Search the Community

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 them currently, you'll get "Coming Soon" Added a story-only reputation count, that is currently only showing to staff. We're working on getting that changed so that it shows to staff and the author. This directly affects those in the story moderation queue and the automatic promotion out of it. When browsing by World, Series, or Story, miscellaneous media items will no longer appear in the list. Only banners for promoted author groups will show. The "Featured Story" that the staff pins on the first page of the story listing, will now properly not cover the story search bar for non-author groups. On stories where there are many Authors, Editors and Beta Readers, they will now be listed alphabetically. (Main Author is always listed first and additional authors are alphabetical) Unpublished chapter count where dozens of chapters were listed as unpublished is now corrected. The meta data on stories should now correctly reflect published chapter data not everything. (error was seen where it would say there are 10 chapters, but only 6 would be visible) Miscellaneous bug fixes. The only major feature still in the pipeline are the Statistics. We've been collecting them since Jan 2018. There are more than 18,000,000 hits since that time. The release of the new forum version that required a lot of rewriting, delayed it. There are also a number of bugs, some of them very stubborn, that we're still working on. Some of this is caused by the default behavior of the underlying software that we have to work around. (double notification thing on reactions, for example) Stay Tuned and be sure to follow this blog. It helps me track how useful people find these posts.

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 prior to the upgrade: Today's birthday's widget has been removed. Due to the ongoing privacy issues and trying to comply with various rules and regulations on the topic, as well as to make it simpler to maintain the code on the site, we have removed the "Today's Birthday" widget. When you are on the main forum page, this will no longer be displayed. We have removed the require for you to enter your birthday. Also to make it easier to comply with privacy rules, we've removed the birthday requirement. However, so we can still comply with laws regarding minors, you are required to enter your current Age. Teenagers MUST have their exact age. We have added a bunch of fields to the profile for links to various social media sites. Feel free to drop a link to your content. More will be coming today. Well, we now support Giphy, the animated Gif place. Often times, we can't express our feelings in text and this is one way to do it. The "GIF" box in the editor will pull up a search box for you to select from. Most of the front end stuff has been minor tweaks with the vast majority of changes geared to makes things fast and snappy. An important change: We can now control the devices widgets show on. In order to speed up mobile devices, a lot of the widgets will be turned off on mobile, thus requiring less to load. Please report any bugs you encounter here or in the help forum and we ask for patience if you experience any.

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 of genres and micro-genres has exploded since you are no longer tied to the physical space limitations of a bookstore. This means you can get pretty detailed in the space you write in. In the survey we ran earlier this year, there was a lot of questions that sounded something like "what's with all the werewolves?" The answer is that the market for ebooks is pretty hot for Paranormal Romance, especially shifters/werewolves. It's fine if this stuff is not your thing. Just click on the top level genres you are used to. The only big change there is that "Drama" is a sub-genre to "General Fiction". The Genre and Tags page has the full definition of all the genres and sub-genres. https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/genre-tag/ For right now, you'll see a lot of 0's in the sub-genres, as most authors haven't had a chance to do anything with the updates at the point in time this is posted. That will change as authors update things and staff make updates based on genres and tags on stories. Looking at a Genre, you'll see the definition of that Genre and any sub-genres that are under it. On the sub-genre, you'll see the Primary Genre and the Sub-genre definition will display: There are two changes to the Story Filters for Genre as well. You Select "Any genres selected", meaning if you select "Adventure" and "Comedy Modern" you will find stories with EITHER "Adventure" or " Comedy Modern" or both. Select "ALL genres selected", meaning if you select "Adventure" and "Comedy Modern" you will find stories that have at least "Adventure" AND "Comedy Modern". (they can have additional. You can add genres to the "Without" category. For example, if you have the above and put "Romance" in the Without filter, it will remove all stories that have any Romance genres tagged to them. This is very powerful in letting you drill down to exactly what you want. At least when authors/staff get all the stories updated fully to use more in-depth genres. For Authors, When you add new stories, Step 3 is still the same, you just have to select the sub-genres you want. There is a generic sub-genre in each major primary genre. (Drama is under General Fiction). There is a link on the story entry screen to the Genre and Tag page linked above to help you select which genre best fits your story. We recommend no more than 4 or 5 sub-genres at most for a story. If you have more than that, go to General Fiction and choose "Experimental" for your sub-genre. Genres are open for use. We are open to adding more and adding more definition as needed.

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 helpful reminders tips on how the system works. The other update is to add a "Without" filter to genres. This allows you to be more specific in the genre you are looking for. Such as Romance, without Paranormal. This can be combined with the Tag filter as well to really dial in on what you want.

