DemonGoddess

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Firstly, I'd like to welcome all the new users we're seeing daily! Glad to have you here! Please do familiarize yourself with the Terms of Service and Content Guidelines. This IS a moderated archive. Hit Counter As you've all seen, we have a new hit counter! As we go through things with the code, we've reached a point where any attempts at patching the old stuff creates much in the way of headaches. So, anything you see that is new? Is really new! Now, a few people have told me that their hits were reset to 0 at random. Why that happened, I don't know. It's not most of the stories, just some at random. If you're one of the users affected, please email me with your pen name and a link to the affected story. How I'll address it is to look up your individual stories within that subdomain in the database, as well as other stories added at approximately the same date/time. I'll make the adjustment according to the data I find. Current Reading List This has been updated to display the last time an author updated a story you're following. So, click your current reading list, and see who's updated! Database Character Conversion This is something you all need to read, please. When upgrading the database cores, the character set was changed to unicode. This is STANDARD for MySQL now. So, to prevent garbage and scrambling, I have to convert the character set within the tables to MATCH the database itself. To do this, manta2g will set the archives to read only on Sunday, February 7 and Wednesday, February 10. The Sunday schedule for read only will be 8 hours, and on Wednesday will 4 hours. The reason to make it read only, is that I can do all this using some database tools, to where it should only take me about an hour for each big table set, and about 20 minutes for each smaller table set. There are 23 table sets to convert. The alternative is to dump all the data to me locally, convert it locally on my machine, and then upload it all. Which, for those of you around for the BIG crash of 2005, will take months of read only. I much prefer being able to do it this way. I've already tested both a small data set and a large data set. That's where I came up with times. The conversions worked great! By making the archives read only for a period of some hours over probably 4 days (2 Sundays and 2 Wednesdays) where I do this total, it protects the data already here. I also then have the time to be able to check and make sure there is no truncation of data, as well as fix some of the very old wallotext. I'll be doing all this by running a series of queries in a COPY of the tables to be updated (in a different database entirely), which will then be moved to the main database to go live after the conversion. Story Votes This is being rewritten entirely, to be supported by the new code. We've also decided that voting will no longer be anonymous. You will be required to login to leave a vote rate. We've had far too many instances where people decided they disliked a story pair (as an example) or a writer, and down-voted all their stories. I had NO way to track it back when it was malicious, as the function was truly anonymous. When this function is restored, the voting system wide will be reset to 0. This is not something happening in the immediate future, but I did want to give people a heads up. Dribs, Drabs and Doggy Tales Current weekly prompt is here Funding Status Introducing, the donation kitty! For years, I disabled a direct button/link to donate, as for a very long time, there was fund raising via “let's push the panic button”. So I made it very low key for a long time. Understand that donations are NEVER required, but they sure do help! This is the first month in 2 years, where I've only had to pay monthly site expenses to where it only cost me $20.00 (it's usually an average of $140.00). I sincerely appreciate that, as it's been a very rough month for me. If you've used the kitty to donate, and want to be added to the supporter's page, please do email with your pen name, so I can do that. Donation kitty has generated 12 donations in the last THREE DAYS!!! It bears saying again, I thank you all for your kind generosity. Truly! So does the rest of the staff! Deletion notification For Accounts When deleting an account because the user is underage, a plagiarist, or whatever else would be a reason to delete one entirely, we do NOT send a notification. For Stories When deleting stories, this is done for non compliance with the ToS. Stories are HIDDEN long before they are deleted. The user is told there is an issue, and given 7 days to comply before the story is hidden. Upon hiding, the story is left for 30 or more days (it ends up being more when I have a heavy work load IRL) before it is deleted. If the issue is CORRECTED, the story is restored to public view. Disposable email Disposable emails are not checked, and we don’t allow registration with them. Upon finding an account registered with a disposable email address, it is deleted. Blocking the site email addresses There are times where staff does need to contact users. Your email addresses are not displayed, and I am not in the habit of making email “blasts” to the users. I may occasionally use the bulk email feature of the forum to email forum members when I post site news, but I tend not to do that as well. Where we are encountering users that block us, when attempting to contact them, I find myself in the position of having to take draconian measures to get a response. So here is what will be done from this point. If, after REPEATED attempts, we find the staff email blocked, I'll have no choice but to hide that user's stories until he or she contacts us with an email address that can receive email from the site. I'm sorry I have to institute this, but it's the only thing I can think of to get response from those who refuse to respond, no matter WHAT way we try to message them. Email address visibility By default, the email address is hidden when you register. It will only display if you put it in the bio area of your profile. In the review boards, if you are asked for your email address when leaving one, you are NOT logged in. If you don’t want your email address visible there, input the word private INSTEAD of your email address. Forum and archive These are separate programs. Being separate programs, they also require SEPARATE registration. In other words, registering for one or the other does NOT register you for both. Disabling anonymous reviews As a matter of course, while the authors cannot choose this for themselves, anon reviews are enabled on a daily basis. If you don’t WANT to have this enabled, email at technicalsupport@adult-fanfiction.org with a link to your profile, and a subject line of “disable anon reviews”. Bear in mind that when I do this, as this is controlled by the profile, ALL your stories will then require that a user be logged in to leave a review. Please remember that the authors you read do like to hear from you! Leave them a review or two, and let them know how they're doing! DemonGoddess061

