what is it?

In short, IPF³ is now the launching area for the upcoming anthology that contains all of the world's finest writing. This includes short stories, opinions, articles, and anything else deemed worthy.

Now? you ask.

Yes.

Well, if it is what it is now, then what was it before now?

You may want to read the section below this if you're that inquisitive.

what was it?

Goodness. You're actually reading this far down on the page. Most people never get past the first sentence or two, you know. Consider yourself the very finest that mankind has to offer on a literary level. Just don't steal symbols from the Hebrew as your own and then choose a religious group like the Jews or the Mormons to perform a genocide upon. You're not that special. Get over yourself.

IPF³ originally started out in September of 2009 as the site "where writers and readers connect." It was essentially a collective blog of writers designed to entertain and educate its readers, and one of the biggest perks was that its readers could submit their writing for publication as well.

It was a good concept, but the timing was a little bad. First of all, I (Jordan Spencer Cunningham, AKA the founder and owner) had little money to invest in the project, though I had plenty of time. I also was pretty new to running an actual business despite my leadership experience in various positions previous. Lastly, I was to embark on an LDS mission not too far into the future and had little time to establish the site as a permanent online beacon of literary delicacy.

I scrambled to get as much free advertising on Facebook and Google as I could, I built the site by slapping chunks of WordPress plugin over a core, I hyped it up as much as possible across the web (I even designed an intuitive video), I rounded up some authors I thought were excellent or at least had incredible potential (no, former authors, I'm not going to tell you my opinion on your writing ability).

To make a long story short, we tried for three months, but the site eventually failed-- even after I spent tens of hours establishing a credible forums area of the site, which I thought would increase our traffic and cause users to return to the site. Apparently not. I had less and less time to run it essentially by myself as the Christmas season became deeper, hardly any of the authors had time to write, and there was no hope of the site maintaining itself without a few people with as much devotion, technical knowledge, and time to take care of it while I was gone on my mission, and these people were nonexistent, unfortunately. Even if they had the technical know-how and the devotion, they didn't have the time.

Alas. Ah, well. The site died. It lives on in our hearts. I consider it a very profitable learning experience. It would have been a very unprofitable experience had I not cancelled that NaNoWriMo contest-- that would have been nearly $100 out of my own pocket. Thankfully I provided myself legal leeway to not deliver. Hopefully those 29 contestants will understand.

what will it be?

I plan to relaunch the original IPF³ under a new name when my situation allows, but I also plan to publish at least another volume of The New IPF³ Anthology of Fine Literature, and perhaps more. If that is the case, then this site will remain in existence.

technical specs

For you nerdy types who are in similitude to myself concerning technology, this entire new site was rendered in Windows Notepad (look-- no spell check, ma!) and Notepad++, mainly out of HTML and CSS and a bit of PHP that I learned while trying to tame WordPress along with a miniscule amount of Javascript I snatched from "learn-it-urself!" sites. It's all written in two pretty basic text editors offline, meaining that no pages nor "posts" were written in an online editor like in WordPress. I rather like the change, actually, and it's not very hard to work with. The outcome is definitely less messy.