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 we add them.

There is now an Author Discussion link directly under the author detail on the author profile page.

This link is defaulted to the "Promoted Author Discussion Forum" for Signature, Classic and Promising Authors.  It defaults to the Story Discussion forum for Authors.  For Poet's it defaults to the Poetry Writers Discussion forum in the Poetry Club.

If you set this link to be a topic, it also appears at the end of each chapter, unless you override it by setting a specific topic on the Manage Story menu on each story.

Manage Story -> Add Discussion Topic -> Type Title of Topic to prompt the search.  It shows you the Title, the Forum, and the date it was added.  Select the correct one and you are all set.

Signature Authors that have Fan Clubs, that fan club is listed here. 

This puts the forum discussion links right in front of the readers.  It is our hope this helps tie our forums back into the stories more, for those that are interested in more than just the story.

Authors can set their own topic/forum/club by hitting the Change button.

The major new feature is Story Recommendations.  I thank everyone that provided Reasons for the Recommendations both on the public blog and privately.  Cia and I reviewed them and took the most popular along with the ones we felt covered a range of options.  We have 8 currently and might re-evaluate those in the future.  I've noticed that people have discovered the feature and started using it I've been writing this... so score.  It's easy enough to use and figure out that I didn't have to explain it.

For those looking for the listing, the official page version is here: https://gayauthors.org/stories/top/recommended/

The link is also located on the side menu on the story pages.  Some very important points to this new system. 

The recommendations are time-based!  You can only recommend a story once. You can change that recommendation at any time or remove it. The main purpose of the time based item is that in order to stay at the top of the listing, you need new readers recommending you on a regular basis to stay there.  You can, of course, hit the other tabs for timeframes, including to see which story has the most recommendations.  The list also allows you to recommend a story or remove a recommendation right from the list.

Story recommendations show up in the box below the meta data/description on the story.  The recommend button is in the center there on the story listing.  Clicking it will pop up the Story Recommendation Reasons.  What makes the story good for you? You can select as many reasons as you like.  The Story Recommendation count is number of people recommending.

We also have Widgets (those little side bar items) that show Top Recommended Stories and Top Recommenders.  I have both deployed on the Forum Side bar for when you are in say "The Lounge".

I hope you enjoy these new features and they help you find more great stories by our great authors!