It feels like not that long ago we were all in fear of the Y2K (which turned out to be way overrated) and now it's time to say goodbye to the "00" decade. Time flies, doesn't it? 2009 was a very good year for both Fantasy and Fantasy Fan. We posted well over 300 articles, among them close to 60 reviews of various fantasy books, movies and games. This was only possible thanks to our dedicated members, so I'd like to use this opportunity to say: Thanks guys! :-)

The end of year 2009 signifies one more thing, a change in hosting for Fantasy Fan! As I mentioned before the site moved from the old hosting to a brand new, super-fast host, which should make visiting Fantasy Fan a more enjoyable experience. The move has been almost completed and went through almost without issues. If you notice any issues though, make sure to let me know!

It's time to get read for the New Year celebration, so I hope this passing year was a good one for you and the next one will be even better! I'll see you in 2010!

I don't know about you, but last few days were a little bit more crazy than I would like. It's the traditional ordeal before Christmas, the chase to get everything ready, buy the presents, prepare food, clean the house, you name it. The crazyness is almost over, Soon we'll all have the time to relax and do something we really like, read the Christmas present book or play the Christmas present game. Or something entirely different. :-)

I'll be enjoying this time of the year making plans for the next year, trying to foresee the joys and troubles my soon-to-be-born son is going to bring my wife and me. I wish you have as happy and safe Chrismas we intend to have!

Merry Christmas everyone! :-)

A long, long time ago, when SPAM was just a weird four letter word Fantasy Fan allowed people to post comments for the articles. It was a great thing to have, but as times changed day after day I had to contribute more and more time to weed out the porn, viagra, cialis and other very productive posts. It reached the point where I just couldn't keep up and decided to remove the comment module, leaving the discussion to our forum.

Today though, it seems that the times finally caught up with the problem and I may have a solution that will stop the wave of automated spam. Cross your fingers. :-) I have enabled commenting again, but I want you to know that this is still early stage of testing, meaning that I know it's working, but am not sure if there side effects I haven't noticed.

In order to comment, you have to register: it's a first hurdle for any robot trying to share the best online pharmacy with us. Also, if you post a comment and it doesn't show up under the article, it most likely means that it was held for moderation. You can check what is happening with it on Your account page. If you're experiencing any other issues, please let me know on Portal Administration forum. For now though, enjoy! :-)

I'm not sure why I didn't think of it when I was designing this layout. Having a fixed page width has so many advantages I'm having difficulty remembering why I went the other way. It's all a song of past now though, because as of today Fantasy Fan should look on all screens in a very similar way. Slim and nice! :-)

Feel free to leave a comment on the new looks on the forum.

As I look over the statistics of the website, popularity of various sections and articles one thing strikes me as strange. Very few of the visitors take time to visit the forum. I'm not sure if it's because they are focused on information they're looking for and don't care about the discussions or is it simply because they haven't thought of it.

In case it's the latter let me encourage all of you reading this post to take a second, a minute or an hour and browse through our fantasy forum. Take a look at our Reader's World where we talk about our adventures with various books both fantasy and not, browse the topics in Movie Lounge to see what movies we've seen lately and what we thought about them or visit the most active recently Song of Ice and Fire forum, where we talk about the books and upcoming HBO adaptation of the series.

Read on and feel free to join in! :-)

Twitter has been recommended to me many times, but for some reason I'm not drawn to it and couldn't make myself use it, even though as I'm told it's a great tool for marketing a website. It's only after Facebook enabled posting Twitter updates automatically from the fan pages I can safely announce to all of you who are using Twitter: Fantasy Fan is there as well! :-)

If you are a Twitter user and want to follow me (and in essence Fantasy Fan, because I'm not posting any personal info there) you can do it here.

Some time ago I stumbled upon a simple website building portal called Squidoo. I decided to see how it works and created a couple of sites (called "lens" on Squidoo). I've found that it's a quick and easy tool for anyone who doesn't have special web designing skills and wants to created a web page. Squidoo is quite user friendly and website creation process is lightning fast!

So far I've created five "lenses":
Fantasy Fan - a quick introduction to Fantasy Fan website
Famous Fantasy Quotes - the list of best fantasy quotes (you can vote for your favorite!)
Fantasy Avatars - lens with fantasy avatar toplist (vote for your favorite!)
Song of Ice and Fire - lens about the SoIaF series
Fantasy Book Blog - a compilation of RSS feeds from various fantasy blogs.

Take a look at my creations if you want and check out the Squidoo in general. It's pretty awesome! :)

Social networks are quickly becoming places where the new, virtual generation of our society spends most of their awake moments. They are also best ways to spread the word about things you like. That's why Fantasy Fan is reaching out to them in hopes of getting through to a broader audience.

We've been to MySpace, time for Facebook! If you are registered on this social networking website and you like Fantasy Fan, click here and join other fans and spread the word!

MySpace, the most popular social networking portal is a great tool to meet new friends, people who share common interests and all kinds of organizations. And websites. The idea of creating a Fantasy Fan MySpace page came to me after I saw a number of fantasy blogs represented on the portal.

