June: The Month of Change

So June is finally here.  This is the month when I started Alternate History Weekly Update last year.  I will leave the sentimental reminiscing post for the actual anniversary.  I want to focus on the past on June 19th, but today I want to focus on the future.

I have marked June as the month of change.  Over the next 30 days I will be giving a hard to look at every aspect of this blog.  Things that work I will keep and things that don't work I will throw away.  I am making it my goal to turn Weekly Update into the most professional looking and aesthetically pleasing blog that I can.  Thankfully I am getting help from my family and friends to make this dream a reality.

Now I do not want to concern you.  Weekly Update will continue to provide top-notch news, reviews, interviews and essays on alternate history.  What I am trying to accomplish is to make the way we deliver said content in the most effective and entertaining way as possible.  So with that being said...

Why are there ads?

So you might have noticed that there are now ads on the site thanks to Google Adsense.  By clicking on an ad I receive a small commission.  Now I can't ask you to click on ads for the sake of making the blog money, but if you do see something you like, I highly recommend you check out what the advertiser has to offer.  Why?  I have made vague promises in the past to use any funds raised by ads or subscriptions through Amazon to help promote the blog.  Well now I have two specific goals I hope to use the money for.

First, I am considering the possibility of moving AH Weekly Update to Wordpress.  More than one person has recommended the service, but to do it right it will cost me something.  I plan to be hosted through Netfirms, which will cost $5 a month, but they throw in a free domain name.  I also want to get a theme template, especially one that will adjust to tablets and smart phones.  Themeforest looks good, but that could cost me around $35.

As I mull over moving Weekly Update, I will be creating a new blog using Wordpress for my own writings.  I hope to use the place to showcase some of my original fiction and commentary on non-AH issues.  Keep an eye out for the newest acquisition of the Mitro media empire.

While the Wordpress move is still in the air, I am psyched about my other goal: creating a podcast.  Podcasts are great ways to communicate information and boost traffic to your site.  I want to start doing an episode once a month just to get familiar and then produce one every week if possible.  I hope that they will eventually replace the Weekly Update post I do every Monday as the primary way people receive news on the genre, but I would also love to have guests on to discuss various what ifs.  Nevertheless, if you are going to do anything, you should do it right.  I will need a good mic, like the Rode Podcaster, which costs $229.  I will need someone to record an opening theme to podcast as well, which could run from $5 to $250.

Including enough cash to pay for 6 months of hosting and other miscellaneous expenses, I am looking at a total of $600 to accomplish my two goals.  It does not look like much, but for someone on a budget like myself, throwing $600 away on a website is a difficult burden to bear.  If I can raise the money, however, through ads and perhaps a Kickstarter campaign, then perhaps you will have the chance of seeing a brand new blog and a podcast in the near future.

So why should I support Weekly Update?

Because we are the best place on the Internet to keep up to date on what is happening in the world of alternate history.  To prove it, this month I will continue to provide great content on topics and issues important to the genre.  We have articles coming down the pipeline from some of your old favorites like Sean, Chris, Tyler, Jordan and Seb; plus some new faces.  I will be interviewing people who work in the genre like author Geoffrey Wilson and Doc Quincy E. Quartermain, founder of The Artifice Club and head of the Alternate History Fan Track at Drago Con.

I am making it a point this month to post at least twice a day this week, so you are getting a lot more content than usual.  Plus there are a lot of good things to look forward to this month, such as the announcement of the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History and, of course, Weekly Update's one year anniversary.

What can I do to help?

We are always looking for new guest posts.  Submit your reviews or articles to me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.  Those of you who are artistically inclined can send in alternate history photos and maps, or submit your design for our new banner.

There are a lot of little things you can do as well, such as liking us on Facebook, joining our Facebook group or following us on Twitter.  If you like our posts, please share them with your friends.  Also if you know someone who would like to advertise on our site, please tell them to contact me.

And as always, thank you for following us.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for the Alt Hist magazine and a contributor to Just Below the Law. One of his short stories will be published in the upcoming Echelon Press anthology, Once Upon a Clockwork Tale (2013).  When not writing he works as an attorney in the state of Illinois and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.

