Lazeez's Corner

I have a problem. Or should I say, I'm dissatisfied with something. Story classification. Currently, the site uses codes to classify stories, but this method has significant shortcomings in my view. It does not distinguish between main themes or story types from minor activities. I want to create an additional classification system that focuses only on main story types or genres, for example: Science Fiction, Western, Horror etc... and of course each genres could have some sub-genres. So far, I have no details about the supported genres, but I definitely want to make it in a way that stories can't have more than one genre. Main genres will replace some story codes like Scifi, horror. So, this is a call for suggestions of what genres to include in the new system, and if a genre definitely needs sub-genres, what they are. Try to keep in mind that a story can only have exactly ONE genre and ONE sub-genre. What's puzzling me the most is what genre can plain sex stories have? Th...

Well, the new reviewing system is mostly finished. I revamped the review display page completely and made it accessible to everybody. The old reviewing system has been integrated with the site. No more need for a separate log in page and different ID. Reviewing is easier than ever for those with reviewer accounts. A new reviewers section has been added to the site and it's only accessible for those with reviewer accounts. The funny part about this change is that it came with no real planning. I know I had discussed a new reviewing system on this blog a long time ago, but it seemed that I could never really plan it and implement it properly within a reasonable amount of time. So I kept putting it off for later. The way this started was with me thinking that the old reviews listing page is not particularly useful to either authors or reviewers if only premier members could access it. So I decided to give access to everybody and started by revamping the interface. Before this change, ...

To encourage readers to send feedback to authors, storiesonline provides an easy to use form at the end of every story and an email contact link in every author's page as well as a feedback link at the end of every blog entry. In order to encourage those who are reluctant to disclose their email address to still send feedback, the mailing system provided allows for anonymous messages. The system works very well and storiesonline, according to many authors, is the source of the most feedback received; which is very good for authors. However, like every system, it is possible to abuse it. Hiding behind the afforded anonymity, some cowardly people abuse authors by sending them abusive messages through the anonymous system. To deal with the problem, the mail system has been updated to allow authors to refuse all mail, or to refuse just anonymous email. When an author chooses to refuse all email, the site won't show any mail forms or links. When an author choose to refuse anonymous ...

This was a frustrating weekend. Inexplicably, still, some people are unable to access the site. The servers are online as usual. The DNS entries for the site are configured correctly. So why some Comcast, then Earthlink and now MSN users are unable to access the site? I don't know, and can't figure it out yet. Most of the problem areas were cleared yesterday about 1 pm - as evidenced by a sustained usage spike on the site; and for a period I thought the problems were cleared. However, today, when I got to work and checked my email, there were several messages still complaining about the inability to reach the site. To help with this problem, I've added two links on the left of this blog. For a long time now, since 2002, I've owned the domain storiesonline.xxx, but since.xxx is not supported by the ICANN, normal DNS servers don't lead you to the site if you simply typed 'http://storiesonline.xxx' into your browser's address bar. The company selling t...

I've been receiving quite a bit of comments and reports about the site's new layout currently available in the beta area of the site. Some favourable, some not. The most common negative common so far is that there is nothing wrong with the current layout, so no need to change, and don't fix what isn't broken. Maybe from a reader's point of view, who's been using the site for a while and used to the current layout, nothing is broken. However, from my side, it is broken, and broken badly enough for me to put a big effort into fixing it. Each day, at least once, somebody contacts me and ask how they go about posting their stories on the site. And as often, somebody requests a feature that is already available on the site. The first issue is the most frustrating. The links to post stories are on the front page of the site, however, currently, they are low enough to require people to scroll down and look to the left of the site's home page. It seems that no one s...

As many of you who've read the previous entries in this blog know, I'm working on a new reviewing system for the site. I have the feature set ready and have already started with the implementation. However, I've hit few snags. Let me tell you a bit about my way of developing features. I don't work in a conventional manner. I learned programing on my own, as in no formal training, and over time have developed my own way of working. One of the most important issues for me is the user interface. When designing something, I start with a feature set, then with the interface, then the actual implementation. The reviewing system has a feature set, but no user interface. While it was easy to decide on how to make the review submission system work and where to place the link to it (the end of the story of course), I still can't figure out how to give the users access to already submitted reviews for editing (where do you put something like that?). How to display the re...