Wednesday, February 27, 2019

How Do You Use the SurLaLune Site?


My question for you is--especially if you are an educator that uses the SurLaLune Fairy Tales site--what pages are important to you? 

The SurLaLune Fairy Tales site turned 20 years old this past December. It has been lying fallow for about two years as I have been pulled in several directions both personal and business. SurLaLune is not how I support myself. I am lucky that I can pretty much call it self-sustaining, but that's it, and all of my work on it is pretty much in the status of "voluntary." So if I have to step away so I can pay bills, I do. I wish it sustained me, but as many authors know, that would put me firmly at poverty level of living. All the same, SurLaLune is my passion and I plan for it to live at least as long as I do.

Behind the scenes, during the past year, the site has been going through a redesign that if all goes well will launch in the next month or so. It was supposed to happen end of 2018 but I lost my primary developer and have been recovering ever since.

For a preview, the Annotated Cinderella page is going to look like this (click on the image to see it larger):


Instead of this:


The site will be mobile responsive. It will be modernized. It will have somewhat different navigation and features. Some will come with the new launch. Some will hopefully comes in the months to come.

This also means some areas will be going away. My question for you is--especially if you are an educator that uses the site--what pages are important to you? 

Please comment here, Tweet, email, whatever and let me know how the site is used in your classroom. And please don't expect direct replies from me, especially if the overall response is large enough. I am going to read every response and take it all into consideration but being only me, with lots on my plate, I am going to spend more of the time trying to figure out how to get the site launched and still the most viable for its visitors. With thousands of pages on the site, it is impossible to recode all of them. I plan to archive the current site online in some way but it will not be readily promoted. I hope the new site will fulfill most needs.

And on that note, the new feature will be a Folklore tales database--the site will launch with over 5,000 tales in a database that will have classifications by ATU Classification, Author, Country of Origin, Title, etc. More on that in future days since I am debating volunteer work to help grow the database into at least 10,000 tales. 

And yes, the 49 Annotated Tales are not going away. The Illustration Galleries are on the brink of the chopping block for more reasons than I can enumerate here today. But the rest of the Annotated sections will be intact. So will the Introductory section.

Thanks for the feedback ahead of time! 

3 comments:

  1. I love this site - the annotated fairytales particularly, so I'm glad they're not going away. I've found the Illustration gallery very helpful over the years too, but am excited about the folklore database, and can't wait to see the new site when it's ready.

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  2. I can't wait to see the tale database, and discover new tales!

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  3. First of all - what a wonderful milestoe - congrats! And thank you for all you amazing hardwork and passion in creating SurLaLune - all the different aspects right through to this blog. <3
    My priority in using the website is basically:
    - tale variants/similar tales around the world
    - the annotations!
    - the list of books etc for each tale is very helpful
    -
    And please, please, PLEASE keep the EZ archived Discussion board available! There is no other discussion anywhere that appraoches all the wonderful conversation and connections in there -so many wonderful ideas, and questions asked that aren't addressed anywhere else. If this does go away, please give me a heads up and I will download it because oh my goodness, I would miss this almost more than anything else! It makes me feel less alone as I research the weirdest things about fairy tales and gives me signposts to explore researching on my own more. I was also a lurker from the very first month this went active (OMG 20 years!) so it's been a huge part of my life, and fairy tale life.
    The blog is great too, of course, and while I hope you keep it up, if you can't, please leave it active and available to search adn read. It's also a goldmine of information. (Thank you!)

    Loooking forward to the folklore database and what you're planning. Best of luck finalizing and with the relaunch - that's a LOT of work and so huge. Thank you from the bottom of so many fairy tale hearts. xx

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