As someone who has already found a lot of areas where this website could definitely be improved, I thought I would simply make a blog post discussing all the areas in which I think could be improved upon and how. For anyone reading, feel free to comment or add to my list! 

SEARCH

Honestly, one of the most important areas of the website could definitely use an upgrade. For instance, one cannot actually look up fanfiction for f(x) unless they search fx0, as the tagging feature does not allow for special characters or anything under 3 characters. I believe there should be auto-tags for all the idol groups. 

I also think it would be awesome if you could sort your search by company or by girl group or boy group. These should be basic search criteria to make navigation that much easier. It would also be nice if you could search by keywords rather than only by tags since tags are limited. 

Furthermore, I definitely think there should be a "search by most popular" option, and even more importantly, a "search by genre" option. Including these things would make the website so much more user-friendly, as it would allow for readers to search for what they're most interested in rather than having to dig and dig through the website. 

SITE ORGANIZATION

Here's the big one. I would think I'm not the only one who's frustrated by the fact that when I go to search for fanfictions on the main page, I'm bombarded with shops and role-play communities. The front page should be reserved for fiction only. In fact, I don't think the way shops function is working for the site. It's very reminiscent of how the website Quizilla ran in its days, with fanfiction being written on quizzes. It was very odd and only those who frequented Quizilla in its golden days will know what I'm talking about. 

There should be a feature to make communities or shops, and these should be in their own section on the website with their own search features. This would reserve the front page to advertise fanfiction fairly and also make searching for shops much easier as they would be in their own section with their own search options. 

On the topic of profile pages, I think it would be much more visually pleasing if the "comment section" on profiles was at the bottom of the profile page rather than the top. This would allow for authors to leave a f.a.q. area in their personal message in case there were certain things new posters should know before commenting on their page. I also think there should be an option to feature a story on your main profile page. 

Going back to role-play communities and thinking about how some people run blogs on this site, I think a forum section might be in the site's best interest, too. That will keep blogs personal, but also expand the community and allow for more users to interact with each other in an area designed specifically for such a thing. 

PUBLISHING FICTION

I actually would really love to see a word-count section on the forward/description page of fanfictions. This will allow users to know ahead of time before they start a fiction what kind of long-haul they're getting themselves into. Sure, the authors can write it themselves, but including this would simply make the whole process easier as it would be an automatic process. 

Also, for those writing stories with trigger warnings, I think you should have an extra drop-down that explains what kind of triggers are present. Not everyone is triggered by the same things, and grouping them all into one is kind of problematic in itself and it keeps readers who would otherwise read a story from doing so because they have no idea what kind of triggers may appear in the story. Simply separating them into triggers such as: "graphic violence, ual violence, racism, homophobia, eating disorder, etc etc" would be very helpful to a LOT of users. 

AFF also has a huge population of users who don't speak English as their first  language, and I think being able to separate fanfictions by language would be incredibly helpful to those who want to find Spanish language fanfictions, French language, Chinese, Korean, etc etc. Really, what this all boils down to is that the search feature is outdated and rather useless on this website, and it could definitely do with an upgrade. 

Anything to add? Leave a comment!