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Gay Authors News blog focuses on items of interest for our entire site with an emphasis on stories.

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Site Tech News

Server Software Updates

I have done some updates on the underlying server software today.  If you were around while I was doing this, the site was going up and down like a yo-yo.   A reboot and a couple of services restart later and I think we are up and running. Everything I tested seems to be working and all the big red warning flags I was getting have cleared.   (for the technically inclined, we went from PHP 7.0 end of life version to PHP7.1.  I had to get the extensions right and update the caching system. bl
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Site Tech News

Streamlining Help Menu

As mentioned in previous announcements, we are undergoing clean up and consolidation.  As part of this, some of the temporary links that were on the forums have been removed and placed in the newly streamlined "Help" menu.   Help -FAQ = a list of common questions with links to the answers. Help Topics = a database of common questions and answers Step-by-Step Guide to Authors = How to become an Author on the site. Support = Open a support ticket if you
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Site Tech News

Writing Resources Page

We have consolidated and removed two different forums that were dedicated to Writing Resources.  We have instead replaced them with a single Writing Resources page. This page will be a constant work in progress as we update and make better ways to organize it.  There are already a ton of resources linked on the page.  If you're writing and stuck on something, there is probably a resource there for you. https://gayauthors.org/writingresources/  
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - New Series and Worlds Feature

This week I'd like to talk about two of the new features coming to the site soon.  I've shared this a bit with the authors, but I wanted to share them a little wider.  This is a more focused view for readers. We currently have one way for authors to group their stories: Series links.  They work, but I've wanted them to be more obvious.  So, with the new version, we're giving a bit more depth to our Series. Series now has a description.  We can also add a series banner and special
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Premium Subscription System

For those of you that don't know, Gay Authors stays open and improving through the combination of Premium Membership subscribers and advertising.  This pays the bills and allows to maintain and improve the site.  In the last version of the forum software, they introduced a simplified Subscription Management tool.  The most important thing it does is fixes that stupid error "You have already purchased... etc".  The catch, of course, is that any time the software changes like this, there are hiccu
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Site Tech News

Stories 2.3.2 Is now Live

We have just posted a new version of Stories.  In theory, this finally corrects the notification bugs.  If you Follow a Story, you should now get your notifications every time.  If you Follow an Author (on the author page) you should be alerted when they post a new story.   A "Part of Series" toggle has been added to filters:   The quick search links now properly activate existing filters and you should be able to change them or remove them with the minus sign. Exa
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - New Search Filters

For those of you that have not yet watched the video on how the new search filters work, please watch it now:     Back?  Good...  Now to add a few things.  Since the new search system uses the URL to add filters, you can now bookmark your search. Or copy it for others.  For example, this is all the Sci-Fi stories by dkstories: https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/?filter_genres=9&filter_authors=212     Or maybe your thing is complete Long
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Following Blogs

Today we are going to talk about how Follow works.  In the forum software, Follow works by notifying you to new content in the item you wish to follow. So, if you follow a blog, you get notified of new blog posts.  If you follow a blog post, you get notified of comments to that blog post.  If you follow a Forum, you are notified of new topics to the forum.  If you follow a topic, you're notified of new replies to the topic.     When you click the follow button, you get these
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Story Archive Next Version

So I shared a sneak peek of this post in our Writer's Circle.  I encourage authors to join the club if you haven't yet because there are a ton of great posts in there, and sometimes early information about upcoming features for authors.   So, we've got the new Stories user interface worked out, and we're fixing the bugs.  Here's a sneak peek at it:      The quick Title search will now be on every page.  The previously empty search field now has "Search stories..." to g
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday: Clubs

I thought I would swing around to Clubs again for this Tech Tuesday.  Clubs are semi-private groups here on Gay Authors.  We have a few different clubs available currently, and you can find them under the Club Link on the main red menu.   I strongly encourage our authors to join the Writer's Circle.  There are a lot of ongoing discussions in there, and our friend @BHopper2 has been nice enough to start his own ongoing topic discussions each Tuesday which have brought forth some g
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - When Tech Breaks

I've just enjoyed, and I use the term loosely, an Internet free weekend.  This was not my desire in the least.  The several-year-old network interface board for Verizon FiOS decided to die Friday afternoon.  The tech was able to replace it fairly quickly, thankfully.  Unfortunately, it wasn't until Monday morning that they got around to getting here to do it.  The only internet access I had over the weekend was through my phone.  That means that time I would normally have for taking care of stuf
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday: Forum Update 4.3.3

As we roll ever closer to Armeggedon... er.. the go date for GDPR, Invision, the software company for the forum software is releasing another update to specifically address the ongoing concerns of pretty much anyone running anything on the Internet.   We will be rolling the update ASAP.  It is set to release Tuesday (Today).  Some features in it: Downloading personal data.  One of the requirements of GDPR is to be able to provide what personal data is tracked.  They've added a featur
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Reading Away in 2018

