www.fkfanfic.com

Archive
Name:	www.fkfanfic.com, Mel's archive, the main/big archive
Date(s):	20 October 1996 - present (archived)
Archivist:	Mel Moser
Founder:	Mel Moser
Type:	story archive, general archive
Fandom:	Forever Knight
URL:	(original site), (current location)
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

www.fkfanfic.com is a Forever Knight fan fiction archive owned by Mel Moser. It was created in 1996, and holds over 2500 stories. The site is known either by its URL (which appears in the logo), as "Mel's site" (after its owner), or simply as "the main archive".

Until 2000, the archive was frequently updated with new stories. A year later, its continued inactivity (caused by ill health) prompted the creation of a new archive, Forever Knight Fan Fiction 2, as a replacement. However, in 2006, Mel debuted a rebooted version of the archive with the original site contained within it. More or less as a result, the replacement archive became inactive. Nevertheless, submissions to Mel's new site were few in number: it was primarily accessed for the original archive.

In 2013, www.fkfanfic.com went offline; and a mirror of the original '90s site was added by Stephanie Kellerman to the Forever Knight Website Archive.

In 2023, the website archive went offline after Stephanie's (presumed) death. That July Greer Watson began uploading it to a new URL; and www.fkfanfic has now been relocated again.

Origins

Mel Moser initially started her Forever Knight fan fiction archive within her personal site at http://www.clark.net/pub/moser/fkfanfic.htm. At that time, the original Forever Knight archives—the FTP site (to which authors could upload their own stories) and Darkangel's FKFIC-L archive (which was based on the fan fiction that had been autoarchived on the mailing list)—had respectively been put on hiatus and discontinued. Mel therefore began her new archive to provide a secure location for fan fiction that had been posted to the FKFIC-L mailing list, most of which would otherwise have proven ephemeral.

Upon the announcement that Darkangel was closing down her FKFIC-L website, Mel Moser decided to upload (to her personal website) a small collection of webpages that she had written for some of the recent fan fiction from FKFIC-L. On 5 May 1996, she posted the following announcement to [email protected]:

FK Fan Fiction fans:

I did this sort of on a whim. I had alot of the recent fan fictions already in my mail folders, so I decided to start throwing up some WWW pages to help me view them easier.

Since I've seen a number of laments about DarkAngel's fan fiction archives on the Web shutting down and with the ftp site undergoing repairs, you are more than welcome to check out what I've got started and let me know what you think.

The URL is: http://www.clark.net/pub/moser/fkfanfic.htm

Disclaimers: I only have some stories starting about mid-April. Please read my notes on the pages. I am missing some of the longer stories (missing chapters), so please let me know what I'm missing, what you'd like to see, suggestions, corrections, etc. Check out the Hot off the List link, the Author List won't work, as it relies on the ftp site.

The Fan Fiction was one of the major factors drawing me to FK & the FK lists, perhaps we can attract a few more if we get the Web pages back. Don't know if it'll be me maintaining it (not enough disk space), but I'll be willing to keep this up as best as I can, at least with recent stories.

Comments requested!!! Thanks!

— "Fan Fiction WWW page", post by Mel Moser to FORKNI-L, 5 May 1996

A week later, she posted again with updates. From what she wrote, she had clearly been receiving considerable e-mail from list members; and their comments were favourable.

In case you haven't caught all the latest from FKFIC-L, I've been adding most of the latest stories on my FK Fan Fiction web page. Here's some of the recent changes to my WWW FK Fan Fiction site:

New Additions to the "Hot off the List" page:

[omitted: list of ten recent stories]

New Pages

• Fan Fiction by Author page
          Links by Author, those stored locally and elsewhere on the Web (Have your fiction online? send me the links, I'll add them here)
• Fan Fiction by Topic

A big "Thank you" to everyone who's sent me comments, links to their pages, etc. And a big thanks, of course, to all the awesome writers. Keep up the good work. Comments requested... is anyone out there finding this useful?

— excerpted from "FK Fan Fiction WWW page updates", post by Mel Moser to FORKNI-L, 12 May 1996

1996-1997

Screen capture of the index page of the 1997 version of www.fkfanfic.com.

