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A group blog by Site Staff in Site Blogs

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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

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 - 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 - Letter and IM/Texting Formatting.

As I mentioned last week, it is my plan to post short feature highlights as well as other tech-related items here each Tuesday.  This week it is about our Letter format and IM/texting formatting. This feature is available across the site, and the buttons are displayed in desktop/laptop-sized windows and tablet-sized windows.  The buttons are not in the mobile browser due to space limitations.   There are two ways you can use this feature: You can type everything you wa
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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 - 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 - 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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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 - Chapter Text Controls

One of the most important aspects to our Stories software is allowing members to make the reading window fit their need for reading.  Whether that is to adjust the text size, the contrast, the indents or the width of the text window.  Here are the controls:   Text size should be obvious here.  The green highlight, as shown here, means that the current text is larger than the default text.  If you have no highlight, then you have default text size.  If you have A- highlighted, then
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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 - 2017 Year in Review

There seems to be an unwritten rule out there for websites and publications everywhere that the last week of the year is the time to do a year in review wrap-up sort of post.  This is the one for Gay Authors. 2017.  What a year!  This was the year we jumped 50 versions of software to finally break free of the 3.4 version of the forum software and break into the world of 4.1 and then 4.2 versions of the software.  We've had hundreds of Stories archive software updates in the same timeframe a
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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

Story Filter Bar Change

We have updated the Story Filter Bar on the Story Archive. (As well as the reading stats filter bar) We have added an FAQ entry for details on the symbols.  This is linked directly on the story filter bar under the help "?" button.  
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Site Tech News

Story Archive Updated

We've updated Stories again! Story Collections All members will now have the ability to create a list of stories List can be public or private List can be ordered or unordered. The feature also allows for Curated lists of stories to be created by the staff.  For example, we can create a "Gay Author's Classics" collection of stories.  Or any number of other options. Review link added to Last Chapter of Complet
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Site Tech News

Story Archive Update November 5, 2021 - Genres

The upgrade to our latest version of our Story Archive software is complete.  This is a pretty big change under the hood on how we handle Genres.  First thing first.  Definitions. Primary Genre - This is the top level genre and consists mostly the old genres we used along with some new ones. Sub-Genre - These are more narrowly scoped genre under a primary genre.  For example Comic Fantasy is a sub-genre of Comedy. Why the change?  With the advent of epublishing, the number
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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Story Archive Update - 9/19/2021

Greetings all!  We have once again made some updates to our Story Archive.  There are two big ones that affect readers.  We have added "Highest Chapter Read" to the "My Reading History" page.  (For those of you that have opted-in to reading history.) There is also now a note in the reading History description, blue box as of this writing, that tells you how many stories and how long the stories will stay in the Reading History.  I also added some notes to the image as some helpfu
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Site Tech News

Story Archive Tech - What do you need?

Fellow Site Members: Welcome to 2024!  There are going to be some big software changes this year as the software that powers our website, Invision Community, goes from version 4.X to 5.0.  The big key under the hood changes for this version will be modernizing the software and removing some of the legacy weight it has been carrying for a long time.  Their main target seems to be making the software even more mobile friendly. With over 50% of our traffic coming from Mobile, more speed, better f
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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Stories System Updated 4/15

We have patched the site with the latest update.  There are a handful of requested changes in this update. Story System Reputation First up, on the Authors listing, we can now sort by "Highest Story Reputation" Under an author's icon, you'll now see 2 numbers.  The Green number is the Site Reputation Total.  (The likes across the entire site).  The number in the gray box is the Story Reputation. (This is the likes from just the stories/chapters/comments in the story system)
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Site Tech News

Stories Software Update

First thing this morning, I applied a new Stories Archive software update.  This was a minor update that was mostly focused on bugs. Added new feature on forum posts that shows how many Stories you have reviewed and how many story/chapter comments you have made Added "Story Review Guidelines", "Story Comment Guidelines" and "Chapter Comment Guidelines" feature that pops up a box when clicked that can offer general site guidelines for posting comments and reviews.  If you click on
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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Stories Archive Software Update

Hello everyone!  It is that time again.  The Stories Archive software on Gay Authors has been updated.  We've had a whole lot of bug fixes and a couple of new features added. IMPORTANT NOTE: Stat's are Rebuilding for the next few days.  You'll know when it's done because not every story will be ranked #1 with 0 views. New Features Site level Story view statistics are now available.  We have been collecting timestamped story/chapter views since Jan of 2018.  That is just shy of
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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

Some Site Stats in 2022 So Far

As we work to fill up our queue of features and what not, I thought I'd drop some stats information about some of things going on at the site. Reactions For the Last 6 Months: Note, that the percentage is vs the previous 6 months.  Very clearly, the most positive reactions are the most popular.   Chapter Comments For the Last 6 Months:   Age Ranges Claimed by Members:   Device Usage:    
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Site Tech News

Site Improvement Survey

Hello everyone! I have been working behind the scenes on quite a few things lately and I wanted to get some feedback.  I would really appreciate it you took some time to fill out this survey. It is short, but it will help us focus on some of the things we need to focus on.   Thanks everyone!  The poll is now closed.  
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Site Tech News

Server Update, Authors, Delayed Notifications

We had to do a server update earlier today and I had a small configuration issue.  The background task was not processing the last few hours and I've corrected that issue. There was a glut of notifications that were off by several hours.   We also had an odd incident where an Author group expired.  If this happens to you, you can just go back to the store and select author again. (In theory)  If there is an issue, just send us a support request from the help menu.  
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