A look back at Othertimelines.com

Like so many other obscure hobbies and subcultures, alternate history began to fully come into its own among the fertile grounds of the world wide web. Over the years, we have seen the rise and fall of many sites and forums dedicated to the genre, with most of the online alternate history community gathering around a few central places such as Alternatehistory.com or the Alternate History Online Facebook group. As Mitro pointed out however, from time to time, there have been other places for the AH faithful to gather online, and I shall focus on one such site today, Othertimelines.com.

I had just begun my freshman year of high school, and having read my well-thumbed copy of What if? yet again, and during a spell in the library, rather than focus on my assignment, I decided to Google 'alternate history' and see what came up. The first site was obviously Alternatehistory.com, which just as it is now, is the web's largest AH related site - having your forum named after the genre of focus tends to do that. However, as a relative newcomer to the Internet, I had never used a forum, so I instead dove into the more web page based Othertimelines.com. From there, I was hooked.

The site was very distinct compared to other web based AH communities, both before and after, one such distinction being it was a more formal website rather than a forum. In addition, whereas most of the other communities have strings of history book like posts, as the name might imply, Othertimelines focused more on creating timelines, with the level of detail varying per TL. One other interesting aspect was that creation of timelines was a largely communal effort, with anyone who desired to contribute toward a TL being allowed to add to them. While this had it's downsides, and likely was a reason behind the sites eventual fall (more on that later) it was unique in AH circles, and helped attract newcomers like myself.

The fruit of all of this was the extensive TL library, that still remains on the site. While compared to the mature efforts of AH.com, many of them may seem raw and underdeveloped, and there is a fair amount of crap (I lost count of how many TLs had then-President Bush killed/impeached/raped by boars/etc) it also allowed for some of the most creative scenarios I've yet come across, allowing for plausibility to be overcome by the rule-of-cool on occasion. Some of my favorite examples of the site include:
-Sailor Monks: A group of early Christians flee persecution in the Roman Empire and eventually settle in New Zealand, forming what becomes a strong Pan-Oceanic Empire.
-Lee of the Union: Robert E. Lee fight for the Union, resulting in an early end for the Civil War, a peaceful end to slavery and start to racial integration, and a far more Utopian American society.
-Alamo Samurai: A Japanese samurai fights and dies at the Alamo. In the years that follow, you see a heavily Japanese-influenced Republic of Texas, an expanding Empire of Japan, an independent Hawaii and California, and a USA that just conquered Canada.
-The Ussuri River War: A massive TL that follows the expansion of the Sino-Soviet conflict into WWIII, with the USSR and USA fighting as allies against Maoist China. The best TL on the site, and easily an under-rated AH classic.

Of course, then there were the members forums. Though small compared to the utterly massive AH.com, or even Conterfactual.net or the AHO Facebook group, the site had a dedicated core membership, any of whom would go on to contribute elsewhere in the AH community. At least in my own case, it would prove to be my first time interacting with folks online (this was before Facebook after all) and proved quite the learning experience - the chief lesson of which being I was not the only one who spent many a day pondering ways history might have been different.

Of course, like many alternate history sites and forums that came before and after it, it would fall and fail. In the annals of the close knit online AH community, the fall of Othertimelines.com would become a legend of sorts. Around late 2006, the site began to be flooded by hackers and spammers, and thanks to the head admin doing little to stop them, they would in the end completely overrun the site. Following this, much of the site's more dedicated members (myself included) would set up a forum called OTL-in-Exile (the abandoned remnants can be found here) before moving on to Alternia, which as Mitro explained, would be torn apart by tensions between members. The OTL.com members who weathered the storm would eventually set up another forum called Different Worlds; most others, myself included, would finally give in and joined AH.com.

In it's time, Othertimelines.com was one of the more lively, successful, and creative alternate history projects on the Internet. Today, the site still stands, empty and abandoned, standing as a relic of the web, and its past added to the colorful history of the alternate history community. For all of you who desire to see the derelict of Othertimelines.com, you can see its bones on display for all to witness here. Though the site lies abandoned, its forums closed, there among the ruins are some true gems of online alternate history - as well as the scattered memories and humble beginnings for many of the genre-faithful, your humble narrator included.

Soldier, scholar, writer and web-voyeur, Sean CW Korsgaard has been active in the alternate history community since 2006, and was recently elected to succeed Mitro as President of the Alternate History Online Facebook group. In addition to his contributions at the Alternate History Weekly Update, he writes for several websites, including his own, which can be found here.