The domain name "www.fkfanfic.com" was registered on 7 October 1996. The counter at the bottom of the index page indicates that the website itself debuted on 20 October 1996. The index page of this first edition of the site had a plain white background. However, by May of the following year, this was replaced by a grey marble background graphic. The logo featured the URL of the site, in elongated raised red block letters that were cross-hatched in black to give a 3-D effect.

At the end of 1996, the site archived over 1200 stories. There were multi-page alphabetical indices for both Author and Title, as well as separate listings for Challenges, Crossovers, Last Knight stories, the Virtual Fourth Season, and Forever Knight Wars. The links on the title index pages indicate that, at that time, readers used password-protected FTP access to download stories from site's server.

Mel was actively uploading new fiction; and initially the site featured two update pages: a list of that month's additions, and a list of recent stories (on which the most recently added appeared at the top of the page). The site also had a section for "exclusives". This featured Imajiru's novella, Spyder's Web, which had previously appeared only as a fanzine.

To increase the size and usefulness of the archive, Mel appears to have copied over the contents of Darkangel's site, which had been offered to fellow FK fans on list as a CD. At the time, this was seen as controversial, since she did not obtain the prior permission of the authors. However, in a short while, Mel's site was accepted as the main archive for Forever Knight fan fiction.

Categorization Crowdsourcing

A early form of tagging.

See Categorization Project.

Categorization Project. Help categorize stories on www.fkfanfic.com!!!!

What's this all about?

Your assistance is greatly needed to help categorize the many wonderful stories on www.fkfanfic.com!

How did it come about?

I've received wonderful feedback on the site, including some suggestions to once again classify stories by categories as I did when I first started my fanfic site. Unfortunately, I only had a handful of stories categorized. With over 1200 stories on the site, this will be no small task!

How can I help?

After reading a story, complete the Categorization Form and press the Submit button.

What categories will there be?

Stories will be categorized by Type: (Funny, Happy, Romantic, Sad, Suspense, Thoughtful) and by Characters in the story (Nick, Nat, LaCroix, etc.). In addition, brief summaries of the stories will be added.

Guestbook

The site also had a guestbook. Comments include the following:[5]

• "Just wanted to say that your web site has truly helped w/ post cancelation stress. Every weekend I come on to get my FK fix. -D.L.Y.H."—The Black Dragon
• "Oh well done, everyone, for the stories, the page and its brilliant presentation URGENT QUERY: Where can I get FK videos, books...anything in fact."—Wooby
• "Hey! This is great!!!!! I am glad that someone has compiled all of this stuff."—Amy Weisflog
• "Great site! I've been lurking for a while, reading all the terrific fanfic. Thanks."—Chris Melzek
• "I was getting withdrawal symptoms from not watching Forever Knight anymore, until I found the Forever Knight Fan Fiction Site. Keep up the good work!!!!"—Joanne
• "I really enjoy this site!!! I miss FK =so= much! Thank you for this invaluable service. I especially =love= the 'xover' stories. Please continue it. Nick Knight lives forever!"—Sissi
• "Absolutely Fantastic Site - I can't believe the number os stories available. I get through my nights at work thinking about the next down load of stories I can get - I need a regular Forever Knight Fix Please keep this site going it's the best I've ever seen for Fanfiction [...]"—Pamela Lang
• "Ever since I've found this website, it's hard to keep me away from the computer because all of the stories that I've read so far(200 stories since 2/14/97!)are amazing! In fact,this website has encouraged me to write my own fanfic for FK and a few of my other favorite shows. I've also created my own home page--"StephiLyn's Home Sweet Home" where I hope that I will be able to publish some of my own original FK fanfic. Thank you so much for giving me the inspiration to begin writing again. Keep up the good work and I hope that I'll be able to contribute something to the FK fanfic archives in the near future. This site is simply the best!!"—StephiLyn Fryar

Deletions

Not all people whose fan fiction was included in the earliest version of the archive seem to have been equally pleased. On at least two occasions, Mel removed a number of stories at the request of the authors: first on 14 November 1996, and again sometime after January 1997. In each case, the story was replaced by a notice of removal, indicating that it may, for a time, have remained indexed.

