New PHP-based Fanfiction System

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Elessar
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New PHP-based Fanfiction System

Postby Elessar » Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:50 am

Greetings and hello!

Well, in the very near future, Triaxian Silk is going to be implementing a new fanfiction system built by our dev team mjimeyg (Mike), and Dark_rain (he was raised by wolves, he doesn't have a real name). The system should be going live in the next 12 hours.

What this means primarily is that maintenance time for posting new stories will drop dramatically. But, this also means increased functionality and access control for readers because the new system implements Genre and Keyword indexing that will allow us to embed a search tool. There will also be an improved interface for moving between chapters of a story. Because the fanfiction homepage will now be PHP-based, it will look slightly different, but trust me, it is not a complete face lift. The comment system has also been renovated so it will be easier and more intuitive. Many of you will probably notice similarities between the user interface of the new system and that of fanfiction.net.

The submission process will remain largely unchanged. Authors will send in their submissions in the same way, and administrators will post them. But the submission process will be simpler for the author. In the past we have asked authors to code their submissions with some basic HTML tags like bold, italics, etc. Many of you have even helped us out tremendously by completely coding up your own entries prior to submission to make our jobs easier (which we have infinitely appreciated). All that will change about submissions, is if authors choose to submit Genre and Keywords - but I'll talk more about that below.

Submissions need not be HTML coded in any way, shape, or form; anymore.

Simple Microsoft Word 97-2003 or Rich Text Format formatting will suffice; the new software can read those format codes the way that Fanfiction.net's system does. Let me take a moment to ask users not to submit documents in Microsoft Office 2007/2008 .docx format. Not all of our admins have Office 2007 or 2008, so please save it to Office '97-2003 format before submitting.

So, for those who are sending in code, you don't have to anymore. One or two authors were putting their stories into html documents and everything prior to submission - we ask that you just leave them in document format, because we're no longer going to be transitioning them into .html in order to post them. We have also occasionally seen raw .txt submissions that rely entirely on .HTML tags to include text formatting - while the new system CAN recognize .html tags, we would prefer if submissions were sent in with MS Word style formatting from now on.

Genres & Keywords

I'm going to make a separate post publishing the list of genres and keywords we have. If anyone wants a Genre or Keyword added to the list, send it to me in a PM with the subject "Genre/Keyword Request", and I'll review it and probably add it.

As an author, you now have the option to include some of these Genres and Keywords in a line in your submission when you send in a story, so that we can index your story that way. It's not a requirement. A lot of people aren't used to doing that, so it's not required.

As with any big change, we'll be looking for, and expecting feedback. Send them straight to Elessar at elessar@triaxiansilk.com. I promise to do my best to tailor the system to the best possible balance of ease and versatility. Like all changes, the slightly new look may not sit well with everyone at first; but it has been put together with ease of use and maintenance in mind so that we can continue to be the biggest, busiest dedicated Trip and T'Pol and Star Trek: Enterprise Fan Fiction site active on the internet.

Elessar
"I call shotgun!"
"I call nine millimeter." - John and Cameron



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