Welcome to the new site!

Friday, June 29th, 2018

• Blog

As the post says, the new site is live!

For those of you out of the loop, the comic gallery on the old site stopped being supported, so the comics stopped working. Additionally, the security on the site was pretty poor, and the comment section had become flooded with bots. In the end it seemed easier to start over rather than to try to fix those problems.

You’ll probably immediately notice that it’s pretty different from the old site. The layout is a bit more of a traditional blog as opposed to the old “select your character” kind of setup the old site had. That’s intentional.

When I designed the old site, I had pretty grand ambitions of constantly putting out new and different comics, with a roster that would grow at the top of the page. I wanted to something non-traditional that would catch your eye; something that you wouldn’t see on another webcomic site.

There were two problems with this: I didn’t end up making a bunch of new comics, and I’m not a graphic designer. In the end I ended up with a roster of clickable character at the top of the page where 2/3 of them led to dead comics, and I’m pretty sure half the site’s users didn’t even know you could click the characters to get to the comics. It was a neat idea but apparently not very intuitive.

The new site is simpler and more blog based because…well, because I’m not totally sure what it’s for. Nuzlocke.com has kind of been my home base on the internet since I created it, and for a long time that meant it was the home of my comics and the Nuzlocke Challenge. It’s still those things, but eventually I think the scope of content will broaden. The Nuzlocke Challenge has grown so far beyond me, that it almost feels silly to claim ownership of it at this point. Similarly, Pokemon Hard-Mode is coming to a close soon. (Well, “soon” in that there’s only 3-4 episodes left before the end, but that could translate to 30 years at the rate I’ve been going.)

Eventually I’ll move onto my next project…and I have no idea what that will be. Another comic? A novel? A web series? A game? Whatever it is, I think this site will be its home, and I need the site to be flexible to accommodate that. I’m kind of sad to see the weird amateur charm of the old site go, but I think this new one will be more user friendly.

Other things you might notice…

…who the hell is “Nick Franco”??

Well, that’s me. For a long time I opted to leave my name off of this site and simply go by “Nuzlocke.” In the beginning that was because I’d started posting these comics anonymously, and I never thought many people would care about them. Also, I was pretty paranoid–I hadn’t really been a content creator on the web before and I was a little afraid people would try to ruin my life or something.

Eventually I kind of just got off on the whole “secret identity” aspect of it–I was like Spider-Man except if he poorly maintained a web comic! And it just became habit. To my fans I was “Nuzlocke” and that was fine. But now as I hopefully advance my career in writing and get work published, it kind of feels silly. There’s no reason to really keep my name off of this work anymore, at least that I can think of. Still, it feels kinda weird.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting here, but hopefully we’ll figure that out. I’m still getting the hang of the new site myself.

Once we go live (I may or may not be preemptively writing this as a draft in advance) I’m gonna try to put out a bit of blog content semi-regularly just to fill out our front page while we wait for Episode 12 of Hard-Mode (it’s started but not finished yet.)

Here’s to the future, guys.

-Nuz…Nick.