Better Site

[Guest KalineReine]

My number one suggestion... Is to make it where people have the option of selecting which characters are in the fic, so that way we can choose ANY pairing we want, not just the ones that are already entered. You know, like the way FanFiction.net and Y!Gallery do it, where you can choose 2 characters when you start a fic, and then people can choose 2 characters when browsing fics? It would make so much more sense that way.

And, the pages all take forever to load. I know my computer isn't the best, but it has no problems browsing other sites. I've had this problem on this site from 3 different computers so far. Every time I try to upload a story of mine, it takes forever and sometimes there will be chapters missing so I have to go all the way back, delete all the chapters that came after it, and start all over again. I hope that will be fixed soon.

Also, reviews... I have to be able to reply to my reviews. I want to TALK to people, not just have them say whatever and not even be able to at least say 'thank you' or answer any questions they often have when reviewing. It would be great if reviews were separated by chapter, and we could also reply to them. If we can't get reviews properly, then what is the point?

I like the pages to be plain and simple white background with Verdana font. Is there a way to change that? The font that the stories are displayed in bothers me and hurts my eyes. I wish we could at least have the option of changing it, like in our setting or something.

So I guess I'd like to summarize by saying... I suggest to:

1. Let people choose characters, not just from a list of pairings but two lists of characters.

2. Pages should load faster.

3. Make it easier to upload chapters and fics.

4. Make it possible to actually reply to reviews and know what chapter they are for.

5. Have the option to change the background and font to how we would like it.

That's all I can think of for now. I hope you will consider some of these.

[Ezriee]

Now I'm not a Techie at all but I do have a couple questions...and a suggestion.

About the page load times...

Are you sure that you're not having a spyware issue or some other problem with your computer that is making the site slower? I have three computers in my home, each one runs a different operating system, windows 98SE, windows XP and the demon, windows Vista. I primarily used the 98SE system and Aff is pretty damn fast considering the operating system is 11 yrs old.

What type of browser are you using?

And Dialup or DSL/T1, etc?

Also, the problem that you're having with the background color...ya see, I have the opposite problem. I can see light font on a dark background (like black or dark blue) easier than dark font on a white or light background.

I've found a way to overcome that and I use it for a lot of different sites. If you use Mozilla firefox, you can actually change the background color and font colors to make things easier to see by turning off the page style or having different colors take over the colors on a page.. If you go to tools, then options, then choose the content tab in firefox, go to the section that says fonts and colors. Select Colors, then change the text color to black and the background color to white.

If you do that and leave the check in the box that says Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections above, the page setup will be different, like all the links for the site will be listed instead of being able to scroll over them for the dropdown. If you uncheck the box, you'll still have the dropdown menus with your colors that you've chosen....

Seems like a lot, but after you take a few moments to set that up, it takes just a few seconds to toggle back and forth depending on what you want to do with the background colors.

-shrugs- Just an option for you to try if the tan background is really hard for you.

[Niara]

I'm pretty sure that the site load issue must be on your end somehow; I've always had near instant loads and uploads here. **shurgs**

As for the review thing, it has been stated in the rules and FaQs here the reason why replying to reviews isn't allowed, and why writing reviews for your own work won't be tollerated... So as nice as it might be on the well meaning side to be able to thank people for their reviews right there on the page, and talk about it with them, it's most likely not going to happen because of the ramifcations of the less than well-meaning - there's a specific FaQ dealing with the reasons why not.

That said, if someone writes you a review you'd like to respond to or converse with them about, you can always send them a private message or email if they've allowed it to be seen.

A more advanced way of searching for fics would be nice, true, but at the same time, the only reason finding what you're after is only an issue because there's so much in the general sections of categories... with more sub-sections, and with mroe fixed being filed in sub-categories suitable to them rather than 'general', seraching for what you're after wouldn't be an issue anyway, no?

I'd agree that a way to change the display style of the archive would be nice, though, in the mean time, have you tried transferring the text of the fics you want to read into another document and changing the font/style etc. from there?

-Niara

[DemonGoddess]

• Load times can and will vary from user to user, depending upon your system, your OS, if you have a malware infestation, and any number of things.
  
• If you read about what it is we're doing with both reworking the overall structure (that falls under the archive cleanup) of the categories overall, you'll understand that there IS something being done about it, and that it is a huge, huge project; and VERY time consuming.
  
• If you read in various places here in forum, you'll see that the code itself is being reworked entirely, but that it's being done in such a way as to not compromise the pre-existing data. That makes it an even longer task than just plugging "holes" and making patches will. You're talking about a rewrite from the ground UP of the code, which is old and several versions behind insofar as languages being written in.
  
• The search engine has also been talked about, and what will be done to make that better has been said. The current engine is not designed to handle a dataset that is more than around 500MB. The database is 7GB, currently, so the current engine gets overwhelmed. Having said that, what we're going to do about it won't be implemented for quite awhile yet, while the cleanup continues, and the reworking of the code is still going on. We're careful about what we put IN to the archive scripts as they currently are, so that it doesn't crash entirely. Again, due to several revisions between what it was written in, and what version PHP itself is up to now, as well as MySQL.
  
• Before I even get asked, we are going as fast as is possible. Please understand that the people doing these things are a small group. For my own part, as well as the clean up stuff, I'm also the lead moderator for both forum and archive. So....stretched a little THIN here, lol.
  
• As to review replies in your review table, refer to the size of the database itself. THAT is why we don't allow it. It's also why search/challenge/request posts were moved to the forum, as it is better able to handle it. Much smaller database, scripts are all current language.
  
• Your suggestion of a drop down or something with pairs, while a good one, is not possible at this time. I don't even know if it'll ever be done at this site, to be honest. Again, this goes back to the overall rework in progress, as not only is code being completely reworked and replaced, table structure is being changed as well. With table structures being changed in the database itself, you're looking at a whole DIFFERENT set of headaches for those of us doing this, as we have to be VERY careful that what is done doesn't compromise the existing data. One of the things I'm hoping we'll have implemented sooner than later, as it will not compromise the data, but will make the sorting much easier, is having more levels of posting categories to work with. Currently I have 3 category levels. Only TWO of them are posting levels. If what is being planned is implemented sooner than later, I'll have unlimited posting levels to work with. That will make the clean up and reorder part of all this much easier to do.
  

Hope that all explains it

[Harley Quinn hyenaholic]

Just a suggestion - that when people donate, you list their accounts in a separate page for a month, so that they get a bit of attention. Just a "Hey, this person was generous, you've got them to thank for the site being up, and look, they got some acknowledgement for it!"

It might encourage more people to donate.

[DemonGoddess]

That's something we've actually been looking in to for the archive, to do it in such a way that it definitely shows who did, and as a thank you. However, it's not quite ready to go.