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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

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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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

Forums 4.4.2 and other changes

Today, we are upgrading the site to the latest version of the forum software.  While there are not going to be a lot of visible changes, there was a ton of things changed under the hood that is geared towards making the site faster loading and to operate better on mobile devices.  It is going to take a few days to sort through the various settings and getting things operating properly. I'm going to post here several times as we go through this process. Some changes that have occurred p
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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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Site Tech News

New Stories Update Mar 5, 2020

By now, you have probably noticed that we have upgraded the Stories software on the site.  There are a bunch of what I would call quality of life updates and a major new feature. There is now an easy way to update your Author Profile area: For promoted author, you can now update your logo here yourself.  Banners need to be 848x121 pixels. All authors will be able to add their website link and author bio.  This is also where future Author Profile fields will show up, if/when
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Site Tech News

Bug Fixes and New Goals Widget

We have posted a new version of Stories on the site.  Things are going well so far. It correct a number of small issues.  We've also added the ability to put up a goal box for feedback items. You'll see it on various points on the site. Be sure to do your part in hitting our goals to give Authors more feedback! 
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Myr in Site Tech News

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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
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Site Tech News

Big Changes for Authors Posting Stories

We have a pretty big Story Archive change arriving very soon.  We have separated Adding a story to the system and publishing.  This should finally address the issues related to setting a publishing time. First up.  You now add all the story meta data first.  If you are still in the moderation queue and the story is not yet publicly published, editing the story will remove Moderation approval if you have it. These steps are the same, except you no longer enter Prologue or Chapter
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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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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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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 - 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
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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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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
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Myr in Site Tech News

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Site Tech News

2020, A Look Ahead

In our last blog post here in news, we looked back at 2019. This week will look forward to 2020.  The year has already started off with plenty of drama out in the real world and it promises to be an even crazier roller coaster for the rest of year.  Let's make Gay Authors a bastion of peace where we can all relax, shall we?  Read, Write, Enjoy! Anthologies The four themes have been selected.  Get a good start and try to have an entry for all of them this year.   I know I'm going
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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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
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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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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 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

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 - 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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Myr in Site Tech News

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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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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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