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39,040 visits (155 today, 586 this week, 725 this
month, 4,348 this year, 101 yesterday. Best day was 9,372
visitors.)
Our tip jar:
The ATF festival season for 2016 has concluded.
2017 Iowa-area festivals as of
9/6/16
:
TBA
If you are in the Iowa-region and want to be listed here, let me know!
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If you would like to support AtTheFaire, and promote your Renaissance festival related group, business or service, drop me a note! We could use the coins in our tip jar! |
| Latest Headline as of Saturday, 07-Mar-2026 16:05:38 EST : |
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At The Faire is a source for Midwest renaissance festival information. Click on a link in the castle wall to explore the major areas of this site: ATF Shoppe features our merchandise; Faire Folke is an index of festival performers, merchants and rennies; Faire Info contains articles, festival calendars, indexes and reviews; Faire Photos is our gallery of 61,603 festival pictures and movie clips; Faire Virgins contains information useful to those wanting to get more into faire; and Web Services gives details on our low-cost hosting and web design services for rennies, faires, and merchants.
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Check this news page daily! The most recent 14 news items from the past two weeks will be available on this front page. For older items, be sure to see the news archives. If you have any festival news, rumors, or announcements, be sure to let us know so we can post it here.
| Saturday, March 7, 2026 12:25AM |
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12:25 AM - Farewell, Renaissance Banner Network! (posted by
JohnPaul
)
One of the coolest AtTheFaire projects was the Renaissance Banner Exchange. I believe we started it in 2001, and it looks like it was last updated in 2011. Back when folks had "personal home pages" or their own business website, you could make a tiny banner graphic and upload it to the RenBan network. You would put some HTML on your web page somewhere and it would randomly show banners from other exchange members. It was super cool.
But it's been broken for years, so I'm going to pull the plug.
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| Thursday, March 5, 2026 8:52PM |
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8:52 PM - Hosting changes ahead... (posted by
JohnPaul
)
Wow. Has it really been 31 years since I put up my first "personal home page" on the World Wide Web? Indeed. What a long, strange trip it has been.
I have spent the past decade slowly winding down my hosting services, but still managed to start a few new sites last year.
As part of this great purge, some legacy AtTheFaire-era websites have been retired.
Washer Well Wenches (wenchville.com) has now been moved to a folder on AtTheFaire.com.
Gypsy Comedy Show now redirects to my Pirate Comedy Show.
Des Moines Renaissance Faire (2020-2021 edition) now archived.
...and so on. I have now gotten the list of sites hosted here to 50. Though I still expect a few more new ones to come online in 2026, especially if anyone out there needs low cost web hosting for their renfest-related project ;-)
Links may be broken in the meantime. I did a similar cleanup for my DisneyFans.com sites.
Oh, and the AtTheFaire gallery was re-generated:
https://photos.atthefaire.com
Thanks to some new server upgrades, I may be able to get those photos back "in" to the AtTheFaire.com site again like they used to be oh, so long ago. At some point, the file count got too high for the server file limit to handle, so I had to split things out into that sub-domain.
But enough about hosting.
How ya been?
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| Wednesday, August 6, 2025 11:22PM |
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11:22 PM - NebFaire and Quad Cities Ren Faire websites changing! (posted by
JohnPaul
)
With the Nebraska Renaissance Faire and Quad Cities Renaissance Faire now fully under new ownership, the legacy domains ATF has been maintaining since day one are being transferred to the new owners. Huzzah! Look for all-new websites in the not-too-distant future!
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| Saturday, March 8, 2025 11:27AM |
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11:27 AM - Welcome, Douglas Cafe! (posted by
JohnPaul
)
As some of you know, I began offering web hosting back in the 90s. I have not promoted it much the past decade or so, and am down to hosting only 73 sites currently. When I get a new one, I will mention it here and on my other photo site, to help boost it in the search engines.
So, welcome about Douglas Cafe in Urbandale, iowa.
https://douglascafe.com
They are a local hometown diner down the road from me that I frequent for their cheap breakfasts and great service.
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| Saturday, February 15, 2025 5:01PM |
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5:01 PM - Beware of scammy event producers... (posted by
JohnPaul
)
Today I went to web search for a specific event... In the search engine, a competing event came up but the listing said the name of the event I was searching for.
The event in question actually has the TITLE tag of their web page -- used by search engines and bookmarks -- as the name of a competing event in the area.
How scammy is that?
They also include the names of two competing events in their meta tag keywords of their page.
But hey, merchants don't care who they are doing business with as long as their are customers ;-)
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| Tuesday, October 8, 2024 7:48PM |
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7:48 PM - ATF 3.0 in 2025? (posted by
JohnPaul
)
With the assistance of Willa, there is a chance ATF may get unfrozen so it can be updated again. Ever since Adobe stopped selling Dreamweaver and moved it to a subscription model, it has not been affordable to use for a handful of site updates each year. This site has been frozen in time ever since.
As much as I hate to break links that have been indexed on the internet for about 25 years, it may be time to rip the bandaid off and convert this site to "yet another ugly Wordpress blog."
To be continued... Next year.
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| Thursday, November 23, 2023 12:00PM |
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12:00 PM - Two Renaissance festivals in Ames, Iowa? (posted by
JohnPaul
)
Have you heard of the St. Andrews Renaissance Faire? Neither had I, but 2023 was its THIRD year operating. It appears to be a one-day community event hosted by a church.
Here was their Facebook event page from 2023:
https://www.facebook.com/events/227488353626642
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| Monday, November 13, 2023 9:24PM |
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9:24 PM - (posted by
JohnPaul
)
If you love theming, and don't mind that theming being "haunted house," there is a new immersively themed bar in downtown Des Moines called "The Haunt". It is operated by the folks that do The Slaughterhouse haunted attraction. The decorations look like they could be straight out of a classic horror movie. It's very well done. I've got a recap of it and other information on my Doing Des Moines site:
https://doingdesmoines.com/the-haunt-slaughterhouse-bar/
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| Saturday, November 4, 2023 6:52PM |
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6:52 PM - Ames Ren Faire non-update... (posted by
JohnPaul
)
We had planned to meet with the Ames Renaissance Faire organizers today to find out more about their upcoming August 13-14, 2023 event, but they ended up not being able to meet. Instead, we submitted a list of questions and will share the details when we have the answers. The Ames Haunted Forest folks have confirmed the weekend is scheduled for the event, so that's good (unlike an event that came through Des Moines earlier this year which was selling tickets without the venue even being rented--it happens).
Their website has some new updates, listing Opening Ceremonies at 10:30am, a Joust at noon, and a Fire Show at 1pm.
https://amesrenfaire.square.site
To be continued...
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| Tuesday, October 31, 2023 11:45AM |
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