northie

I can answer the badge element of your question with confidence (hopefully). You get badges for doing various things on site - visiting GA consistently, commenting, posting things, being followed, how many years you've been a member. It's possible for pretty much all members to get at least some badges.
Clicking on the 'Recent badges' section of your Profile's Achievements area (towards the top on a laptop view) brings up all the badges you've been awarded. Most of them are self-explanatory. See part of mine as an example:

 
As for ranks, Myr can correct me as necessary. My understanding is points which count towards rankings are earned mostly (entirely?) from interactions in the Stories part of the site. That can be posting stories (and chapters), reviews, and most commonly, making and responding to comments. Any member can grow their reputation but Authors can tend to have an advantage. As a general example, I'm 7,001 points short of progressing to my next rank (10). 

OK - not entirely sure I've got the question right but here goes... Taking one of my stories as an example and using a laptop. Having clicked on the story title, you see something like this:

Continue to scroll down and you'll see something like this:

You can either click on the direct link (highlighted) or use the drop down selector (arrowed). Hope this helps.

Hi, you might get a better response if you repost in the Writers' Club. You'll need to join first. I think there's a section for seeking editors / beta-readers. I get the impression there's a shortage of available editors... Good luck.
 

Hi, @grahamsealby. In the absence of any other response, I thought some clarification from you might be useful.
Are you trying to renew a premium subscription? If so, have you tried going to https://gayauthors.org/subscriptions/? Down the RH side (on a computer), there's a list of menu options. 'Payment methods' looks like the way to go. If you've tried this and are still experiencing difficulties, Myr or whoever, will need to know this. If you can give details of what's happened (or not happened), that will also be useful.

The help pages for posting a story at GA are here:
Incidentally, if you have a query you'd like the staff (or members) to answer, give it it's own string. You're more likely to get a reply.
 

Tim, in theory, only 'promoted' authors can add banners to their stories. I know there have been the occasional exceptions, but that's my understanding. 

Emi, there's a limit to the number of photos you can have in any one album. It's 25, I think. And you can't delete them, either. So, unless you want to delete the whole album, start a new one. That's what I've had to do. 

Hi,
 
Go to Stories and then click on the Advanced Search option on the RH menu. Untick the box that says Any which then gives you a drop down menu. Click on Complete which should then register when you do your search.