Because the Wayback Machine did not retain a copy of the site until after the first set of deletions, it is not possible to say which stories were removed in 1996, though it seems likely that stories by Elisabeth Hurst and Jayel Wylie were among their number. There were, however, 28 of them in all. An additional 39 stories were later removed, comprising fan fiction by Alora, Tippi Blevins, Cagey, Sherri L. Campbell, Bonnie Pardoe, Heather Jeannine Parks, and M.K.. It should be noted that some of these stories were, then or subsequently, made available elsewhere on the web.

1998

Screen capture of the Table of Contents of the classic "original" version of www.fkfanfic.com.

By May 1998, Mel had decided to make the archived fan fiction on www.fkfanfic.com directly accessible on the Web, rather than downloaded by FTP. Perhaps because this required the complete revision of the various index pages, deleted stories were no longer listed, though the deletion notices remained on the server.

The site had also been visually redesigned, with a new background graphic. This is a gradient running from grape purple at the top, through puce, to a burnt orange, before reversing the gradient and running back towards purple. (Originally, the orange shade was near the bottom of the page; but as additional links were added, the page significantly lengthened.) The new design also revised the logo to an orange version that matches the background, with smoother shading that provides a better 3-D effect. The webpage design is credited to Imajiru.

The front page for www.fkfanfic.com indicated that the site now contained over 1400 stories.[6] For this reason, Mel now posted a request for fans to help in categorizing them. This would be an ongoing request; but, ultimately, only a small proportion of the fiction ever received the detailed description that was envisaged.

In addition to the changes in graphics, the index page had been reorganized. The "exclusives" section no longer appeared; but the website now had several new sections.

• the archived Save Forever Knight! site, moved to www.fkfanfic.com from its original web address
• a link to the Kickstart the Knight campaign
• an archive of transcripts of episodes of Forever Knight
• an archive related to the Forever Knight Bookcover Contest, including copies of all the entries
• a section for "Kewl Stuff", which included:
  • information on the professionally published tie-in novels, and links to interviews and background articles about them
  • the results of a survey of favourite fan authors, conducted by Amber Murray, with the top ten listed alphabetically
  • information on the upcoming participation of Geraint Wyn Davies (the star of the show) in the Tucson Charity Golf and Tennis Tournament

By December 1998, the archive contained over 1700 stories. The now outdated information about the Tucson Charity event had been taken down; but new information had been added to the Kewl Stuff section:

• links to the Fred Mollin Fan Club
• the results of the Forever Knight Fan Fiction Awards for 1997 (a section that would be updated annually as long as the awards were given out), moved from its original location in Susan Garrett's Forever Knight Fan Community Site.

1999

On 21 January 1999, in a marathon uploading session, Mel added more than 160 stories to the archive, which then included over 1800 stories. By April 1999, the archive contained over 2100 stories. The following had also been added to the Kewl Stuff section:

• the Forever Knight font, now relocated to www.fkfanfic.com and available as a download
• a form to submit favourite quotations from Forever Knight

On 11 April 1999, Mel had another marathon uploading session, adding over 180 more stories to the archive. By 13 October 1999, the archive contained 2200 stories. The website now had two new features:

• The archive for Forever Knight War 8 was moved to www.fkfanfic.com from its previous web address
• Mel began to poll Forever Knight fans through the website, asking them a range of fannish questions.

Also in 1999, a Yahoo!Group, fkfanfic, was created to provide people with updates and news.

2000

On 5 February 2000, Mel had yet another marathon uploading session, adding 141 stories; and, on 9 March 2000, a further 48 stories were uploaded. This brought the total number in the archive over 2500.

• The website now had a section reporting the result of the polls.
• Some time before 1 March 2000, nominations opened for the Forever Knight Fan Fiction Awards for 1999, with story nomination forms and voter registration available through the website. By 29 April 2000, the top of the index page reported that final ballot nominees had been announced.

