back on task: latest site news
new features installed, tested, and in place, with a few minor tweaks to go.
rss category feeds
For those folks who’d prefer to limit their subscription deliveries to X or Y categories… now you can. There’s the site’s regular RSS feed, and you can subscribe to that by clicking on the icon at the bottom of every page (far-right side, can’t miss it). Or you can click on “get updates” in the menu, and you’ll see the general subscription option over on the left. There are eight other options, if you’d rather pick and choose. Each subscription will be considered a separate feed in your feed-reader; these may show up with names (ie, “Site News”) or may not, depending on what kind of application you use. You can pick one, two, six, or all of them, but just keep in mind that some posts will appear in multiple feeds, if the post is in multiple categories (most overlap will be among icon colors).
“more in category” suggestions
Open a story and scroll down to the bottom. Now, on either side of the review box, are two sets of suggestions. One lists a randomized selection of other stories in a similar code (rated-G, rated-K, rated-M). The other list contains randomized suggestions for stories with the same color (pairings). There are a few bugs still to be worked out, such as the fact that sometimes the list will include the story you just finished reading (a minor issue, overall). If you’re reading a story with multiple color icons, sometimes you’ll get a list for each color. Working on this, but at least it doesn’t appear to be that common, since the majority of stories are single-icon.
green lion links
Links have been added to the front page for all the green lion challenges. If you’re looking for a specific year, now you can get there directly. If you use the menu to select the Green Lion category, this will open the Green Lion archive page, but you can narrow down your choice by picking from the links in the header, one for each year. (Not all links have anything, yet, because the stories themselves are still being uploaded.)
reviews to author
The comment box is now private. Sort of. When you enter a review, the review won’t be posted on the site; instead, it’s sent directly to the author just like the previous archive version. (The review is kept in the admin backend, so authors who prefer to ‘pick up their messages’ can log in and view feedback, as well.) For the time being, entering a comment brings you back to the empty comment box, which does give the impression that your comment didn’t actually go anywhere. I’m still working on getting the comment box to go away (at least temporarily) and show you a message letting you know the review was successfully sent. Otherwise, I’d be sending duplicate reviews all day, myself, so best to fix that one soon as I can, eh.
in progress…
* Reader recommendations
A kind of short-hand review by readers when they like a story. However, testing showed that the chosen plugin also managed to happily devour most of one of the database tables, and that’s no good. For the time being, this option is hidden while I figure out how to rewrite the thing so it doesn’t make the site unbearably slow. Will keep everyone posted.
* Author information
That is, more than basic bio on an author’s page. The first question is what, exactly, should go in there, and then I’ll come up with design and code for it. Look for a poll sometime today, asking you what you might want to see on an author’s page.
* Author recommendations
You’ll see this already (or at least the header for it) on stories by hosted authors, but it may be a little while before I get the mini-application up and running. The idea is for authors to be able to suggest a story from each of the site’s other authors, as examples of what they themselves like to read. (Limiting it to one story by each author also makes the coding a great deal simpler, even if that will make the author’s choices much harder. Sorry.)
* RSS Feed templating
If you're subscribed, then you got a copy of this post in full. Work is being done on getting the RSS feeds to show category, tag, pairing, characters, genres, notes, warnings… yeah, it’s a lot when you stop to think about it. But it’s useful information to have before you click on a link, so I’m trying to coax WP into letting me finagle things to suit the archives. As part of testing, I will be uploading stories that will then come down the feed, and some of the stories may end up coming through in full - so to prevent everyone getting 8K per post in their reader, I’ll be concentrating on converting only really short stories while I work on the template. Just FYI.
anything else?
Can you think of anything else that would make it easier on you, as a reader, as an author? What have you seen elsewhere that you really liked, and think would work for Scimitar? Comment, or drop a line to me or Mikke and let us know.
rss category feeds
For those folks who’d prefer to limit their subscription deliveries to X or Y categories… now you can. There’s the site’s regular RSS feed, and you can subscribe to that by clicking on the icon at the bottom of every page (far-right side, can’t miss it). Or you can click on “get updates” in the menu, and you’ll see the general subscription option over on the left. There are eight other options, if you’d rather pick and choose. Each subscription will be considered a separate feed in your feed-reader; these may show up with names (ie, “Site News”) or may not, depending on what kind of application you use. You can pick one, two, six, or all of them, but just keep in mind that some posts will appear in multiple feeds, if the post is in multiple categories (most overlap will be among icon colors).
“more in category” suggestions
Open a story and scroll down to the bottom. Now, on either side of the review box, are two sets of suggestions. One lists a randomized selection of other stories in a similar code (rated-G, rated-K, rated-M). The other list contains randomized suggestions for stories with the same color (pairings). There are a few bugs still to be worked out, such as the fact that sometimes the list will include the story you just finished reading (a minor issue, overall). If you’re reading a story with multiple color icons, sometimes you’ll get a list for each color. Working on this, but at least it doesn’t appear to be that common, since the majority of stories are single-icon.
green lion links
Links have been added to the front page for all the green lion challenges. If you’re looking for a specific year, now you can get there directly. If you use the menu to select the Green Lion category, this will open the Green Lion archive page, but you can narrow down your choice by picking from the links in the header, one for each year. (Not all links have anything, yet, because the stories themselves are still being uploaded.)
reviews to author
The comment box is now private. Sort of. When you enter a review, the review won’t be posted on the site; instead, it’s sent directly to the author just like the previous archive version. (The review is kept in the admin backend, so authors who prefer to ‘pick up their messages’ can log in and view feedback, as well.) For the time being, entering a comment brings you back to the empty comment box, which does give the impression that your comment didn’t actually go anywhere. I’m still working on getting the comment box to go away (at least temporarily) and show you a message letting you know the review was successfully sent. Otherwise, I’d be sending duplicate reviews all day, myself, so best to fix that one soon as I can, eh.
in progress…
* Reader recommendations
A kind of short-hand review by readers when they like a story. However, testing showed that the chosen plugin also managed to happily devour most of one of the database tables, and that’s no good. For the time being, this option is hidden while I figure out how to rewrite the thing so it doesn’t make the site unbearably slow. Will keep everyone posted.
* Author information
That is, more than basic bio on an author’s page. The first question is what, exactly, should go in there, and then I’ll come up with design and code for it. Look for a poll sometime today, asking you what you might want to see on an author’s page.
* Author recommendations
You’ll see this already (or at least the header for it) on stories by hosted authors, but it may be a little while before I get the mini-application up and running. The idea is for authors to be able to suggest a story from each of the site’s other authors, as examples of what they themselves like to read. (Limiting it to one story by each author also makes the coding a great deal simpler, even if that will make the author’s choices much harder. Sorry.)
* RSS Feed templating
If you're subscribed, then you got a copy of this post in full. Work is being done on getting the RSS feeds to show category, tag, pairing, characters, genres, notes, warnings… yeah, it’s a lot when you stop to think about it. But it’s useful information to have before you click on a link, so I’m trying to coax WP into letting me finagle things to suit the archives. As part of testing, I will be uploading stories that will then come down the feed, and some of the stories may end up coming through in full - so to prevent everyone getting 8K per post in their reader, I’ll be concentrating on converting only really short stories while I work on the template. Just FYI.
anything else?
Can you think of anything else that would make it easier on you, as a reader, as an author? What have you seen elsewhere that you really liked, and think would work for Scimitar? Comment, or drop a line to me or Mikke and let us know.