DemonGoddess

X-Men is done. pair specific categories are now subcategories of the pair types per top level. The movies categories have been merged into one for all the movies. Comics, I'm not quite sure what to do with. I know what I'd LIKE to do, what makes sense to me, but there's not enough there yet to split it up. So, there are categories added to allow for misc titles not listed. That's the extent of the changes there for now. Other than that, the initial recategorization is done. NOW, it's on the WORK. Sorting all of those stories in each subdomain.

corrected it, thanks. Normally, I do try and do that for manta2g as English is NOT her first language, and occasionally we'll see some odd spelling from her unintentionally.

If the user put this up in each and every category, that's spamming. Thanks for letting us know, this'll get handled.

Part of what you're seeing is people either haven't moved their stories, or don't know how to. That's no problem, since that's the next thing that we'll be getting to, is moving everything around to where things have been set UP for them.

whatever's easiest for you. I'll actually be posting up directions for when we start cleaning up either later tonight (I just got home from work, still night for me) or tomorrow after some sleep. I've got one more subdomain to go through for this part, and then we can actually start with the cleanup.

Thank you . It'll still help me.

I get excruciating migraines monthly. Latest one started yesterday, so I'm in for at least another week of hell. They last me no less than 7 days at a stretch. Now that I've gotten older, that is. It USED to be, that my headache FREE days were maybe 7 days out of a month. If I was lucky. To quickly bring up your blood sugar, drink some orange juice. Having diabetics in my family, that's a very old trick that is used to bring UP the blood sugar when it crashes like that. For headaches, I've tried all kinds of prescription stuff, and none of it has ever worked for me the way it's supposed to. So, I stay with the OTC stuff, particularly naproxen (Aleve). IT works better than the other stuff. It doesn't make it go away (NOTHING makes 'em go away), but it takes enough of the edge off the pain to make it so it's easier for me to deal with. I also tend to have the muscle from my neck down to my tailbone get very tight and stiff from these as well. That just makes it hurt more. Some days it feels like one giant charlie horse. So, a hot soak to loosen up the muscles helps. Since the neck area gets particularly tight, my mom told me one of HER old tricks to help loosen all that up and help provide a little relief. Take an old tube sock, put dried beans or rice in it and tie it off at the end. Microwave it for a minute or so, until it's as hot as you can stand it. Put it behind your neck and slowly roll your head from side to side. That loosens things up ALOT. Which helps. Your best bet, of course, since you get these chronically is to see a doctor for them. Just because the prescription stuff doesn't work for mine, doesn't mean it won't for yours.

Changes in tv zone: Angel, CSI, Smallville, Stargate: SG-1, and Supernatural are all top level categories. The other 2nd level categories have been split as in the other multi title archives.

The top level categories for originals are now all on the originals main page. They became top level categories because of the sheer volume of stories they each had. So, to find those, you would (if you're another part of the archive) use the menu to browse to originals and switch your subdirectory, and you'll see them all there right on the main page for original fiction. As to the Gravitation het category, thing is, until we're done sorting through all those stories that were originally in ONE category, it'll be hard to say if it lives or dies yet. If there are stories in the archive for it, it'll stay. If not, it'll die. It's honestly that simple. Same goes with pair specific type categories, wherever they happen to live. If, after we've gone through each and every section, they don't meet the criteria of 10 or more stories, the stories will get merged into their parent pair type category, and that pair specific category will be gone. As I've explained before, what you're seeing now, is the recategorization, which is a very necessary occurrence before even ATTEMPTING to clean up the archive as a whole. We're looking at approximately 100,000 individual story uploads across all those subdomains. This is only the beginning of a large task. Something that's a positive already from all this, is that it's defnitely helped the overall health of the archive database itself. By changing levels, and subleveling more, what happens is that the queries that are in the script, are not looking for everything all at once anymore. So, by changing the structure, it makes the queries work better, which in turn means that the database isn't overloaded with too many queries at one time. Which slows things down alot. Causes time outs as well as other things. Also causes white space in tables, which is a very bad thing. White space can CRASH a database. Unrecoverably. Hell, I pay extra so that I have a faster than normal broadband connection, and I can SEE a definite difference in speed of execution for page draws. Now, as I can see such a huge difference with my connection, imagine someone who still has dialup. THEIR page draw and script execution time will have increased even more visibly than what I have seen with my connection. When one considers that in September of last year, for example, this thing was ready to implode in on itself, there is a real need for what is being done. Yes, there have been things done since then to help forestall any major problems with the database, but they have been small fixes, and only bought us some time to implement larger fixes which have a positive long term effect on the database itself. This particular fix, which is the largest one to date, will stabilize the database to the point of buying us time to do what needs to be done to the code itself. Rather than a continuous scramble to keep the thing from teetering on the brink of implosion, which means NONE of us have time to get to the coding. Because you all hear from me the most doesn't mean squat, by the way, insofar as what we each do. It just means that I'm the most vocal (and therefore the most visible) of the three of us. manta2g with her overall abilities with programming, xax with his overall abilities with query structure, and me, I'm an old hand with making data work efficiently in a database and restructuring things to make that happen. But, our strengths individually with this sort of thing all complement each other. So, you see, while you may see/hear from me most, it doesn't by any means mean that I'm the only one doing things. I can say with certainty that the task I'm doing now, would've moved at a snail's pace comparatively, had I not asked xax for some queries to simplify and speed things up in data manipulation. It also would be much slower if I didn't have the coded utility provided for me by manta2g to simplify other tasks as well, that this entire task requires of me. pffft. I'd still be working somewhere in Naruto if I didn't have those extra tools provided to me. Instead of being maybe a day or two away from finishing up this initial task, before we get to actually cleaning things up. I'd be looking at weeks left to this part instead.

