We’ve always had separate databases for each subdomain. That’s nothing new. The new levels of sub-categories and categories within those are something we have been asked to do by many members, who want to be able to navigate to a specific pairing within a subdomain. In the more general subdomains, ie, Anime, you do need to navigate to the specific anime you want to read, such as Pokemon, which has its own sub-category and levels of categories under that, or Ai no Kusabi, which is in the .+ to F sub-category and which gives you 4 pages of stories to look through.
Is it slow to navigate? I expect it is, but you need to navigate within FFN in a similar manner. I f I want to read Dragon Age stories on FFN, I would need to Browse to Games, and then to D, and then find Dragon Age on the list which appears. From there, it’s all chronological based on dated published or updated, with 20.6K of stories for me to peruse. On AO3, I need to Browse, which takes me to a page of recent fics from every fandom, and then I have to click the link to take me to fandoms, and from there figure out where my fandom might live. I’m not sure what the difference is between Dragon Age – All Media Types and Dragon Age (Video Games), but I’m sure if I poked, I’d eventually figure it out, but with 46,669 works under Dragon Age (Video Games) I don’t anticipate the search being too quick.
I don’t think any fiction archive has managed to find a way to streamline the search process. Certainly, since AFF was founded in 2002, the site has grown considerably, and what was a speedy process has become more time-consuming as we embraced new fandoms. It’s really only a few clicks to arrive at a fandom, and while I personally liked the left-side menus a lot better, they didn’t work for mobile users.
But what can help is to navigate once to a fandom you like, and then bookmark that category. It’s faster to click that bookmark, and get to the fandom than to navigate through the menus, or Google a random story and backtrack. Using one of my examples above, you can go to Ai no Kusabi, and bookmark the category url: http://anime.adult-fanfiction.org/index.php?cat=1049 Most browsers let you edit the text for a bookmark, so you can edit it to read something like AFF-Ai no Kusabi, and then you’ll be able to rapidly find your fandom. You can also add specific stories to your Currently Reading section of your profile, which I do to be able to access a specific story with ease. Our FAQ here explains how to do that.