While I've not experienced this aspect of life for myself, my hubby has with both his mother and brother. Mostly his brother. Yes, it is horribly stressful for any of you who have to experience this. There were many, many things I overlooked BECAUSE of the stress he was dealing with at the time. After all, his first and only priority at that time should have been his ailing family members. When he felt guilty about it, mini and I reminded him to not, because it's not like any of them asked for this. His brother didn't ask for cancer, and his mother didn't ask for leukemia. To ease his mother's burdens, he took on all the care of his brother. You're right. It's a thankless job. Know that the person you're caring for, though, even if he or she doesn't mention it, DOES appreciate it.

I have no way of verifying what the actual hit count was for the story, which is why I came up with the method above.

regal renege rambunctious rules

Here's how I'm fixing this: I look up your stories in the subdomain in question. I compare dates, and take the adjustment from the stories in the date range of publication.

We're trying to NOT go in to the old code at all for any tweaks. Chances are high it'll cause big issues.

Well, just my two cents, but if the author stated it was going to be published, it's LIKELY the author removed it before hand because of that.

@24CaratCoal Thank you! I've got some things I'll be covering in a news post on Sunday, related to the upgrade and further tasks, and how they're going to affect users.

With the ratings being disabled, it doesn't matter at this point, really. Plus, there are other things I'll go in to about the ratings and how they'll come back, in the upcoming news post.

The most common reason I've seen for downvoting is that the person who does this doesn't like a pair written about in the fandom.

yep, I adjusted it according to other popular stories in your category, published in the same time range.

You may just need to refresh your bookmarks. Story update date/time has been added to current reading list too, by the way.

We've seen that with a few, and that had to do with the rewrite of the hit counter itself. Why it only affected some stories, but not the bulk of them, I'm not sure.

We're actually looking in to a full text chapter search, but if it bogs things down too much, that's not likely; as far as internal search engine. Yes, I've added things to the indexes for google and whatnot to allow for chapter text searching. Did that a couple years ago.

Okay, moved to the correct forum, for starters. Secondly, it appears the author has removed them from the web.

No, it won't be anonymous. I'll actually be able to track back malicious downrating. It'll be awhile before it returns, it requires a complete rewrite of the function, as well as additional tables.

aw jeez, that's the old one In any case, you need to activate. Instructions sent.

You're welcome!

@24Carat, yes, your email can be changed. Email me at technical_support@adult-fanfiction.org with your updated information. As to the tags, they are going to be a set of tables, and selectable. Not input on the fly though. That'll make it much harder to set up filters and for searching, and be sluggish as well.

Tags will be rewritten as far as how they work, entirely. This is going to require the creation of additional tables for the tags, and a subroutine to add then and whatnot. Not sure yet how exactly this will work in search, unless we're looking at filtering using the tag field. I'll ask on that.

thank you!

I'm not sure, unless it was converted with the new hit counter? I'll look in to it though.

Actually glad you pointed out that error, as the function referenced no longer exists, so the string is now corrected so it no longer calls for a non existent function. As we're making things more centralized to run GLOBALLY across the domain, the only title you'll see is the subdomain (archive) title.

And once again I'll address this. The goal with the code is to make as much of it execute from one area, as we can. This means we're not running 23 different instances of the same script copied locally to the subdomains to open a story anymore, in different subdomains. We're using ONE script, in ONE subdomain to open stories EVERYWHERE.