So finally here it is: Fantasy Fan on MySpace . If you're a fantasy fan and you have a MySpace page, connect with us!

Fantasy Fan RSS feed was available since almost the beginning of the website and now, with the help of the Google tool FeedBurner our news are available also in form of daily emails, delivered to your inbox every time there is an update on Fantasy Fan. If you would like to receive Fantasy news via email please click here.

Fantasy Fan gained a friend today! On my usual fantasy-news-hunt I encountered a blog that peaked my interest. I got in touch with the creator and voila! Dave put Fantasy Fan in Spotlight!

Dave runs a Science-Fiction & Fantasy blog, where he daily posts SF&F news, reviews and even some exclusive content that makes me quite jealous! ;-)

You can find Dave's blog under the address: davebrendon.wordpress.com . And if you want to see what the author says about his website read below...

In case you haven't noticed, Fantasy Fan has among reviews, news and all sorts of fantasy related information also a forum, community where our members share their thoughts on anything that's on their minds. Take a look at our Reader's Forum where people discuss what fantasy book to read next, read through the Stargate discussions in our Movie Lounge or simply say "H!" to fellow fans on the General Fantasy Fan Forum. Join us! :-)

It's that time of the year again, time again to wish all Fantasy Fans around the world Merry Christmas and very happy New Year! May you find great presents under your tree and New Year bring you the long awaited fantasy movies and books (A Dance with Dragons anyone?). Have a great time in this Holiday Season!

As you may have noticed Fantasy Toplist (Top 20 Fantasy Websites) moved to a new location. The toplist moved to a better platform and changed the formula of voting a bit. The websites listed remained the same, however now you can vote for each website once a day as opposed to once a month. Each month the toplist will be reset allowing new websites to compete with the old-timers.

To visit the new toplist go to: www.best-redefined.com/fantasy and to vote for Fantasy Fan click here .

If you want to help us support Fantasy Fan you can do that by visiting our Fantasy Shop . If your do not feel like shoping you can give us support by giving a vote for Fantasy Fan at:




RPG Gateway

If you're looking for more fantasy dedicated websites or you have a website you want to spread word about you might want to take a look at the Fantasy TopList . And while you're at it, you can give Fantasy Fan a vote .

After over fiver years of existence Fantasy Fan is going through another metamorphosis. Starting today Fantasy-Fan.org is running on a new Content Management System (CMS): Zikula . The new platform brings a lot of improvements on the backend of the website (increase in performance, improved security and spam control, search engine optimization tools) as well as some user friendly features.

The structure and layout of the website has been changed significantly as well. As you may have noticed ;-) we're running on a new graphical layout, helped to forge and adjust by the great community Fantasy Fan has. The article structure has been changed as well. We now have dedicated section for fantasy writers, with bio's and other resources. Additional fantasy related information (art, games, movies, fan-fiction) has been brought together in a separate place for the sake of clarity.

I hope you like the change! If you have any comments, kudos or constructive criticism, let us know on the Fantasy Fan forum .

Squidoo is the world's most popular site for building free, single pages about your passions. It's an amazing tool for everyone who wants to share their ideas, hobbies and passions. Fantasy Fan has it's own Squidoo representation, a Fantasy lens. Take a look at it and maybe you'll get inspired to make your own website. With Squidoo it's really easy!

Fantasy Fan website has a new partner site. All fantasy fans interested Dungeons & Dragons might want to take a look at www.DNDOnlineGames.com .



DnDOnlineGames offers game masters and players a chance to connect and play their favorite tabletop games...online.

If you're looking for an easy way of staying in touch with the latest Fantasy Fan news and stories, there is a new way to do it! You can add Fantasy Fan News to your iGoogle page! All you need to do is click the button below and follow simple instructions.

Since the very beginning of the Fantasy Fan we had a fair number of girls in our community. Has this changed over the years? Do we have more men or women? Find out and cast your vote in the poll on our fantasy forum .

Recently I've been looking around for new fantasy websites to gather news from and I stumbled upon a number of great sites in languages different than English. I thought to myself then that there should be a place on Fantasy Fan dedicated to local language websites. And now there is. :-)



If you are running a fantasy website in any language - feel free to register on Fantasy Fan and submit the link to your website into our Fantasy Directory . All we ask for in return is the link back to Fantasy Fan.



If your website is in a language that doesn't have a specific category in our Directory put appropriate information in link description: new category will be created for it.

Wondering how you can get your girlfriend to join you in the passion for Fantasy? Use the tried and successful method! ;-) Visit our Song of Ice and Fire forum and read Another Person Addicted topic.



Great thanks to Guysun for contributing. ;-)

On the first day of this year I'd like to wish everyone all the best! May it be only better than the one we just said good bye to. :-)

It is that time again! Another year went by for Fantasy Fan. On behalf of everyone staying with Fantasy Fan I would like to wish each and every one fantasy fan Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! May your swords stay sharp for ever! :-)