Michael Martinez Web Sites

Michael Martinez

The Official Web Site for Michael Martinez

Web Sites

Michael Martinez
Web Sites

At one time, Xenite.Org carried over 100 Web sites and more than 50,000 pages of content. It may have been -- for a while -- the largest non-commercial science fiction and fantasy Web site in the world. Regrettably, many old sites and discussions have been irretrievably lost. Perhaps the most greivous loss is that of the hundreds of memorial threads fans posted to our Kevin Smith Forum at SF-FANDOM within days of his death in 2002. Thousands of fans visited the forum and major networks like CNN posted video of the forum in their news reports. Dixie struggled for four days to recover the lost discussions from a damaged hard drive, but in the end she had to move on and rebuild what content she could. Nonetheless, Kevin, we will never forget you. You will always have a home in our hearts and at SF-FANDOM.

Hot Magic Nights: Houston's West Side Salsa Scene
Hot Magic Nights: Houston's West Side Salsa Scene brings together, in a magazine-like format, about 20 feature articles on some of Houston's best known and not-so-well known Salsa clubs, artists, teachers, and dancers. Michael takes the reader on a detailed, guided tour of the life of a Salsa dance student, recalling good times, bad times, and a lot of fun times. Artists who were interviewed include Mary Frometa (founder of Mary's Band), Antonio Garza (Director of La Orquesta Salmerum), and Yelba.

Xena Online Resources

Xena Online Resources began more as a random posting to the news groups than anything else. In the summer of 1996, Michael began collecting links to various Web sites related to the television shows Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess and posting them in an article titled "Xena Online Resources". The article, updated every one or two weeks, became popular on several mailing lists and discussion boards. People began sending links to Michael to include in his list.

By the end of the year, it was obvious that a Web site would work better. More than 100 links had been collected and Xena Online Resources, the Web site, was born. The newsletter was maintained in conjunction with the site for a few weeks, but editing the growing list twice became too much work.

By March, 1997, there were over 200 listings on Xena Online Resources and Michael made it one of the first four Web sites of the newly created Xenite.Org domain. It proved to be the most popular site for many years, and XOR (pronounced "Zor" by Michael but "X-O-R" by Dixie) eventually helped build traffic to other parts of Xenite.Org.

By the end of April, however, with more than 300 listings to edit, Michael found himself spending up to 18 hours on each update. He put out a call for help and by June 1 twelve volunteers had re-organized and redesigned the site so that the updates could be performed weekly in the matter of a few hours. Listings continued to roll in and more than 1,000 sites were in the index by the end of 1997.

In November, Michael had to take a leave of absence from his work as Webmaster. Dixie agreed to take on responsibility for XOR and a few weeks later she took up responsibility for the entire domain while Michael relocated and started a new job.

As the years passed and the listings grew, the volunteer staff experienced some rollover. Eventually, to simplify the task of maintaining the largest directory of Xena-related sites on the Internet, Michael and Dixie decided to use a CGI-based application called Links. Links made the directory almost self-automating. After about two years, the volunteer editorial team literally had nothing to do and they disbanded. Dixie continues to operate Xena Online Resources and an associated banner network to this day.

The History of Xena: Warrior Princess

Like Xena Online Resources, this site started out as a news group article which was periodically updated with episode summaries. The original article was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek treatment of the subject matter, and it was only after Michael realized just how many people were relying upon the History of Xena to keep the unfolding story straight that he revised it extensively to be a more thorough, more respectful survey of the episodes and characters.

When Xenite.Org was created in March 1997, The History of Xena: Warrior Princess became one of the four principal content areas. As the years passed, the site was expanded with genealogical information about the most important character families on the show. Several fans joined in to help write and edit the summaries. Repeated server crashes took their toll on our archive. The current version is based on a 2001 archive copy, and about half of the last season is missing.

The Witch World Message Board

Now renamed The Andre Norton Forum as part of the SF-FANDOM discussion groups, the Witch World Message Board was the first message board created for Xenite.Org. Launched in March 1997, the board slowly acquired a small group of regular visitors, some of whom continue to participate in ongoing discussions today. Many fans of science fiction and fantasy fondly remember discovering Norton's books years, even decades ago. There is a strong sentimental attachment to Ms. Norton in the fandom community. She is one of the oldest living authors in the world, perhaps the oldest living author of science fiction and fantasy, and she was one of the first women to successfully launch a career as a writer of science fiction and fantasy.

The original message board was created in conjunction with The Witch World Page, a site devoted to the series of books which chronicle the unfolding history of an imaginary world far from Earth where magic and science come together in a war-ravaged, mystical landscape. The Witch World is one of the most detailed literary creations in science fiction and fantasy, unparalleled by most other attempts to define imaginary worlds.

The Lord of the Rings movie news site

Originally called The Lord of the Rings movie fact/rumor roundup, this site started out as a brief message in a news group in January 1998. Rumors were flooding the Internet about a possible movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No one really knew for sure what was happening, but Michael collected everything he could glean from several sources and compiled a quick little FAQ. The documented started to grow quickly as Peter Jackson's name begand circulating in fan circles, and by February the first full Lord of the Rings movie news site had become a reality.

Michael continued to document news and rumors, occasionally breaking major stories ahead of other sites (including the announcement that Peter had signed with New Line Cinema). But the overwhelming volumes of news and discussion which the project generated proved to be too much for a generalist Webmaster to handle. So many sites were reporting the same news that Michael at first began linking to sites with original news stories. But when that became too tedious, he arranged to carry headlines from other sites. Today, Xenite.Org partners with TheOneRing.Net, TolkienOnline.Com, and WaroftheRing.Net to carry their frequently updated news headlines. Xenite.Org also carries news headlines from other sources in the Lord of the Rings movie news tour.

