ApolloImperium Posted February 5, 2011 Report Posted February 5, 2011 Updates from Apollo Updates from Apollo I swear, every time I turn around it's been two weeks already! And here I thought that we wouldn't have even enough updates for a bi-weekly post, but new things are coming quick and fast! Archive Improvement Status Updates So last time I talked about some of the most requested Archive changes and forgot one! An easier way to load your stories to the site! We all know that hand coding a story can be a pain but what I bet you didn't know is that uploading a file like we used to support takes up a whole lotta space. Word and other editing programs toss a bunch of excess code into the database that just isn't needed. Remember when back in November I said the archive was 7.7GB? Well, two and a half months later we are at 7.8GB even though as usual we've been working to remove the excess minors and other such things that bloat the database. At this rate, we'll be over 8GB by the time the summer hits! So what do you do when the only options are hand coding or extra code that doesn't help the site? You install a Rich Text Editor that gives all your users many more options to play with! In the 48 hours since it's gone live there have been some good and some bad feedback from the users. As such, I wanted to address some of the concerns that were brought up. My chapter looks strange in the text box: Okay, so I explained before that uploading chapters bloats the database which is why with the new RTE we have disabled this option. Now, the RTE doesn't play correctly with the old uploads in the RTE box, so if you uploaded a chapter in the past or pasted in from Word or another word processor without hand coding in line breaks etc, it will look like a blob of text in the editor. Unless you click Edit Chapter it will not affect the formatting in the Archive. If you wish to make sure that it still looks nice in the editor, just hit enter at the start of each paragraph and save. My chapter looks really weird in the archive now: When we installed the RTE editor, we also ran a cleaning program that stripped out all the bloated code that Word and the other processors left behind, this can result in your story looking something like this with the broken lines and random code snippit. Most times this can be fixed by pulling up the chapters itself in the editor and just resaving, but a quick perusal to make sure that it's all in order always is a good idea. Otherwise if it appears as a block of text, just hit enter at the start of each paragraph and select save. I don't want to use the RTE or I cannot use it: We understand that not everyone can use the RTE and while it is the preferred method of uploading a new chapter, we have enabled the uploader for plain text files only. For the upload to work, you must have it saved as a .txt file and any html coding that you want already in at the time of upload. The HTML tags used previously in the Archive are still the only ones allowed with this method. Editing of uploaded files is allowed via the RTE, however if you are unable to use the RTE the only way to edit existing chapters would be to remove and readd the chapter in question. New Advertising Programs I know I said that we would have a new program for our advertisers today - I apologize, but we are still working out the details of the program we are attempting to launch. We should have this up with the next news! Sorry for the delay! AFF CafePress Store Please take a moment to check out our store, featuring our AFF Calendar and other merchandise with the wonderful designs they provided us! If you see artwork you like but not on an item you are interested in? Send me a PM or e-mail and I will see what we can do! Funding Status Information to exact status is always found on the donations page. Currently, the site has $718.05 stored in PayPal. February's hosting costs are paid and as we have the money to cover March! We have started to amass a small surplus that will allow us to do various upgrades, but again, please keep us in mind if you have some spare cash! Please see the donation page for further information on how. Tech Updates from DemonGoddess Rich Text Editor Now that you've had a chance to read some of the basic information about the updates, here is some more detailed information. The rich text editor makes it so that a user can either copy and paste directly from Word or Open Office and maintain their formatting, type in their chapter data and format as they go, or copy and paste as plain text and then format. This takes the place of .html/html uploads, which are a security risk for any php application to begin with. We've been very lucky, to date, to not have had some malicious coding inserted in to the database via an html upload. The user also has the alternative of adding a chapter via a text file upload. The old html tag rules apply to a text upload, and control the formatting of the chapter text. The edit function is controlled with the rich text editor. There is no longer a plain text editor available. Known Issues with the RTE/Related Forum topics Currently, the only known issues are the ones listed above when stories were uploaded in HTML files or if the author simply used the old plain text editor to insert the spacing between paragraphs. For the tech minded out there: The container tags stripped. This is particularly noticeable and a problem with old html from Word exports that were uploaded. The RTE cleans out all the extra html Word always inserts, which means that all the extra div tags it inserts are gone. If you uploaded html which had ONLY the allowed tags, those pages are displayed in the editor as they were before this upgrade, and there is no need to make additional edits unless you choose to. Data which was typed into the text box, and then coded in the text box, is also unaffected by this. Links FAQ: How to add a Chapter (Includes break down of the RTE functions) FAQ: Allowed HTML Tags for Formatting (For those that wish to upload txt files) If you experience any other issues with the RTE that have not been mentioned here, please follow normal procedures to gain Technical Support. Archive Clean Up With the changes made, we are going back over the previously corrected stories from our Archive Clean up to ensure that they are still formatted correctly. However as always, if you know that you were affected by the crash in 2005 and your story was already fixed during clean up we would greatly appreciate your assistance in ensuring the story is still formatted correctly.
ApolloImperium Posted February 5, 2011 Author Report Posted February 5, 2011 Note: The archives for clean up that have already been repaired are Books and most of Buffy.
DemonGoddess Posted February 6, 2011 Report Posted February 6, 2011 Review responses- hp subdomain Hi, I was wondering whether or not it is against site rules for an author to keep editing their 'completed' stories under a particular pairing like Harry/Draco. There is one author who has done this for the last two days and each time at least four pages are taken up in a row showing only her stories under that pairing name. When I click the Harry/Draco pairing link, I keep missing seeing whether or not my favorite stories are being updated because I have to keep paging through four pages of her stories to find the ones I like. I was just curious and wanted to know. Thank you. I appreciate you letting me vent my frustration. I don't mean to cause any trouble just wanted to know. P.S. She seems to be an extremely gifted and talented writer and I don't mean to appear rude by asking about this or get anyone in trouble. I understand maybe one day of editing all stories BUT this was two days in a row that I noticed it happening. I expect we'll be seeing a fair bit of that throughout the archive, as the authors edit their word html exported chapters. With the addition of the real text editor, what happened is, that stories like that, where the chapter was uploaded using a file generated by Word especially, the chapters now show parts of the illegal html function calls. So, in order to FIX that, the authors are having to go in to their stories, open the chapter, and then resave it. This preserves their formatting, without them having to actually completely delete and re-add that data. The author you're speaking of is having to do this with almost every single story she has added to the archive. I expect many other authors will be in the same boat and this will be something seen throughout the site as authors do this.
ApolloImperium Posted February 7, 2011 Author Report Posted February 7, 2011 New Known Issue: If the < pre > tag was used as your text container, then it was stripped as it is no longer supported, and text may not be word wrapped.
Guest HerRoyalGoddess Posted February 17, 2011 Report Posted February 17, 2011 okay I'm probably not posting this in the right place, but i don't know where to post this problem. I'm currently trying to add a new chapter to one of my stories, so I go into authors panel click edit story, and all it comes up with is the page it shows when you add a new story. I followed the process again starting with the first chapter thinking perhaps the sites software had been updated and when I went to add the second chapter the whole thing started again, so now I have one story loaded twice which I know you don't allow and I will remove it but some help would be appreciated. Many thanks HerRoyalGoddess Xx
DemonGoddess Posted February 17, 2011 Report Posted February 17, 2011 If you want tech support, please post it to the tech support forum. That's where I look for tech support requests. As to the issue, it's fixed now, so you should be good to go on your chapter edits.
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