A few more updates:
Got an initial issue template set up. Still debating whether to tweak it a bit to handle specifying if it's a crossover or one-shot. I also set up a property to specify characters that appear on the cover (so you can search for all issues with a specific character on the cover for instance) but don't know if I want to integrate that into the template as well or just specify that in the article itself.

Also enabled an extension to improve the talk pages.

Created a couple more templates:

Issue - for individual issues (fields include title (only used when the issue title is different than the series title - mainly used for things like the Showcase Series digests and Archie Giant Series), release date, artist(s) - a comma-separated list of people who are credited for the cover art and number of pages along with one where you specify the name of the file that shows the cover art, though you can also upload a file directly from the form). I still need to add a section where you specify which stories are included in the issue as well, but that's fairly easy to do.

Creator - for artists, writers, etc. This is a simple thing that includes fields for an image, birth date, death date and website.

Still need to make one for series (individual titles such as Life with Archie or Pep), stories (title and creator credits, plus an optional "series" field for things where the story was part of a series such as "Love Showdown", "Archie Marries", etc.) and a few other things, but making progress pretty quickly.

Also need to decide how to handle people who aren't/weren't creators. I'll probably create a separate template for that based on the one I made for creators, just with some extra fields such as years active, titles, etc.

Brief update on things...

Still testing the Login with Facebook thing. It should work just fine, but Facebook's app thing is broken. You have to specify one or more domains to use the app on (for security reasons), but even specifying a single domain results in it telling you you're "sending too many domains".

I updated the Character template:
- Fixed syntax so the parameter checks work properly (each parameter is optional so I have code to only display an item in the infobox if the parameter for that item is specified)
- Added a "universe" parameter to categorize character articles by which universe that character primarily appears in (Archie, Sabrina, Little Archie, Josie, etc. - currently it accepts any value but we can change that in the future)

Created a basic "Archie" article to test the Character template
Updated the form for creating/editing character articles:
- Added a field for the new "universe" parameter
- Added code to allow the VisualEditor to be displayed in the "Free text" field

Created a template to link to specific issues.

Still to come:
Finishing up the licensing templates (I'm still not entirely sure how thorough I want to get with that - a lot of the ones Wikipedia uses wouldn't apply to us, and the vast majority of the images we'll be uploading would be copyrighted but considered fair use; the biggest area there would be pictures of people and non-comic stuff, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it).

Finish up the rest of the article templates (at the very least, series, issues, stories and creators - I want to focus on documenting the important stuff first, then focus on stuff like the movies, TV shows, music, etc. as that's not as important).

I'm hoping to have this done in the next couple of weeks, especially as I'll be going out of town for a week in about a month.

Making a bit more progress now. I'm basically done with the properties and made a template for characters that I need to test out soon.

At this point I don't have a lot left that I want to do...
Still need to finish up the licensing templates
Need to add templates for other things (albums, songs, TV shows, movies, creators, series and issues)
Need to add forms for the other templates

Still in testing:
Ability to login or create an account with you Google or Facebook account. I need to make sure these don't conflict with one another (just in case someone tries to link a single account to both Facebook and Google), need to see how they handle linking to an existing account and also make sure they're configured such that a local account will be created as well, so you can still login if you lose access or unlink accounts in the future.

I'm guessing the profit margins on the digests are pretty high since they only have to pay for the cover art and maybe one new story, compared to the cost of three or four new stories in a standard sized book. At this point most of the artists that do work for them are independent, so they only pay per job, which is cheaper than having a full-time artist on payroll as well.

I'm not sure how these collaborations like the upcoming Jay and Silent Bob issue work though. I'd imagine Kevin Smith is getting something out of the deal. I may ask Fernando if he knows anything about that (I'm friends with him on Facebook).

Either way, there should still be some interest in the floppies. In 20 or 30 years it'll be hard to find Archie back issues in comic book stores because they rarely publish floppies anymore (finding digests in comic shops is nearly impossible)

Quote from: PTF on May 09, 2025, 08:25:25 PMSo I guess it has to include all the horror comics, too, huh?

Yes, I'll also include pages relating to the Archie Horror issues. I'm not into that at all, but it's still relevant for documenting everything relating to Archie. I'll probably also include pages for non-Archie titles published by the company such as the Sonic and TMNT things they published for a while (especially since they even did an "Archie meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" issue)

Quote from: Tuxedo Mark on May 06, 2025, 11:34:46 AMWill there be anything regarding shipping? Pairing one character with another, whether canonical or not? Sources from canon, list of ship names, stats regarding how popular that the ship is, etc.

I'm not planning on anything like that.

Almost done adding properties now. Still have some more I want to add - ones for brother/sister and son/daughter, as well as one for album (for songs) and one for who portrayed someone (TV shows/movies), but that won't take long at all (it only takes a few seconds to add a new property - create a page, add the text along with the special code to specify what type it is and save).

After that, I'll work on the templates and forms, then start adding content.

