Jump to content
RIP - Comicality

Gay Authors News

A group blog by Site Staff in Site Blogs

  • entries
    2,083
  • comments
    13,457
  • views
    1,806,915

Contributors to this blog

About this blog

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

Entries in this blog

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/  
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

0
Site Tech News

Updates and Feedback From Survey

Thanks and Introduction So, right up front, I want to thank everyone for taking the time to do the survey.  I would especially like to thank the kind words that many people left in the comments.  They meant more than you know.   In the rest of this blog, I'll go over some of the feedback and offer advice as well as covering the open bugs.   Bugs So, yes, there are still a few active bugs: Chapter comment notifications are not being sent.  We missed this one i
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

8
Site Tech News

Traditional Forum View VS Fluid Forum View

Now that the forums are consolidated, one of the features added to the system years ago is a LOT more useful.  You can now select Fluid View and see all topics in a single list, instead of having to go to different forums to see the most recent topics.  You can see them all in one go and filter to see only the forums you are interested in. If you are not a fan, you can still use the Traditional view, which is the button next to the one with the giant red arrow, shown above.  
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

0
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

1
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

4
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

3
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

3
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

2
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

3
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/  
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

7
Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Story Reviews

Writing reviews is hard.  That's the honest truth.  Writing the first review is even harder.  Humans are social creatures and tend to have a herd mentality.  Most people will wait for others to go first.  It is part of human nature.  However, writing those reviews is important for the same reason.  A lot of people don't like to go and read something unless it's been reviewed.  There are other factors people look to like number of views, number of likes, and number of follows when the reviews are
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

10
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

0
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

5
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

11
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

1
Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Spoiler Tags

Hello!  Welcome back to Tech Tuesdays!   Starting today, we are planning on bringing this feature back for you every Tuesday.  Most of them will be short but will highlight either existing features or coming features.     Today, we will be going over the use of the spoiler tags.  These are built right into the editor and should be used to hide information that would otherwise spoil someone's enjoyment.  This often applies to the big twists you see in books, movies, tv shows, games, etc
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

12
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

3
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

3
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. 
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

10
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

10
Site Tech News

Tech Tuesday - Quotes, Mentions and Etiquette

I thought I would talk this week about the use of quoting and mentions while you make posts and comments on the site.  There is a certain etiquette to this to keep topics flowing smoothly without making a nuisance of yourself.  So, first up, some definitions: Quoting is when you press the "Quote" button and it pulls in the entire comment Quote This is when you highlight a portion of text and a small "Quote This" box pops up that you then click.  It functions the same as Quoting, bu
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

10
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

2
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

2
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

3
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
Myr

Myr in Site Tech News

0
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Our Privacy Policy can be found here: Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue..