vampbyte
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The Great Tutorial Masterlist Migration
🕑 Added 2023-05-28 21:06:13 +0000 UTCAs I'm sure most of you know, I've been maintaining a masterlist of my Clip Studio Paint and general art tutorials for a few years now. This is one of the things I'm most known for and something I'm really proud of!
But as the years have gone by, there's been one huge glaring issue with it that has been deeply troubling me - a good chunk of the tutorials on there were created as Twitter threads. If you're a Twitter user or even just hear about the antics that go on on that platform, then you know hosting anything of major importance on that platform in its current state can be a dangerous game. In the past few weeks, there was a bug on Twitter's back end that caused a large number of accounts to randomly get suspended with no warning. Fortunately it's been resolved, but while I was watching the carnage unfold and wondering if my account would also be compromised, it dawned on me that, if something ever happens to my account or Twitter as a whole, a huge chunk of my tutorials would be rendered completely obsolete, thus making my masterlist obsolete, too.
I've known for some time now that I want to make an effort to rewrite and reformat all of those tutorials onto another platform, but I knew it'd take a lot of time and effort on my part so I've hesitated. I've been chugging away at my Tapas Original series for over a year now and that has taken up 99% of my work time, so it's been tough trying to squeeze other things in. But now it feels a little more urgent, so I've decided to start the process, even if only as baby steps.
The question ultimately is - where should the tutorials be hosted? My main worry is that, like Twitter, other platforms can also become victim to poor management and thus create the same problem down the line. After posing the question to a few friends, we've narrowed it down to a couple options, which I'll list the pros and cons of here.
More than anything, though, I would really appreciate you guys' insight and feedback on this! If you've got any strong feelings in any direction please let me know, because I want to make the choice that works best for everyone!
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Option 1: Patreon
The first choice would be to rewrite and post my past tutorials here on Patreon. They'll stay free to read as they've always been, and although I'll have to re-record a lot of the GIF footage that has been lost with my old computer, the formatting should stay relatively similar between the Twitter threads and here.
The main factor that has me unsure is whether or not you guys would be okay with getting these tutorials rewritten and re-uploaded here onto the feed. On one hand, they wouldn't just be the same tutorials as before, as I'll have to re-record and rewrite a lot of them from scratch, and because I won't be stuck with Twitter's crummy character limits, I can go more in depth with my explanations. But on the other hand, if you've already read all of those tutorials before, I could understand being annoyed at having those fill your notifications when I upload them.
Option 2: Google Docs
Another option, one which omits the use of social media altogether, is Google Docs. I could either write up each tutorial as its own document, or stitch them all together in one master document broken up into "chapters" for ease of access. If I did it this way, it might even potentially negate the need to have the original masterlist in the first place.
However, because of the lack of social media elements on Google Docs, this would make sharing the info a lot harder on my end and on everyone else's too, and having these tutorials be accessible to a lot of readers is my primary goal.
I also worry that this might be the most time-consuming option, as it would take a lot more formatting and effort to get it right. Still, I'm more than willing to put that effort in if it would pay off best in the long run.
Option 3: Tumblr
The final option I've considered is hosting them on Tumblr - I'd probably make a blog dedicated exclusively to these posts, and then link to them on the masterlist. This would make them more open-access than Patreon and faster to format than Google Docs, but runs the risk of potential poor management in the future like Twitter. In general, I feel a little hesitant to leave my tutorials at the mercy of whatever bad decisions social media site owners make, but I know that's the sacrifice of having them be accessible to as many people as possible.
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Thank you in advance for any input!! If you have any other ideas, please let me know and I'll try to factor those in too. Thanks for reading!