Other stuff in the works (low priority): Allowing you to sign up or login with your Facebook or Google accounts.

Note that you will need to register separately on the wiki if you want to edit anything or post on the talk pages (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Talk_pages if you don't know what a talk page is). I may also add more social stuff like article comments, polls, etc. at some point, but the main focus for now is the content.

Playing around with some more things tonight. The forms thing I added makes it quite easy to create a new page with structure. I will need to tweak some template code after creating the templates to get them to display things the way I want, but that should be fairly easy.

Some other things will need to be tweaked if we want to use dark mode, but I can always look into that later. While I prefer dark mode, at this point I'm more interested in getting the site up and running - we can worry about tweaking the look later.

I will have more free time this weekend to play with things but it's going along nicely at this point.

About done adding properties for now and will work on the templates/forms in the coming days.

I'm also still playing with the design and options for mobile users as well, plus a few additional addons that add more useful Wikipedia-style features (short descriptions and popup article previews when you hover over an article link).

Hopefully things should be ready to go live in the next week or two.

Quick status update...

I added a template from Wikipedia that allows us to do the "This article is about X. For Y, see Other Article" text at the top of an article page. While I am trying to avoid Wikipedia templates as much as possible due to their complexity (and the fact that a lot of the code is written specifically with Wikipedia in mind, so it includes stuff we'd never need or use), but this one is too useful to pass up. I may also add a related one ("X redirects here. For Y, see Article") as that doesn't require a whole lot of extra work.

I added a contact page to the wiki. I may have to change some settings to combat spam, but we'll see how that goes.

I began the licensing stuff again on the wiki. This is what allows a user to choose a licensing option when uploading a file. It's a two-step process. The first step involves creating a list of templates to be used, while the second is actually creating these templates. I'm still debating on what options we actually need - I want to keep it as simple as possible while still allowing a wide range of available content (like Wikipedia, I want the images of actual people to be freely licensed so we don't have to worry about who owns the rights and whether we can use that image).

I'm still playing around with some addons for the wiki software. I've enabled a feature that will allow you to change the title of the page (so we can do "Title #x" instead of "Title/x" on issue pages - you can't use # in the URLs because that's used to link to a specific location on a page, so making issues sub-pages of the main article on the series seems like the most logical solution). I also installed an addon that uses that specified display title for all links to that page on the wiki, and have a few more ideas I want to play with as I have time.

I'm still playing with properties on the test site. This is a special feature added by an extension called Semantic MediaWiki that makes things a whole lot more powerful. For instance, on an issue page we can do [[Cover art::Harry Lucey]] then easily generate a sortable list of all articles about issues with cover art by Harry Lucey. I need to see if I should create a separate property for each role (writer, pencils, inks, etc.) or if I can just have a generic "Creator" property and further specify their role from there.

I do need to create a few specialty templates as well for indicating content that is used from another source such as Wikipedia, GCD or another site with the same license, since the license requires you to credit the source (which is perfectly reasonable of course - our wiki is using the same license as well), but some of those I can grab from other sources and modify as needed.

The Jay and Silent Bob one-shot appears to be the biggest thing coming in July. A couple of new stories involving Sabrina, but more digests that are nothing but reprints. I really miss the days of floppies where you'd get two or three new stories per issue.

-

KEVIN SMITH PRESENTS... ARCHIE MEETS JAY AND SILENT BOB (ONE-SHOT)
SNOOCHIE BOOCHIES, ARCHIE FANS!! Yes, you read that right—acclaimed writer, director, actor, producer, and podcaster Kevin Smith takes the teens you know and love from Riverdale on the wildest ride of their lives. What's supposed to be a summer job at Quick Stop for Archie Andrews turns into so much more; from a budding friendship with co-worker Randal Graves, crashing a Pussycats concert, a potential new love interest, Jay and Silent Bob being, well, Jay and Silent Bob, and a musical number that will be burned into your brain forever. Plus, could Jay and Silent Bob even help Archie to finally choose between Betty and Veronica? SNOOGANS!! Featuring legendary Archie artists Fernando Ruiz and inker Rich Koslowksi, this is a DOUBLE-SIZED, CAN'T-MISS event FOR MATURE AUDIENCES unlike anything we've ever done before!
SCRIPT: Kevin Smith
PENCILS: Fernando Ruiz
INKS: Rich Koslowski
COLORS: Matt Herms
LETTERS: Jack Morelli
MAIN COVER: Fernando Ruiz w/ Rich Koslowski & Rosario "Tito" Peña
OPEN-TO-ORDER VARIANT COVERS: Fernando Ruiz w/ Rich Koslowski & Rosario "Tito" Peña (Grayscale), Francesco Francavilla, Phil Hester, Dan Parent, Ty Templeton
OPEN-TO-ORDER FOIL VARIANT COVERS: Fernando Ruiz w/ Rich Koslowski & Rosario "Tito" Peña, Francesco Francavilla
RETAILER INCENTIVE COVERS: Dan Panosian (1-in-10), Michael Allred (1-in-25)
FOIL VARIANT RETAILER INCENTIVE COVERS: Dan Panosian (1-in-10), Michael Allred (1-in-25)
ON-SALE DATE: 7/9
48-page, full-color comic
$7.99 U.S. (Regular Covers)
$11.99 U.S. (Foil Variants)

