PotterFicWeekly

I SWEAR I didn’t break the forum! It wasn’t me, I was off doing church things being as it is Sunday here in the future. Ryan is still in the past, in Ireland, and as soon as I can find someone in the present to press the right button all shall be well.

In the meantime we have a Facebook page

Hopefully, we’ll see you soon back on the forum – feel free to download a podcast or two while you’re here 😉

Posted on October 17th, 2009 by kezza
Filed under: News | 7,333 Comments »

Welcome back to PotterFicWeekly! This is Ryan.

First, allow me to quickly answer the most common questions I’ve heard over the past few days.

1) I have not left the fandom.

2) I did not forget to pay the bill.

3) Yes, I noticed the site was down.

4) No Mike, I didn’t ban you from Poufwa.

5) No Jen. I didn’t ban you from Poufwa.

Like many of you, I woke early on Wednesday morning to check on Poufwa before heading to work and found PFW, the Poufwa Exchange, and the Poufwa forum listed as suspended by our former webhost. We’ve had issues with our provider for months which resulted in short periods of downtime, but this time I was unable to resolve the issue and needed to immediately find a new home for Poufwa. Due to a busy work schedule and dinner plans on Wednesday, I wasn’t able to start the process until late Wednesday, and due to severe demand from our new web host, the process of transferring our files took much longer than expected.

The whole “three hour podcast” thing finally bit us in the butt!

As of this afternoon, PotterFicWeekly and the Poufwa Exchange are back online. The forum should be back shortly.

This entire experience has solidified for me 1) that we’re a community and 2) that we’re a Poufwa community. Because our staff email accounts went down with the ship, I contacted our hosts via my personal email account to ask them to start relaying information through skype and facebook.

Jen2’s response was my favorite: “Who are you?!?!”

Major kudos to Richard/LonelyRiddle, who was jostled awake last Wednesday by my repeated calls for help and who has talked me through explanations of forum coding and website transfers that I never would have understood otherwise. I have a masters degree in Business Administration. My kingdom for knowledge of mysql!

My thanks to Kismatt, Sueatducksfoot, Jen2, and LadyChi who kept the community together.

Many of you have contacted me over the past few days asking how they can send in donations to assist in maintaining Poufwa. I had never considered accepting donations before as this is my gift to this community and to myself. While the last week did cost money, it was not nearly what it could have been, and there’s zero risk that Poufwa will ever end over financial concerns. That being said, so many generous Poufwanians feel such a strong connection to this community that I will set up a paypal account so members can contribute towards the future costs of maintaining Poufwa.

That said, until the forum comes up, please use this space to keep in touch with each other!

Ryan

Posted on March 1st, 2009 by Ryan
Filed under: News | Comments Off on Poufwa Out Of Foreclosure!!!

As part of my New Year’s resolution going into 2007, I posted the following on my personal blog.

I will stop being an observer who samples from different plates. I will choose a direction and accomplish something.

It was shortly after I made that statement that I thought about creating a fan fiction podcast. I knew virtually nothing about the fandom, didn’t have any contacts, and knew nothing about producing a quality podcast. (One could argue I still don’t.) This project has been so successful for me personally because I never expected anything in return. I don’t care about the fandom itself. I could care less if five people or five thousand people are listening. It’s not meant to be stressful. It’s not work. The day it’s no longer fun, I’m absolutely out of here.

I don’t see that happening for quite a while because of the people I’ve met and the bonds I’ve formed over the past ten months. I never imagined I’d make friends doing this, and yet Jen, Chi, Meg and I are extremely close. We’ve been together such a short time, but it’s been an undeniable rollercoaster and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. The community that’s come together is literally that. It’s not a meeting place for occasional visitors to talk shop. It’s family. I never imagined that this project would be less about the content and more about the community, but it’s happened, and I could never recreate the conditions that brought these hundreds of people together. We’re friends, and we’ll continue to be friends long after we put Harry back up on a shelf. The outpouring of kindness we’ve encountered over the past year truly gives me a lot of faith in the power of strangers.

I am pleased to announce that PFW’s first Yule Ball will commence in the forum on Friday, December 14th at 2PM. If you’re not yet a member of the community, we’d love to welcome you to the group. This is a party from the members for the members. On behalf of the hosts, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season. This one’s from us.

Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Ryan
Filed under: News | Comments Off on The Yule Ball, and Happy Holidays

Katelestrange on the PFW forum always refers to PotterFicWeekly as family, and we certainly are. Those of us who turned on the lights here have only been together for six months, but there is no denying that we’ve forged lasting and permanent friendships. When you start a project like PotterFicWeekly you expect to learn about editing and audio programs and scheduling. You never expect to learn about yourself. This place has a way of sneaking up on you, and like it or not, family is what this place has become.

There can be no debate that Jen is the heart of our family.

If you just judge Jen by the podcast, she’s the wacky smut-addict who doesn’t quite understand the intricacies of parking brakes or tax fraud. It is true that she almost crushed her husband with the family car that one time, and she really did call 911 when she ran over a squirrel. Jen faced down a murderous grizzly bear to save her $8,000 camera lens, and has been a lifelong advocate for fanfic whales everywhere. We leave out mention of tornadoes, scorpions and vicodin only because you probably get the idea. Those of us who know Jen personally get asked all the time, “Is she really like that?” Unequivocally?

Yes.

Everything we just mentioned is true, but it’s not Jen in a nutshell. Jen is a cancer survivor. In fact, she’s a survivor in every sense of the word. She’s endured stress and hardships that would cause many of us to give up and cry, and every single day, she’s been the Jen that you know from PotterFicWeekly. She’s faced challenges that no one her age or any age should ever have to face, and without complaint, she does just that.

She faces them.

While she has earned the right to be, Jen is not bitter about life. She loves life that much harder. She’s fiercely loyal, genuinely warm, and is one of those rare people who without realizing it and without having ever met any of us in person, has inspired us to be better people. Jen’s extremely humble. She once missed a podcast on account of having her appendix removed, and it took us five minutes to get her to stop apologizing for taking the week off. It’s against her nature to ask for help, so we’ll ask on her behalf.

Jen was hospitalized last week for problems related to her intestine and colon. She’s obviously no stranger to hospitals, and she’s obviously a fighter. She’s been discharged, but the six months are going to be critical for Jen and she has a long road ahead of her. She’ll try to be on the forums and is already insisting that she wants to be on next week’s podcast.

We at PotterFicWeekly didn’t get the privilege to know Jen the last time she needed thoughts and prayers, but we won’t let these months go by without reminding Jen every day how much she means to us, how much we need her, and how we have no doubt that she will do to her illness what she did to that grizzly bear – beat it with that special ingenuity that only Jen has. Please use this space to send Jen your continued positive thoughts and best wishes, and feel free to email her directly at jen@potterficweekly.com.

We love you Jen!

Ryan & LadyChi

Posted on August 28th, 2007 by Ryan
Filed under: News | Comments Off on Please keep Jen in your thoughts