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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: 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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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 - 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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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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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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Tag, You're It!

This week is all about the tags.  Every part of the system uses them.  I bet most people kind of gloss over them if they notice them at all.  Buy why are tags important?  The honest truth is that the tags are there to help you group like material together.  For example, I tag all of these type of blogs posts with Tech Tuesday.  if you click on a tag, it pulls up the search engine and shows you everything that is tagged with that item: https://www.gayauthors.org/tags/tech tuesday/  
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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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 - 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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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Clubs!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far!  With so much going on around Gay Authors, sometimes it's easy to miss when something new happens. Lately we have been adding some new clubs to the site, and moving appropriate forums into those clubs. Wondering where your favorite topic went? Check out clubs!  Clubs allow us to put all the stuff that belongs together in one place.  Writing Sci-Fiction?  Then the Sci-Fi club has fellow sci-fi writers, resource links, inspiring images, etc. Want to tal
Renee Stevens

Renee Stevens in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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: 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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

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