Jeconais posted on Wednesday 31st December 2014 10:34am

An update a few days ago added an OPDS catalogue system to the site.

And while it's a typically ambiguous initial-ism, it does make it very easy to download any of the Epubs (ebooks) that are automatically generated on the site.  The epubs are automatic, unlike the other formats which are distinctly manual and need the moon in the correct place for me to update them.

For the iPad, I used an app called ShuBook, added Fanficauthors as a custom catalogue source, and was then able to browse all the authors, and then all the stories for each author - and download all the ebooks.

There are other apps available and I have no idea which one is best.  

The url to enter is http://www.fanficauthors.net/opds/root/.  Some software might be able to pick up the catalogue from the metadata on any of the pages.

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Jeconais posted on Wednesday 10th July 2013 6:46am

If you have email alerts turned on, and you would like to keep them, then you MUST revalidate your email address.

The ability to send email alerts was suspended by Amazon, due to a high amount of complaints and bounces. The only way to get unsuspended was to invalidate every email registered before January 2013.

The process is as easy as I can make it, and you'll have the choice of changing your email, revalidating, or asking to never receive emails again.

This only has to be done once. And of course, new accounts just go through the standard procedure.

I apologise for the inconvenience, but it was this or turning off alerts all together.

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Jeconais posted on Friday 15th June 2012 8:41am

Another of the fanficauthors author has ventured in to the real world, and has her own work for sale:

A Widow in Waiting is a historical fantasy with strong elements of mystery and romance, set in 1780's Britain and following the adventures of Eleanor de Maine, who must conceal the truth about her noble husband's death and learn to master her magic of moving in order to survive the six months which separate her and the man she truly wants.

It's on both Amazon.com and Smashwords.com (the Smashwords copy costs a bit more but has some extra back matter to it): 

Amazon (Kindle and PC): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008AQQ04G
Smashwords (all common e-formats): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/171162

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Jeconais posted on Saturday 18th February 2012 2:47pm

As much as I liked and preferred the new layout for story lists, it was growing more and more obvious that I was in a minority.  

As the number of complaints started to exceed the number of compliments, I decided to revert the code.

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Jeconais posted on Thursday 16th February 2012 5:14am

As well as a vast swathe of bug fixes, there are three more interesting things that might be of interest.

1) A new site config option to replace the light blue with the standard site dark blue

2) The expand-list check box, that replaces expands the story lists to something more resembling the old layout

3) For those with an attachment to the old grid layout - http://www.fanficauthors.net/old/ has it

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Jeconais posted on Sunday 5th February 2012 9:17am

So, finally, a few months later than expected, we have the long-promised code updates.

While every effort has been made to bug test this, there are probably some still floating around.  Alas, I don't have the resources I do at work to run full tests for all browsers.

The new site is very javascript heavy, but has worked fine on a 7 yr old computer (running Chrome), so it should be fast enough for everyone.  So, what's changed?

• Login with Facebook/Google.  If nothing else, this stops people from needing emails that are (currently) dodgy.  I don't store any of these details, I just match your email address with one in the site.  If no match is found, then it offers you a chance to either create a new account, or reclaim your original account.
• Improved story lists - you can now filter, or even do a basic search for stories.  I'd have liked to put in a full text search as well, but don't have the server resources to do so.
• Improved story uploading for Site owners - Finally switched to a DOM based parsing system (From the regex based one) that appears to be a LOT more robust
• Changed the translation system to be far more comprehensive.
• Complete visual refresh 
• Improved Font Size/Style, CSS and page width settings.  These are now available on all story pages
• Updated the user pages (to see all a users reviews) to be more useful
• FINALLY - fixed the problem with .mobi files, and Kindles.  New versions are being uploaded at the moment.
• Allowed better html customisation on reviews/comments
• Fixed the bugs showing chapters (On mine) before they were officially released.  This has been a long standing bug, that was discovered in December.  When I found the bugs, I delayed the release of the stories until i could fix it, but finding this meant re-tooling parts of the site, that just delayed everything.  I will be releasing the chapters "officially" for the few who didn't find them before hand shortly.

There are more, but I can't think of them right now.  What started as a quick hack to integrate Facebook/Google quickly grew out of control, and a lot of ideas were tried, then removed.

As always, IE support lags behind Chrome/Firefox/Safari - however, it looks like IE10 will support the URL pushState objects, bringing them into line with the other major browsers.  I've also dropped support from IE7, 8 is acceptable, just - but if you are stuck on Windows XP, it would be better to use a more up to date browser, if only for stability and security.

If you do find anything wrong/weird - please contact me.

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Jeconais posted on Tuesday 19th April 2011 1:34pm

A big welcome to another great author who has joined us.  ChemProf is the lastest welcome addition to this small site.

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Jeconais posted on Tuesday 11th January 2011 5:43am

In an attempt to be cool, and hip, and down with the kids (get off of my lawn, etc) I've added the ability for the authors to add their Twitter feed to the front pages.  Of course, this implies that they actually use said service, and care enough, but it's there.

I'm doing it, if only because that's about all I have time for these days.

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Jeconais posted on Thursday 6th January 2011 9:13am

Just released a couple of bug fixes and added this page.  One of the things is an update of all the site javascript, so hopefully the problems with font/colours/sizes not working is fixed.

Also started to emphasise the RSS feeds more.  RSS is the best way to get updates from this site - it's certainly the quickest. 

Emails are throttled, and are sent out at 2000 an hour, and with some authors having more than 12k users, that can be six hours before all the emails are sent.  There is also the fact that Spamhaus doesn't like the fact that we're hosted on Rackspace, and often mark us as a dynamic ip address - and as a lot of companies use their RBL, it means that mail servers start rejecting emails long before they can get filtered by your email client.

I'm going to reassign some of the site articles from my site to here, so there will appear to be a history.

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Jeconais posted on Tuesday 28th December 2010 5:38am

As many people have pointed out, emails haven't been working well from here.

Turns out that we were listed as a dynamic IP by Spamhaus, so a lot of emails were being incorrectly marked.

I've hopefully fixed the problem, and emails should go back to normal now.

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Jeconais posted on Friday 24th December 2010 5:41pm

Nothing says Christmas like a new bug... stories with no live chapters show on the site - which is why The Flying Thundered is showing up. If my parents' network stops crapping out, it will be posted tomorrow along with another chapter of something else. Bug will be fixed when It's not a holiday...

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Jeconais posted on Tuesday 11th May 2010 11:11am

First, apologies to all who sent me contact messages and had a severe delay in getting responses.  The emails were getting marked as Spam, and not being forwarded to the account I actually check.

Onto the changes.  I've fixed the Print bug that was making the page error out.  Fixed the problem with the alternaet style sheet not sticking.  Fixed the problem with epub generation.  First I didn't have the responses cached, and the clean up routine was failing - it meant a large mess on the file system that was causing problems.  I've tided the code that matches the url to the module, and while this has no visible effect to you, it means the code is a hell of a lot cleaner and easy to extend. 

Finally, when I started this version, I figured that as I was the only person writing the code, I wouldn't need branching in the SCM.  Large mistake, so, that's sorted now, which meant I could release some bug fixes without having to worry about the next large new feature.

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Jeconais posted on Tuesday 4th May 2010 9:13am

This is now fixed.  Unfortunately, it was one of those stupid things that you sometimes miss.  Basically, the font-size was being set to the width (if you had a width configured) - which is why I couldn't recreate it.

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Jeconais posted on Friday 30th April 2010 4:28am

I received a suggestion for some form of related stories.  With the lack of meta data that I have available, and my lack of faith in "crowd sourcing"*, a straight related system was never going to work.  But the idea didn't go away, and after some peculation, I decided to use the information I do have.

On every last-chapter (or stand alone chapter), at the bottom of the page, should be a couple of stories that you might like., based on the tastes of people who have reviewed that story.

Obviously, this feature is experimental, in beta, and likely to eat your horse.  it also might not work, might be to expensive to generate, and open bigger holes in the ozone layer.

For those who read everything, this will hardly be worthwhile, but for those that don't read much, you might find it useful.

* - why yes, I do work for a company that jumps on bandwagons.

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Jeconais posted on Thursday 29th April 2010 3:29am

After several issues were pointed out with the front page, I've changed it again.

The order of the HTML is now correct, and the bugs with the Show More link has been changed.  The more stories is now a modal window, and as an extra function, you can now directly link to it.  For example:  http://www.fanficauthors.net/#Jeconais

The problem with some of the ebooks missing chapters has been resolved.  

On the 31st of May, I'm going to be removing the hacks that allow IE6 to work.  I simply don't have the time to support browsers of that ilk.  When ever I do anything, it takes endless playing around for just one browser, and looking at the stats, it is not a large percentage of our users.

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