However, the final poll question, "Where would you prefer to 'hang out' in FK's Toronto?" remained at the top of the index page until around 10 February 2003; and the notice about the FK Awards nominations remained up until some time after 7 August 2003. A note on the index page gives 2 April 2000 as the last time modifications were made to the website.

2000-2006

From mid 2000 to mid 2006, Mel effectively did nothing about the archive. However, the webhosting service for www.fkfanfic.com required domain names to be renewed annually. Once she was no longer updating the site regularly, there was a tendency to let this slide a bit. She also had other problems with the service.

Problems in 2001

On 1 March 2001, Judith Lieberman posted to [email protected] that, for the previous two days, she had been unable to access the site. Discussion ensued on list for the next couple of days. Although a few fans said they were able to reach the site, most were unable to access it. Stephanie Kellerman quickly informed the list that she had downloaded the entire site on 3 February 2001, so there did exist a back-up; and, on 2 March 2001, she put up a mirror site at http://216.78.198.242/fkfanfic/index.htm, running it on her PC. The copy did not contain the entire website (notably missing were the polls), but did contain all the fan fiction.

WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!

After a scary Not Found error message the site came up and so did the stories!

Let this be a lesson of warning to us all---Major FK sites that have the sacred status in our eyes need a BACKUP!

What if the domain had been lost? What if something (God forbid!) dire happened to Mel? Steph? Ain't none of us immune to accident or other misfortune, either.

Sure, one hopes that Mel has everything already up on backup files and I understand the desire to be in total control of her own work, but what good does that do the rest of us if she is too busy or unavailable to re-upload hem? [...]

— post to FORKNI-L by Kyer on 1 March 2001 [7]

The experience of apparently losing the main archive for the fandom was a nasty scare. However, by 3 March 2001 the original www.fkfanfic.com site was back up; and, sometime afterwards, the mirror site was taken down.

Problems in 2004

In 2004, the domain name "www.fkfanfic.com" expired on 8 October 2004, and the website again temporarily disappeared. On 14 October 2004, Megan Hull reported the problem in a post on [email protected], Both Stephanie Kellerman and Deborah Hymon suggested on list that it might be good to have a backup site and offered webspace; and Lisa McDavid, one of the list owners, agreed that a backup was desirable.

In the event, by 17 October 2004, Mel had reregistered the domain name, and www.fkfanfic.com resumed existence. However, in the intervening period, Stephanie had uploaded a mirror site (at http://foreverknight.org/www.fkfanfic.com/), which remained until early 2007.

Problems in 2005

In 2005, Mary Lynn reported in a post on [email protected] that, once again, www.fkfanfic.com was down. This time the problem did not lie with the registration of the domain name but with the webhosting service, which had been put up for sale. There was discussion on list about someone else taking over the site—in particular, Deborah Hymon and her husband offered to put it on their own server. It was pointed out by Cousin Kezia that, no matter how precious the site was to the fandom, it nevertheless belonged to Mel: no one else had rights to it. This promptly elicited assurances that people were only offering assistance. However, Stephanie Kellerman posted a reminder that she did still have the mirror site; and Deborah Hymon said that she had also downloaded a back-up copy of the site.

On 24 October 2005, www.fkfanfic.com was up and running again. However, the writing was on the wall.

The Rebooted Archive

Screen capture of the index page of www.fkfanfic.com, 2006-13.

On 18 May 2006, Mel Moser began an "archivist's blog" on LiveJournal (http://fkfanfic.livejournal.com/).

In the first post (18 May 2006), Mel revealed that—following the disappearance of the original webhosting service the previous year—she had relocated the site and was now in the process of uploading all the stories from back-up files. The new service offered more features; and it was her intention to "make some major changes that will help the usability of the website, and more."

In the event, the changes involved converting the site to a different format using a php program called Efiction that would allow authors to upload their own stories themselves.

Mel designed a new main page for the site. However, she did not attempt to reformat the stories from the original website. Instead, she kept it substantially unaltered from its pre-crash form, simply linking its index page to the new front page of the site. New fiction, though, could be added to the site only through the Efiction access.