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ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #362
BRAND NEW STORY! Sabrina and the gang are going back to the beach... and back to the 1980s! But when messing with time causes Betty to go missing, Sabrina's going to have to figure out how to set things right...
Script : Dan Parent
Pencils: Dan Parent
Inks: Bob Smith
Colors: Gillian Swearingen
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover: Dan Parent, Bob Smith, Rosario "Tito" Peña
On Sale Date: 7/2
192-page, full color digest-
$9.99 U.S.

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ARCHIE MILESTONES JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #30: JUGHEAD SUMMER VACATION
Summer time means pool parties, vacations, and water parks—unless you're Jughead Jones, then it's all about ice cold lemonades, barbeques, beach picnics, and hot dog eating contests!
Script : Dan Parent, George Gladir,
Art: Dan Parent, Dan DeCarlo
Cover: Bill Galvan, Ben Galvan, Rosario "Tito" Peña
On Sale Date: 7/23
192-page, full color digest
$9.99 U.S.

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BETTY & VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #336
'Tis the season for beach bashes, sunny seaside adventures, and the best swimsuit fashions you'll ever see—all thanks to Betty and Veronica!
Script: Dan Parent, George Gladir
Art: Dan Parent, Dan DeCarlo, Holly G!
Cover: Dan Parent, Rosario "Tito" Peña
On Sale Date: 7/9
192-page, full color digest
$9.99 U.S.

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WORLD OF ARCHIE JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #152
BRAND NEW STORY! Sabrina's meddling with time gets more hectic thanks to Amber Nightstone, who's summoned a legendary SEA WITCH! But find out what happens when Sabrina and the Sea Witch realize they might actually have a lot in common in this Wickedly fun story!
Script: Dan Parent
Pencils: Dan Parent
Inks: Bob Smith
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Jack Morelli
Cover: Dan Parent, Rosario "Tito" Peña
On Sale Date: 7/16
192-page, full color digest
$9.99 U.S.

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WORLD OF BETTY & VERONICA JUMBO COMICS DIGEST #40
It's always fun in the sun with Betty and Veronica—but things get even more exciting when they bring some friends along for summertime fun!
Script: Dan Parent, George Gladir
Art: Dan Parent, Dan DeCarlo, Pat Kennedy
Cover: Dan Parent, Rosario "Tito" Peña
On Sale Date: 7/30
192-page, full color digest
$9.99 U.S.

As you doubtlessly have noticed by now, there is nothing that Betty & Veronica can't do! But now, the girls face their biggest challenge yet: Keeping the world safe from new villain MEDUSA DOOM! The daughter of classic Archie villain MAD DOCTOR DOOM (who appears here, along with the return of his teen sidekick CHESTER), Medusa is set to cause plenty of problems for Agents B&V. Are our heroes up to the challenge? Does Pop have the best shakes in Riverdale?
Here's a sneak peak of the some of the fun that awaits in you Betty & Veronica: Friends Forever: Spy Girls:








Now packed with 30 PAGES of story content, including a BRAND NEW STORY! INTRODUCING: MEDUSA DOOM, MAD DR. DOOM'S teenage daughter! Medusa Doom has come from far away to bully the residents of Riverdale and only Agents B and V have what it takes to stop her!

Script: Tania Del Rio
Art: Holly G!, Jim Amash, Glenn Whitmore, Jack Morelli

There's some incredible variant covers for this issue!

STADIUM COMICS BETTY POP ART VARIANT COVER BY NUNO PEREIRA

Betty & Veronica: Friends Forever: Spy Girls hits stores everywhere on May 14th!

Did some playing with the test yesterday and found that it's pretty easy to do some of what I want. Dynamic lists are simple and can be manipulated easily as well. It should be pretty easy to do. I'll have to look more into it this week as I have time.

Got a test installation set up to play with the "alternative" I described above and I'm thinking it might be better to go that route instead. It's simpler and allows a lot more flexibility - I can create templates quickly, then create forms to allow people to create articles using those templates.

I need to spend more time playing with it though to figure out a few things:
1. How I allow people to specify a file in the form (you'd need to upload the image first, which is fairly straightforward)
2. Allow wiki text in the form instead of just "Free text".
3. Dynamic lists/categories:
- Creating an issue page should automatically add that to a category of "Issues published in <year>" and "Issues with cover art by <artist>"
- What code can be added to a story page that will display a list of all issues it appears in

I'd still need to add some additional templates for bands (The Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, maybe The Veronicas), albums/singles, the various TV shows, etc. but that shouldn't be too difficult to do and I can take inspiration from Wikipedia for that.