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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

Forum Consolidation and Club Clean Up

As part of keeping up with changing times, we have done a consolidation of forums and clubs and have removed stuff that was not getting enough use.  This will hopefully consolidate our active content into less places as well as making the "Fluid View" of the the forums more useful. The changes we've made: Clubs o    Closed Fanfiction Club and moved topics to Writer's Circle - Specialized Fiction Forum o    Closed Sci-Fi Writers Club and moved topics to Writer's Circle -
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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Changes Coming to Profiles

As the schedule currently sits, we are planning on upgrading the forum software to the newest version in the next couple of weeks depending on how the software patching process for the Stories Archive software goes.  As part of that roll out, I'll be changing how we handle new member registration as well as the information available in the profile.  One of the more visible changes is that we are going to remove the birthday and Age in Years fields and replace it with the Age Range demographic op
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Site Tech News

Editor behavior change

We have changed the way the editor behaves due to the difficulty in maintaining the code for it.  It used to work that when you hit "return" it would go to a new line.  Now when you hit "return" it goes to a new paragraph. Example: This is a new line from Example This is a new paragraph. If you would like a new line, instead of new paragraph, hit shift-return. This was part of what caused the double space error you see in some stories.  Now, some posts will seem oddly space
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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

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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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 - 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 - Premium Content and Gift Cards

Greetings everyone!  It occurred to me that since this is the gift-giving season, we should share with you that GA does have a built-in Gift Card system that you can use to gift Premium Content (or credit for eBooks).     But first, let me get to the why Premium?   Everyone who has been on the Internet for awhile and is familiar with the other story sites like Gay Authors knows that there are basically 4 business options out there: A private or small group that covers
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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

Tech Tuesday - Series Feature in Stories

This week's blog was triggered by the observation that some authors and members seem to be unaware of a built-in feature of our Stories system.  This is the Series function.  First, for the readers, you can find Series easiest by using the right-side menu on the main stories page. See below:   If the Longest Series is not your thing, you can easily adjust it by selecting "Sort By" and choosing a different option:   When you click on a Series Title, say "Gone From
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Site Tech News

Server Update and Story Archive Updates

Gosh, it's been busy around here lately.  We have done a number of updates in the background and some front facing.  First up, if you didn't click on the announcement banner, Gay Authors has switched from our own dedicated server to our own cloud dedicated server.  From a technical standpoint, that means we abstracted one layer giving us future flexibility and ease of upgrades. This also got us off a server we could no longer upgrade who's Operating System was going unsupported in June.  As
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 - 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 - 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

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 - 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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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 - 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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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

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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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 - Starting off 2018 Secure

I thought I'd start off 2018 with a reminder to everyone about computer security.  In the past year, we've seen major security breaches that gave away pretty much everyone's personal financial information and worse.  It was bad, to put it mildly.  So, first, I'm not a security expert but I'm offering some common sense items for everyone. Use different passwords on all of your accounts. Use Strong passwords( 8+ characters, mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special
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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday: Tagging Tutorial

This week I wanted to talk about the power of the Tag in the forum software. It has been a feature in the software for a long time now. Although we use them slightly differently in our Stories Archive, they function the same with our search system.   What is a tag? It is a descriptive word that you can attach to a topic, blog, gallery image, ebook, story, etc. This word is that searchable. The system is set up so you can group like-tagged items together. For example, anything tagged "Renee Ste
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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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