I am hoping authors will want to move their stories from the old archive into this new site. — Mel Moser, blog comment, 28 May 2006

It will be really nice to get tha (sic) self-archiving site up and working once I'm all done. Archiving the old way was ALOT of work! I forgot it used to take me 10-20 hours per update, at least, if not longer. Where did I find the time? — Mel Moser, blog entry, 21 May 2006

On 28 May 2006, Mel was finally able to announce in the blog that she had completed uploading all the stories.

Mel Moser's Announcement on FORKNI-L

On 20 October 2006 (the tenth anniversary of the site), Mel officially notified members of the [email protected] mailing list of the newly relaunched www.fkfanfic.com. The following is the full text:

Posted with the permission of Lisa. Forgive me if this is a bit long, but I figured some old and new people would like to know the story.

It was over 10 years ago today that I launched www.fkfanfic.com. In the beginning, I started hosting stories when I noticed that the original archive was no longer updating. This was when the web was still young and new and we didn't have fancy HTML generators or PHP etc. I first hosted stories on my own personal webspace but after a while and some guidance from my good friends, including J.R. and TJ Goldstein, I obtained my own domain name in October, 1996 and www.fkfanfic.com was born.

The web design changed over time. I got better about organizing stories (again thanks to [J.R.] who designed most everything) and used an excel database to track everything. HTML for the story listings was generated from the database. It was a ton of work back then, assembling and reformatting stories, adding them to the database, generating new pages, and uploading them all to the website. Updates could take hours and hours of work. But I loved doing it.

Then somewhere in there, Real Life intervened several times, and I confess I lost interest a bit when I got involved in MMPORGs and I had a number of health and RL issues that really limited the amount of time I could devote to FK. Then I lost my pc hard drive and the database and was overwhelmed by the amount of work it would take to recreate everything (over 2500 stories?!!). I also was majorly broke for several times in there due to job layoffs but I kept the site up as best as I could, with the moral and financial support of Stephanie Babbitt. You can ask Stephanie, when we went over my budget together, the fanfic site was never negotiable. Well, the past few years have been better finally.

And this past year, I have been working on fixing things up again. I was forced to find a new web provider last year, but this was a blessing as I was able to find a much better one that provides all kinds of bells and whistles that I can and have now put to work improving the site to something better. It's amazing what wonderful things you can easily get for websites nowadays. Fortunately, I was able to recover an old copy of the database and spent many hours rebuilding the database to make it current again. I am also in the process of implementing a new auto-archival system for authors, Efiction. I am just waiting for the new release to come out before I make this available. I do plan on regenerating the old pages here in the near future, to allow for updates/changes. No new stories will be added to the old archive, however, in lieu of the new archive, where you will be able to add your own stories. Stay tuned on this.

I have also been implementing a new front end for www.fkfanfic.com. You can see it up and running now. I'm still ironing out some of the kinks and making changes, but it should be working (feel free to test and comment on things). The site is also available via RSS, and will have an RSS feed from the new story archive so that you will be able to see new stories on the front page. The old archive will always be available via a link on the main page. If you have any suggestions, submissions for articles, links, quotes, etc., feel free to use the Contact page or email me. I am hoping to put together some pages of reference of the many great sites people still are keeping up and running about Forever Knight as well. If you'd like for me to host any material, let me know too, as I know there's alot of scattered information out there still and some outdated sites and I'd be glad to host things in a central site..

Anyway, thank you to all of you out there for all your moral support and visiting the site over the years. And thank you to the many authors who shared their wonderful stories that have kept Forever Knight alive and well in our hearts. It's hard to believe it's been 10+ years.

Feel free to forward this to other lists if you wish, or post on your sites. And a big hello again to old friends, sorry for losing touch and disappearing there for a while. I'm better now and I'm back.

