So, early spring? or...

[DemonGoddess]

Guess we’ll find out with the groundhog tomorrow!

February 1, 2017

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. The news posts are always posted to the forum as well, and one does need to register to talk with staff about the news post. Click the forum link!

Software Upgrade

The menu is now mobile friendly. Because this was actually a big change in how sessions calls are made and some other things, you’ll all need to clear your cache, and site related cookies. Once you’ve done that, close and then restart your browser. This should kill any issues you may be having for logging in.

One of the other things with the mobile friendly update, is that it’s being done in stages, so it can be debugged as we go.

As to the logins, please remember that the password field is CASE sensitive, so if you’ve got capitals in your password, the program will be looking for that. If you don’t use the caps where you have them, it won’t accept the password.

The forum has been updated to the latest version. The bug tracker is now here.

Ad Blockers

Our banners are embedded in the site skin. They do not pop up or under. As we use banners to pay the bulk of the site expenses, please consider whitelisting the site in your ad blocking software. We’d greatly appreciate it!

Unlimited subcategory levels

With this ability FINALLY in place, I’m starting to implement it. Where you see this, such as in the books subdomain, where I’ve already moved Anita Blake and Twilight back to their parent categories (where they should be, after all), an empty category will display the latest listing. Be sure to click the menu at the left to get to the story listings for the categories. Non posting categories are, by their nature, EMPTY. Manta2g has told me that she will make it so that the non posting categories will not display the listing where they are children of top level categories. This should make it less confusing.

Reviewing

We’ve made some big changes to the review process. The biggest one is removing the REQUIREMENT of inputting an email address to make an anonymous review. Now, you simply leave the review. Just remember to add your pen name where it’s asked for, so that the author knows who it is!

I have had to disable anonymous reviews globally for all users, due to an influx of spammers. If you want to reset your account to accept anon reviews, you can. I would suggest until we figure out how they’re getting around the anti spam stuff we have in place, that you don’t.

While I’m on the subject of reviews, I’d just like to remind readers that the authors get paid nothing for what they do. I’m not saying leave a review to fluff ‘em. What I AM saying is that at least acknowledge you read what they wrote. Maybe it’s an old fashioned thing because I’m an older gal, but I feel if I’m going to take the time to READ something, I’ll take the extra minute or so it takes to acknowledge I read the chapter (or in some instances one shot). When I have more time to be more verbose, I am. BUT, even when I don’t HAVE a lot of time, I still at least say that “hey, I read it, and thank you for the update” or something along those lines.

To the authors, a reminder that you can set or unset whether or not you receive anonymous reviews in the first place. Not all authors want anonymous reviews, which is why the option is left TO the author. The author is also able to set or unset whether or not to receive an email when a review is left.

Story Tags

One of the other things we do, as we go through each chapter, is to go through the story properties and remove the non-searchable characters from the tags. With the search made to where you can search with two or more characters, instead of four or more; this made it so you can search the tag field itself now. In order for it to work properly, this means that the ‘/’, ‘&’, ‘-’ and other characters like that that are not searchable have to be removed from the tags themselves. i.e. M/M becomes MM, M/F become MF, etc. If the tag you’re searching for doesn’t appear, try adding “*” after it. It broadens the search.

Dribs, Drabs and Doggy Tales

This is the forum where they all are listed. This is the current one. These are open ended, so if one set of words doesn't work for your muse, look at others!

Funding Status

As always, we appreciate and thank everyone who can donate. It's certainly not required of the users, but every little bit helps! I'm in the process of setting aside an emergency fund, equal to 3 times the monthly expenses. That will be noted on the donation page as well.

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.

Tech Bits

Archive Cleanup

Now, because of the new tools that I (and other staff who do this with me) have at our disposal, this should proceed at a much faster pace. For example, I fixed a 52 chapter story with errors from the old crash in 4 ½ hours last week. That same story, fixing it the way I had to before, would’ve taken me roughly 40 hours to get the exact same results. The new tools make it so I cut out several steps in the process, as I no longer have to do this all directly in the database itself. It also means that the people who help me with clean up, can help me with this part as well, not just finding the issues and giving them to me, which is what we did before.

Something which I do want to stress with you all, is that I completely agree with what was said during the restoral after the big crash in 2005. It’s really not the responsibility of the users to fix all this. It’s the SITE’S responsibility. This is why I don’t insist that people fix it themselves. Does it help to have users do this to? Sure it does! But, I don’t expect it, as it’s the responsibility of the site.

Tech support, directions given

Just to reiterate, when I email out step by DIRECTIONS on how to do something, that is exactly what they are. Not suggestions, but directions. If followed as stepped out, it works very well. This means that the user must follow them in the order the steps are given.

 

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