A few weeks back, our tech guru extraordinaire, A.J., compiled the reading stats to date for me.  I poked them around to see what I could see and I made a little pie chart for everyone.   Now, any math person will tell you that you need context to understand what that means.  So here are the relevant details: Data is compiled based on "reads" from Jan-April 2018.  This is about one quarter of the year. The data shown here represents 2.89 million views, which comprom
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Privacy and Site Terms

There has been a lot of news lately about Privacy and information breaches all over the place.  Combine that with the new EU law, GDPR, going into effect on May 26th, and every internet company on Earth has been bombarding you with alerts, messages, and requests for re-agreements.  The amount of regulation that you have to deal with as a small business is frankly crushing.  As the laws were written by technical half-wits (and I'm being generous), the law is written in such a way as that everyone
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Story Archive System Updates

We are actively developing a change to the story system that will go with our forum software upgrade.  There are a lot of things going on under the hood, but there is a fairly sizable visual change coming as well. Clicking on Newest Stories currently shows you this:   Our still-in-development software update shows you this: A couple of notes here on the image: This is a work in progress and subject to change This is in the default color scheme and ha
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Help Us Help You

This week is all about help.  We have a pretty extensive help system here on-site where we've taken the time to write up the answers to the most frequently asked questions.  We've also made videos for some of the features on site to make it that much easier.  So first things first, help your fellow members with a quick link to the appropriate help section.  Help is on the red menu on every single page of the site.  Don't be afraid to click the menu. Help -FAQ - Brings you to the list
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Updates

I've started my new job and I'm getting settled in.  I'm hoping my schedule settles down soon as I've been going a bit bonkers. lol.   Anyway, we stealth upgraded the site a few days ago and since no one complained, things appear to be working well.  We also updated the rules on the site on Sunday which triggered a request that you agree to the rules again.  This rule updates and your agreement with them is now recorded so that we comply with the upcoming EU debacle, the GDPR. (General
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Other Social Media

I've completed my move, but my life is in boxes and I'm actively digging out.  I am keeping it short this week and hoping to resume longer posts next week.   If you have not already signed up for our weekly newsletter, you should. Cia likes to sneak surprises in from time to time. You can find it here: http://eepurl.com/cqQPIz   We also have a YouTube Channel, which I have placed a number of "How To" videos.  Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/user/GayAuthors
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday: Author Posting Rules Visibility

We are currently testing a bug fix update to Stories, 2.2.4, that also contains a minor, but important feature.  Site rules at the source when posting new Stories and new chapters and when editing them. This is just a sample of the test code in process:   One of the issues we have at Gay Authors is that we have a lot of rules and standards that authors are expected to follow, but they are not always easy to get to.  This update will place rule boxes right at the point of use
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Story Formatting Issues

This week's blog is going to be a little light.  I'm extremely busy with my move.  I will be relaxing this time in two weeks, I hope! Now, I think everyone has bumped into some weird spacing issues or weird formatting issues when reading stories on the site.  This is especially true of older stories that were brought in from the days when we hosted stories as webpages.  @A.J. has been working hard to clean up visually, by having the system fix the code on the fly.  We are working on a way f
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Recent Updates and Coming Updates

We've recently had a couple of noticeable updates for authors and for everyone pasting a story link.  I wanted to make sure everyone saw the information. First, some changes to the software: Also, A.J. has been able to fix the Preview Chapter button so you can now see how your story will post into the system, with all of the filters applied:   As mentioned in the first topic, when you place a link to a story in a post or a blog, etc, it will now format with a story banner. 
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Settings, Emails and Profiles

There are a lot of settings and options on the site.  It can be a real chore for people who don't make a habit of clicking on things.  I'll admit, I'm an engineer, and I tend to explore every option.  I realize most people aren't as shiny object driven, however. So... settings.  You can find the link in the pop-up menu under your Display Name on the upper right part of the site.  (Or in the hamburger menu if you are on a mobile device).  Choose "Account Settings". Today we are going to
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Fancy Links

I created an announcement a few weeks ago asking people for topics they wanted to be covered here in more detail.  You can find it here: One of those requests was how to we make the fancy links, like I use in my post signature to link to my story.  It's really, really simple.  Just copy the link in the url address bar and then paste the link to a story on the site into an editor, and it'll auto format for you.  For example, I could paste a link to my Sci-Fi Anthology story, A Bad Day to Be
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Activity and Activity Stream

When we upgraded to the new software, we picked up a very powerful tool called the Activity Stream.  The cool thing here is that it has not only built-in options, but you can create your own as well.  We'll start with the most important two, right up front.   First.  All Activity.  You can find it by going to the Activity option on the Main Menu and Selection the top option on the Sub-Menu, All Activity.   This immediately shows you all the latest new content on the site.  Yo
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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Fluid Forum View

So, when Forum 4.2 was released, they added a new feature called "Fluid View".  This is a whole new way of looking at the forums.  It basically lists all new topics based on when they were posted and gives you a color-based tag on which forum it belongs to.  The forum company is recommending now that new forums start with it.  This ties into me taking the time to colorize the forum icons awhile back.  You can check out the different options here: The Standard forum view is the button t
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