Thanks and hugs to all, Mel Moser http://www.fkfanfic.com/

Nevertheless, at that point, the new auto-archival system for authors had still not yet been implemented, since Mel was waiting for a new version of Efiction to be released, which she hoped to install on the site

Contents of the Rebooted Archive

The new sections of www.fkfanfic.com did contain a small collection of fan fiction that was uploaded in 2006; and, in addition, a small portion of the JADFE archive was copied over by Mel in 2007. However, it was still the original www.fkfanfic.com collection that contained the bulk of the archived fiction. This could be accessed from the new index page by clicking on the "Original Site Archive" link at the top of the page.

It should be noted that the rebooted archive did not contain all of the material that had been in the old archive, and some of the things that were there were no longer properly linked in. The following were no longer on site:

• the archived War 8 posts
• the form for adding a Forever Knight quotation
• the guestbook
• the archived Forever Knight Bookcover Contest
• webrings
• polls

However, the archived Save Forever Knight! material, the Virtual Fourth Season, and the page for awards won by the website could still be accessed. In addition, the archived transcripts of Forever Knight episodes were on the server, although the link was broken.

The fkfanfic LiveJournal blog was last updated 2 August 2007. The final entry revealed that the domain name would not expire again until 8 October 2016.

Take-Down in 2013

Sometime in 2012, one of the authors represented in the archive, Name Withheld 10, discovered that her four Forever Knight fan stories were on www.fkfanfic.com. These were apprentice efforts from c. 1994, written hastily, and not edited before posting to FKFIC-L; and Name Withheld 10 was extremely upset to discover that they remained available on the open web. She therefore wrote to Mel, asking her to take the stories down. Largely now out of FK fandom, suffering from health problems, Mel was by then scarcely interested in dealing with the archive or queries about it. By 2013, therefore, Name Withheld 10 became sufficiently frustrated with the lack of response to complain to Mel's ISP about what, in her mind, was copyright violation.

In 2012~2013 I attempted to contact Mel Moser several times requesting takedown of the fiction and was ignored. Ms. Moser was given several chances and ample time to comply with the request. Finally I presented the info to Ms. Moser's ISP as she was in violation of their terms of service agreement for displaying copyrighted work that she did not have permission for (including the author's personal info) and the site was subsequently taken down.

If Ms. Moser had chosen to remove the fics and their links the complaint would have been withdrawn and her site would have been put back up. She chose, however, according to her email to me after she finally got in touch with me, to let the site lapse without making the attempt to comply as she claimed she was no longer interested in running it any longer, and she assured me in that same email that the works in question would not be distributed to other sites. — Dearjunie on Greer Watson's User talk page on the Forever Knight Wiki, 24 May 2014

Sometime in May 2013, the account for Mel's site was suspended by her ISP. Attempts by FK fans to contact her failed; and, as a result, the cause of the suspension was not relayed to active members of the fandom.

Mirror Site

On 31 May 2013, concerned that the archive remain available, Stephanie Kellerman once again put up her mirror site at http://www.foreverknight.org/www.fkfanfic.com/ (on www.foreverknight.org). When Name Withheld 10 discovered this, she repeated her request that her stories be removed, which was carried out on 25 May 2014.

In 2023, after Stephanie's (presumed) death, the archive was temporarily unavailable from May to July. However, it was relocated to a new URL by Greer Watson and is currently available at http://www.foreverknight.ca/www.fkfanfic.com/.

It should be noted that this version includes much of the material that had been lost from Mel's own site, including War 8, the guest book, the webrings page, and the report on the Forever Knight Bookcover Contest. However, as the copy was made in 2001, it does not include any of the material added by Mel in 2006-7. https://www.foreverknight.ca/www.fkfanfic.com/

Expiry of Domain Name

With the transfer of the website to the Forever Knight Website Archive, Mel Moser did not renew the domain name, which expired 10/8/2016.

Archive Funding

At its original location, Mel's site had a PayPal link.

Awards

• Links2Go Key Resource - Forever Knight Topic
• Vampire Excellence Website Award
• Cyberspace Golden Leaf Award
• The Teddy Award
• The Golden Grail Award
• Hot Site of the Knight Award
• The Phoenix Gate Award
• "Best Bets on the Internet Yellow Pages Pick of the Month, June, 1997

References

The contents of this article are largely drawn from "www.fkfanfic.com" in the Forever Knight Wiki.