Vampire, Fantasy, and Dark Fic are all top level categories.

Challenges and requests are set up to be done in the forum. Those forums per zone and top level category, are set to NOT require login. So, the user can pop over, post their challenge, and be done without ever having to make a forum login. Gravitation has 3 het pairs in it (Tohma/Mika, Hiroshi/Ayaka, Claude (K) and his wife). Plus, there are other minor female characters in the manga and anime as well. Yes, it is a YAOI manga/anime, but that doesn't mean that there aren't het pairs within the storyline itself, as there are. Okay.... For Originals, I did it in such a way as to compensate for that bedamned blighted near useless thing we call a search engine in the archive. So, say for example, you specialize in writing angst, and you prefer writing het. You'd then put your fiction in the angst top level, with the subcategory of het. It'll help make things easier to find. For Poetry (which is also now a top level, among others), I've set up different second level categories based on poetry TYPE. i.e. haiku, sonnet, etc.

Okay, what I'm looking for specifically are links to these things. If, for example, you go the next chapter and there is no author data, that would be a glitched story. If it doesn't navigate to the next page (where there is a link for a page), that's also a glitched story. Can't fix if if I don't know where it is.....

What this means is that we are in the process of doing things. When it comes to single character categories, those won't be happening. Sorry.

Finished up movies zone. PotC and Star Wars are both now top level categories. Again, keep in mind that this is the BEGINNING of what is coming up, which is the overall cleanup. In order to clean it UP, it has to be properly categorized first. Non English will stay the same, no need for changes there. Originals will have SEVERAL categories become top level categories, with the ability to sort where they're placed with the overall schema set up everywhere else so far. Also, there will just be the general misc type stuff which remain where it is.

The other thing, is if this beta insists on posting your work, I'll put it all together to show all of this, to where it can't be implied it wasn't stolen...and into the Hall of Shame it will go. I'm evil like that.

Absolutely you should post it first. Plagiarism is plagiarism, and your beta shouldn't steal your work.

I'd restore it to what it was before the beta tried to make it her own thing isntead of yours, and then take it from there, I think.

Your offer of help is certainly appreciated. . Once I'm done with this initial recategorization, then we start cleanup. You can be sure that at that point I will be asking for your help.

*sighs* This is all the beginnings of the reworking and cleaning up the entire archive, subdomain by subdomain. These particular fics you'll find in the het category, as that is where they were moved to.

gone and gone

As to pairings, I work with information I'm given. Particularly in a fandom I'm not familiar with. Again, once we start going THROUGH these things, a section at a time, I'm sure I'll find more pairs. As I said earlier, this is just the beginning. Recategorizing and reordering merely sets things up for the overall cleanup of the archive as a whole. The DELETION of the categories you mentioned was announced. They will not be returning. If you publish a fic in response to a challenge, it goes in it's appropriate category, with a note in the description that it is in response to a challenge. All searching/looking for type stories will be deleted as they are found. Same with RP stories. There is MUCH that is going to happen. Granted, not everyone will be happy with what is going on. That's a GIVEN. However, what is being done is for the health of what we have currently in place. I'd much rather not have the whole thing die unrecoverably because it's overloading the sql server due to query overloads. The query load is already lessened CONSIDERABLY now, because of what has been done so far. IF I didn't have this 3 category limitation to work wthin, the query load would've been cut even more already. But I do, so there is only so much that this will fix insofar as the actual query loads. Then there is the bandwidth consideration. The archive handles post insert data very differently from the forum. THAT is why those particularl categories are coming here. I don't care if I EXACTLY duplicated all the data, chapter by chapter, the forum db would still not exceed, say 500MB with all that chapter data. The archive db, on the other hand, WAS at 6.2GB. Every chapter uploaded is actually a file that ends up being anywhere from 500k to 2+MB per chapter. A forum post doesn't exceed 50k in size. EVER. Believe me, we are well aware the search engine sucks. That's being NICE by the way. Nothing can be done about it yet, but it is being worked on and looked at to either make the current one better, or replace it entirely. It's LIKELY that the search function will be replaced entirely in the rewrite that is in progress.

Yes, it meant what it sounded like. It's in het or slash, depending on what the pairing was (OFC/OMC). This doesn't just make life simpler for the programmers, it helps the PROGRAM run better by recategorizing. That's more important. I'm doing what I'm doing to REDUCE the load on the hardware framework, in a few very important ways. Also, this is a critical step in what is coming next which is the overall cleanup and moving the stories around altogether. This has been done in OTHER subdomains as well, so I don't foresee where those category types will be restored.

I didn't feel it, but I sure did HEAR about it from the store customers.

All done with setting up the ages things for the books in LotR. Set the one category with description that it will be moved to celebrities. We'll be sorting it from there, I'm sure , as the category has 521 stories, so there will be some additional switching around once it's moved. (It'll end up a top level in celebs due to how many stories there are in that section).

it's gone