problem. I think either of them is a better-looking browser in any case.

So is the home URL http://www.sff.net/people/lwe/, or http://www.watt-evans.com/, or what?

It's http://www.watt-evans.com. Originally the entire Misenchanted Page was in the SFF Net People Pages, but I acquired the watt-evans.com domain years ago and gradually transferred content. I think I have everything on either watt-evans.com or ethshar.com now, with only redirects on the old site.

And I'm not using subdirectories anymore, as it got too confusing trying to find things. I did use them extensively on the old site because the software and connection I was using at the time were so slow that using one large directory made uploads a pain in the butt. These days I have a broadband connection and it's not an issue.

I tried using an e-mail link, and it didn't work. What's up with that?

Oops.

Over the past fifteen years I've used at least half a dozen e-mail addresses, and unfortunately, most of them don't work anymore, and I haven't kept all the links up to date.

My actual e-mail address is lwe@sff.net. If you try a link and it gives you any other address, it's out of date.

I think I've finally found and removed all the links to lawrence@clark.net; that was my e-mail address for seven years, and I hadn't ever intended to give it up, but Jamie Clark sold ClarkNet to Verio, and they dumped their residential customers, so I didn't have a choice. If you send e-mail to that address I don't know whether you'll get any response at all; I've turned off forwarding, though, so it didn't reach me. I did not get it.

I can't find any more links to lawrence1@earthlink.net, which is the address Verio shifted me to when they killed their residential service. I liked Earthlink, but alas, they didn't offer broadband service in my area, so I closed that account in October of 2003. E-mail sent to that address should produce a bounce message, but some systems now filter those out because of spammers using spoofed addresses. If you e-mailed me at the Earthlink address, once again, I did not get it, and never will. It's gone. Try again with the right address.

If you find e-mail links to either of those addresses, or any address for me other than lwe@sff.net, please take a moment and tell me. Thanks.

And I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

You used to have a form where I could sign up for a mailing list that would notify me when the Misenchanted Page was updated. What happened to that?

I dropped it. In fact, I used to have several mailing lists, and I've gradually dropped all of them.

It's mostly just that I kept forgetting to send out the notices I'd promised. I'd make grand plans for what I was going to do, but then I'd get distracted and forget something, and the whole thing would fall apart, and I'd never get around to sending a notice...

Also, I got tired of getting bounce messages from dead addresses, and thanks to the plague of spammers SFF Net changed their rules on mass mailings so that it's much more difficult to send them than it used to be, and the whole thing became a hassle.

Not to mention some spammers even figured out how to use the sign-up forms to spam me with ads for porn sites and the like.

So I quit. I sent out one last notice (I think it was the last, anyway -- I haven't erased the lists) telling people I was discontinuing the service.

Some fans have on occasion talked about organizing a maillist; in fact, there was an Ethshar list on Yahoogroups for awhile. It died for lack of interest.

The possibility of adding code from a site like ChangeDetection or the now-defunct Netmind hasn't been ruled out, but I'm not in a hurry about it. If you really want something along these lines you might find ChangeDetect.com useful.

Have you ever considered having a professional run your site for you?

No. People have offered often enough, believe me -- but I like doing it myself, even if it does get messy and out of date. It's fun. If someone really wants to do a website about me, I have no objection to fan sites, but this one is mine, and I'm keeping it.

So there.