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). You can now view the most popular author based on positive feedback on their story content. Story Types The next feature we've added is a new filter in the stories system to allow you to select stories of a specific size. Some special notes about "Story Type": This filter is only showing live data in the story system The titled story type is only a range of story word count as it exists at the moment you use the filter. We used the Wikipedia definition of story types while adding the last 3. Since this is live data, when an author posts new content with sufficient word count, then the story type will change. And to repeat... Story Type is number of words in the story at the moment you use the filter. Stories List for Fan Clubs There is now a way to list an authors stories in a Fan Club. This makes getting to the author's stories that much easier when you are hanging out in their Fan Club. The listing is the same as you'd see visiting the author in the Stories section. (I've gone through and added the stories list to all of the open fan clubs)

With the latest update to the Stories archive, you can now assign default discussion locations for both Author and Stories. This gives authors one more change for interacting with their readers. I have added FAQ entries for these two new options:

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!

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 Completed Stories On the last chapter of a story with a status that allows reviews, there is now a link to the review section on the table of contents page. Lock link title from edit on publish for Author Upon publishing a story, the link title will be locked. (link title is usually generated automatically and this reduces confusion when editing stories) Automatic Story Status Update Stories will now be automatically set on hold if an author stops showing up on site for a set period of time and the story has had no updates. Stories will now be automatically set to abandoned if an author stops showing up on site after a set period of time Category Enhancement Story data for entire category displayed under the category name. Similar to series/worlds. Story of the Moment Widget Random story link to further highlight stories on different areas of the site Quality of Life Enhancements For authors, when you visit the series page, your buttons will be "Add Series" and "My Series". Same for worlds and collections. Otherwise, it'll show "add story" and "my stories" like always. For members, "Add Collection" and "My Collections" will appear on most pages stories are listed. "Premium Stories" link was moved to the top of the right-side menu. Premium Stories pays the bills and keeps us open... just saying.

Hello everyone! It is that time again. The Stories Archive software on Gay Authors has been updated. We've had a whole lot of bug fixes and a couple of new features added. IMPORTANT NOTE: Stat's are Rebuilding for the next few days. You'll know when it's done because not every story will be ranked #1 with 0 views. New Features Site level Story view statistics are now available. We have been collecting timestamped story/chapter views since Jan of 2018. That is just shy of 26,000,000 story/chapter views that have a timestamp associated with them. NOTE: for privacy sticklers, no personal data is collected here. You can now go over to the new Story Stats section and see what people have been reading, set the time frame and the genre and show the list. Story level statistics are now also available. You can click on the story in the site level list and see the details of views by chapter in the time frame you choose. My Stats. Authors will be able to quickly see how their stories are doing with views. This data is broken down into All Members, Members or Guests. Administrators also have the option to view Premium Member group views. (again, no personal information here). This allows you to get an idea of what people are reading, if you want to make sure there is more of that available. (This is exactly what we are doing with Premium Member group views... what do Premium Members like reading? Get more of that.) Series and World link embedding now works properly. That is, if you place a link to your series or your World into the editor, such as your signature, it now properly formats like a story link would. We now have the ability to allow a chapter to be edited without the story being edited. This is important to authors that would like to be able to fix typos in their Anthologies without the system throwing a hairball about editing stories in restricted categories. Stories only reputation is now visible on your author page to just the author and Staff. This will show you how close you are to leaving the moderation queue through promotion. Bug Fixes Story widgets now obey settings for devices. Which is to say, when you view the site on desktop, you'll get more information visible. If you view the site on a mobile device, then we reduce the menus down to the bare minimum to improve the speed Review links in notifications are no longer broken. This was patched onto the site a while back and this is the official fix. Links to your reviews in a notification should work properly. Automatic Link Title should simply add a number to the link title if a story with the same automatically generated link exists. Should this remove the confusion when everyone names their story the same thing and the system previously gave you an error. We can now properly delete chapter comments again. There was a bug preventing us from doing it. Leaderboard function is going to be what it is for now. It's quirky from a programming standpoint and the minor issue we're experiencing is not currently worth the cost of trying to work around it. Goals widget should now be usable on Mobile devices Weird bug where the Promoted Author banner was not showing properly to members/guests has been fixed. Miscellaneous notification bugs fixed. Multi-author approval system for World's and Series should be working properly now, where the author can improve instead of requiring an admin to do so. Story Update activity Stream, is no longer showing unpublished stories. I am working on a FAQ entry for using the story stats. That will be up soon.

With the last update to the software, we've added the ability to add new meta data fields to Worlds, Series, and Author pages. I've just added a new field to the Edit World interface. If you have set up a website that has more information, details or images, you can link it here. This might be a Club for our promoted authors. Or it might be a World Building website like World Anvil. Or maybe Dungeon Fog, if you're sharing a map link. Anyone writing in Sci-Fi, Fantasy or other speculative fiction does world building. Not all of it ends up in the story itself. Do you want to share it? You can now link it easily.