Xenite.Org continues to provide the most complete, comprehensive, and up-to-date coverage of all news relating to the movies -- now thanks, largely, to the efforts of other great sites.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Forums at SF-FANDOM

Xenite.Org began expanding its message boards in late 1997 as flame wars -- intense arguments between people -- began to afflict many news groups. Michael, admittedly, participated in some of the flame wars, but he wanted to share a flame-free environment where people would feel comfortable if they disagreed with anyone for any reason. So, he began adding message boards to Xenite.Org, including The White Council, now renamed The Tolkien and Inklings Forum at SF-FANDOM. The Tolkien-related discussions were regarded as some of the best on the World Wide Web by many people, and for several years Xenite.Org's Tolkien forum was the premier Tolkien forum on the Web.

However, the early forums required tedious editing of message trees because the pages became corrupt after about 200 messages were posted. Michael did his best to update the forums as soon as was necessary, but when it became an almost daily task, he and Dixie decided to implement professional forum scripts. They first tried out Ultimate Bulletin Board, which worked well for a while but as traffic grew its performance subsided. Eventually, Xenite.Org switched over to VBulletin, which is powered by MySQL and PHP.

In late 2000 Michael realized there was a significant demand for many new forums on Xenite.Org. He recruited a small staff of volunteers to act as forum moderators and the forums were eventually moved to the new SF-FANDOM domain. SF-FANDOM's primary focus is to serve as a home for the large community of science fiction and fantasy fans who have discovered Xenite.Org and its sister sites through the years. Chief responsibility for administering the forum policies and leading the volunteer moderators was turned over to Stripe and RobRoy.

As interest in SF-FANDOM continues to grow, special homepages are being created for the forums. The homepages include information about the moderators and the subjects to which the forums are dedicated.

Web Sites, page 2

Michael Martinez

Contact Michael

Xenite.Org...almost

Xenite.Org Today One of the projects which never got off the ground despite a great deal of preparation was a Web site called Xenite.Org Today. It was going to be formatted like a glossy magazine and would include interviews with writers, actors, and producers from several TV shows (Xena, The Lost World, Andromeda). Many people were willing to contribute. A graphics artist and an editor were going to devote their time to bringing the site online. It was to be a celebration of fandom. Email interviews were written and answered.

So...what happened?

"Sometimes, people make commitments they cannot keep," Michael explains. "I was pumped over this project. Dixie could hardly contain me. And then, suddenly, the two people we were counting on the most couldn't stay involved. It came down to deciding whether I should try to go forward with the site or stop it right there. My life was in upheaval at the time, and I just couldn't see how I'd be able to do a good job by it. So I wrote to everyone involved, thanked them for their efforts, and said we would just drop the project."

SF Links Galore! One resource Xenite.Org has excelled at is providing links on various topics. When a popular Edgar Rice Buroughs fan site was taken down, Michael saved its link directory and kept the ERB fans in touch with each other for a couple of years. Xena Online Resources has long been the premier resource on the Web for Hercules and Xena listings. And Xenite.Org had a special directory of Tolkien Web sites Michael had personally vetted. People were begging to be listed, but most never made the cut.

So, one day, Michael proposed that Xenite.Org create a general SF link directory. It's not like there weren't several good ones already out there. But Xenite had many links already. So, Dixie began designing templates for the new directory. She set up an enitrely new Web site with scripts and everything. And...it vanished. What happened?

"I ran out of time," Michael says with a heavy sigh. "I was projecting about 5,000 links after one year's worth of research. But the project was immense. I was going to automate the process as much as possible. But I couldn't finish enough projects, so I finally told Dixie to just take down the site. It wasn't ready, wouldn't be ready, and would have been an embarrassment to us if we had announced it."

Xenite Book Store(s) "I always wanted to create a fantastic online bookstore," Michael says wistfully. "I tried to do it several times, but every time, something weird happened. The first book store was a collection of pages with personal comments about the books of 40-50 authors. We were an Amazon affiliate back then and I had spent weeks creating those pages. Then, one day, while checking traffic statistics, I noticed declining sales and visitors. What happened?"

A little bit of research revealed that Michael's pages had been copied by another Webmaster. "He had not finished converting all the pages," Michael says. "I found my own Amazon links still embedded in the pages."

Michael wrote to the Webmaster, demanding that the stolen content be taken down. The Webmaster refused, boldly claiming that all the content was original work. So, Michael sent proof of the stolen content. Every page which had any Xenite.Org referral codes on it was immediately updated. "I should have left well enough alone," Michael says. "We lost even more sales after that."

Fed up with the Amazon experience, Michael turned to VStore, which used Javascript to embed links on pages. "Great technology," Michael says thoughtfully. "Easy interface to work with. The only problem was that search engines would not crawl Javascript. I couldn't get any decent search engine listings, and people just didn't trust VStore the way they trusted Amazon."

So, after a year of trying other vendors, Michael went back to Amazon. "By now they had begun implementing that ugly search box. Still, I thought, that might be the trick." Michael added Amazon search boxes to thousands of pages of content. Sales began to pick up. Xenite.Org almost made enough money to pay its hosting fees. And then...

"I got into a dispute with Amazon over enforcement of some policies," Michael says. "I felt they were being dishonest. They said they didn't have to change the way they did business. So, I cancelled my association with them and pulled all the boxes. It cost them about $10,000 a year in sales. A drop in the bucket for Amazon, but we struggled to replace that commission revenue."

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