Writing Site Updates

[CJtheSiteWizard]

Figured it would be easier to put updates here if anyone wants to follow the thread. I’ve got a variety of things cooking so y’all can stay up to date on any new changes.

Things I’m Working on Now

• Tutorial Video for the site
  - Optional ability to login to main site via your existing Discourse creds (and vice versa)
  - Notifications when books on your bookshelves are updated
• Thesaurus/Dictionary menu on the edit book page for when you’re writing and need to look up a word (the functionality works, just gotta make it pretty now).
• Share books on social media
• “Other books by this author” on book pages

Things I’m Hoping We Can Work Out

• Option to show your latest forum topics on your main profile
• Book stats for authors
• Option to link books by series
• Tip-based monetization for authors
• In-Site Notifications for Support Ticket Updates

Things We Can’t Do Until $$$

• Better search functionality
• Better search/author data
• Tag ranks and genre ranking lists

Bugs I’m Addressing

- Author Notes Aren’t Showing Up

• Deleting books from bookshelves deletes ALL instances of said book from ALL bookshelves. Working on granularity here.

I’m happy for feature requests to end up here, but can’t promise they’ll be implemented.

If you see bugs or design issues, you’re welcome to post it here, but PLEASE PROVIDE SCREENSHOTS WHEN YOU’RE DESCRIBING STUFF.

[J.L.O]

I had fun starting a “book” for dumping cover backgrounds into.

I’m not sure it’s a glitch, yet, but I cannot use the writing tools on my phone when I place a nearly screen sized picture in it. I’m thinking this is user error, but didn’t want to waste time uploading on the phone when I have perfectly fine computers right there. Maybe I’ll test it again, sometime.

It’s a shame that the pics can’t be downloaded from the book, but that’s not something anyone would want to make easily optional–even if its possible–because that increases the security risk of people’s work. Most everyone knows how to use a screenshot by now, anyway.

Oh, and for fun: my kid’s wall scribble on kaleidoscope made this possible:

Looks like little lion heads.

[CJtheSiteWizard]

@J.L.O

I’m not sure it’s a glitch, yet, but I cannot use the writing tools on my phone when I place a nearly screen sized picture in it. I’m thinking this is user error, but didn’t want to waste time uploading on the phone when I have perfectly fine computers right there. Maybe I’ll test it again, sometime.

You’d probably need to show me a screenshot of what you mean. It’s entirely possible that an image taking up the entire screen space would make it harder to use the writing tools, but there is a fullscreen option for chapters too.

[J.L.O]

As screen on the phone matches closely to book covers, I’m thinking it’s me. Lol

…Just tried it again,and it didn’t “fight against my fat thumbs”, so this one looks like a “false alarm”.

[J.L.O]

2 screenshots: In Chrome

My dumb backside forgets to put excerpt on this one, so I go back into edit (buttons in top right). And it decides to load the edit page with no information in it, and change the title. Don’t know what happened here.

Looking at DuckDuckGo, it’s still the same problem…
I’ve been fixing accidentally forgetting to take it off “Complete” without having all the other saved data disappear, yesterday. So, yeah. Fun times.

[CJtheSiteWizard]

Check now, I updated something which should fix it.

[Novel_Worm]

Any update on Author notes not showing up?

[CJtheSiteWizard]

I’m actually looking at that right now, I imagine I’ll have it fixed in a few minutes.

[J.L.O]

Beautimous!

[CJtheSiteWizard]

Okay author’s notes should be fixed, you just have to tell it where you’d like it to show up (before or after your chapter content).

[Novel_Worm]

I think after is most preferable?

[CJtheSiteWizard]

Yeah, you can choose - just go into your chapters to edit the notes, check which chapters you’d like author’s notes on, and you can pick which place you’d like it.

[Novel_Worm]

Oooh fancy! Thanks for all the amazing stuff you do!

[CJtheSiteWizard]

Updated mobile nav functionality due to overeager swiping function. Mobile nav now has bar with chapters and previous/next buttons instead.

[J.L.O]

It looks like it works now. Nm.

[CJtheSiteWizard]

@CJtheSiteWizard

Notifications when books on your bookshelves are updated

I think I have this successfully implemented - if you notice any weird notifications, let me know.

@CJtheSiteWizard

Author Notes Aren’t Showing Up

Also fixed.

[CJtheSiteWizard]

Okay, so I guess I need a poll for this because everyone’s workflow is different.
I want to rework the chapter edit page (I’ve been updating my book on there and I feel like the interface is kinda clunky–lots of clicks which defeats the purpose I’m trying to reach here lol)

So right now, the individual chapter “publishing” section looks like this:

By default, the “Draft” status is selected, which means you have to manually click “Publish” for every chapter you’re ready to post. If you’re uploading in bulk, that’s annoying (even if you’re just uploading one chapter, it’s annoying–at least to me, I like to paste one chapter in there and just click “Update”).

So I’m thinking about changing it to something close to this (these are mockups, not actual site functionality right now, so it’ll be a bit prettier than this).

Where you don’t have an automatic save to draft, but you have the option to keep it as a draft if you so choose.

They both would do essentially the same thing: one is manual, one is automatic.

So if you click “Save as Draft”:

The schedule feature goes away because that indicates you’re not done with it yet and don’t have plans to schedule it to be posted. It will stay in Draft until you manually uncheck the box (giving you the option to either schedule for publishing or just publish it immediately when you save your work).

And vice versa:

Scheduling implies you’re done and ready for the chapter to be posted, you just want it done automatically, so it will auto-publish (and your chapter won’t be in draft) at the date you choose.

If neither box is checked:

It will post the chapter immediately when you click “Save/Update”.

Any thoughts on this change, for those of you using the site right now?

• Yes, I like this change!
• No, I like it the old way!

[CJtheSiteWizard]

I should add that this doesn’t change whether or not your book is in published/draft status – if you want to upload all your chapters at once but don’t want the book to show up yet, you can leave your book in draft status without having to mark all your chapters as drafts too.

Also edited to add: I’ve automatically switched over everyone’s work to the new method, so you don’t need to worry about going in and changing anything (scheduling or marking chapters as drafts)–it’s done for you.

[Novel_Worm]

Can I just take a moment to appreciate that bulk actions are a huge blessing?

Side suggestion that’s not very necessary: maybe the notifications could be sorted according to the type of notif they are? So I mean something like DeviantArt’s notifications system, where replies are in a separate category, likes are in another category, and updates are in another category. But the bulk actions are making things work very well without, so it’s not really necessary

[CJtheSiteWizard]

You can now optionally use your existing forum credentials to login/signup for the main site if you want to. If you signed up before this, you can also sync your account to the forum so you’ll be auto-logged in to both.