My site, Amethyst Arts, is being overhauled right now and should be back up in a few days with a whole new look and feel. Plus some new features. 1. an art school is in the works. Both traditional art discaplines as well as 3d and graphic art studies 2. links, links, links ... please feel free to e-mail me links you would like to add. Anything dealing with art (traditional and 3d). 3. Galleries. 2d gallery, 3d gallery and a new guest gallery for artists to add their work for more exposure and... 4. Gift Shop. Crafts, healing arts, Artwork by in-house artists and guest artists. This is the opportunity for Poser and Bryce Artists to sell prints of their work. I feeli this will be a great group co-operative effort. 5. Other goodies and industry news to be added every week. I'll let you all know when the site is up. If not for you guys this would never have been possible. question: I'd like to build a chat-room on my site and a forum to suppliment the wonderful forum you have here. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for all of your help. Boni

Active Server Pages. That is where the real fun starts.

Sweet, Boni! keep us informed!!

I am checking out some free code right now from ActiveForum or as it is now known Buzz Company, course now they make you pay for the complete solution (like Bondware). Looks pretty good. Thinking about augmenting the whole shopping cart, library and advertising sections. Integration. (Had a little problem with a guy who put a program on his workstation which started entering the wrong data into our client's e-commerce databases. Had to reverse engineer it and actually made it better. So while I am in that mode, I figured that I would delete half my site. Woohoo!!)

Ya know you are deep into programming world when you lose the ability to speak when spoken to. "donut...grunt, grunt"

heya; an art school?? on your web page??? really? that sounds interesting. (need any teachers? ;) )

Whew ... finally got back on ... we are having bad weather here in the Silicon Valley ... and I shut down my computers when the lightning started. Just a procaution because I lost a computer a couple of years ago from an electrical surge inspite of the protector. Thanks for your encouragement guys. I have it up 95%. Need to double check some of my code for links and design consistancy. Bloodsong, I will certainly keep you in mind as an instructor for the school. If we can develope a true online art school it could make it much easier for so many students in remote places to learn art. One think I definately will add to the school, that I see in very few schools is a marketting and self-promotion course so artists actually have a chance to make a living at their art. Well ... I've rambled, but please take a look ... more critiques are welcome. Speedofdark ... this is the first chance I've gotten back to the forum. I will definately check out "Active Server Pages" and "Active Forum" today. Between the storm and preparing to buy a condo we've been very, very busy. Your help is most definately appreciated. :). Peace Boni

heya; surge protectors are NOT for lightning!! :) they are for teeny, tiny, normal electrical spikes. hey, i need some of those marketing and promotion classes :/ i'll check out your site in a week or so... right now i have to wipe my hard drive and re-install EVERYthing. ::

Oh, bloodsong ... ouch, that hurts! I relate! I'm still compiling my sample lessons to upload today. The marketing and self-promotion classes will formally be up by summer ... the lesson plan for the commercial school is still being put together, as is some of the sample classes. To show good faith and appreciation for your interest (and because you are a Renderosity regular) please feel free to e-mail me and I can give you some pointers and a few places you can start for your self promotion. Anyone else reading this message is of course welcome to e-mail me as well. Sorry this took a few days. The storm took out my phone lines for a few days. Pacbell finally fixed it. Keep checking in there will be more added constantly. Good luck with your hard drive Bloodsong, a word of advice on backing up. You need only back-up your downloaded props (etc.) documents and creations you've made, bookmarks, browser plug-ins (and passwords) and a hiearchy file of your hard drive. The programs should be installed clean from the install disks. This is if you don't have an elaborate backup system. It may be obvious, but I've re-built several machines from friends and that has saved us all headaches through the years. Peace Boni