Site Updates

Nichiren 09/03/10 6:41 AM - Secured include files from being directly accessed. Added index.html files in directories to prevent browsing. Fixed an admin view. Added moderator tweaks.

Nichiren 09/01/10 4:37 PM - Revamped security group permissions and simply made it a flag in the user table. Also created the moderator page and implemented the ability to easily mark users as a moderator and moderator candidate.

Nichiren 08/30/10 9:54 AM - Added ability to toggle tagbox in sidebar.

Nichiren 08/28/10 11:41 PM - Limiting the number of sent emails to 100 since it didn't look like the 500 sent. Also removing emails from the queue whenever a user has viewed the subscription page since there's no sense in sending an alert email to someone who's already seen the alert. Implemented the profile status feature (Source: Gerlcine). Switched sidebar tagbox to chatango and widened the site container by 30px (980px total). Removed chatango chat from all pages except chat.

Nichiren 08/27/10 4:49 PM - Re-added user friend check in profiles but there is a cache in place if a visitor views a friend's profile. Also implemented a cache for the frontpage story comments while also reducing the number of displayed comments for a story to 10. The modified time is now updated whenever a user updates a chapter without the draft checkbox being marked. Revamped email subscriber alerts to send less emails and simplified the email queue. Limiting the number sent by number of cron invocations.

Nichiren 08/26/10 12:20 PM - Removed blocker / blockee check from wall, story, and poll comments and created a "blocked users" page instead for someone to reference. That page now contains the unblock link. Also made various tweaks to where a user will be redirected after blocking, unblocking, and deleting a comment. Made sure to delete the visitor nav cache in the story model whenever a user updates a story.

Nichiren 08/21/10 10:37 PM - Added ability to search by rated and completed in the tags section search form. Also increased number of returned results to 150 (Source: tabibunnie). I managed to remove the 150 limit and you can now view all the results. Videos now show up in the topics section and the video section has been revamped.

Nichiren 08/20/10 10:28 PM - Reinstated karma rankings but gave users the ability to opt-out. Karma now only increases when a user comments on a story and not on walls. Added comments to polls.

Nichiren 08/19/10 10:30 PM - I've re-added the subscriber and view stats to the "popular" section but the stats remains hidden for those stories that have opted out.

Nichiren 08/18/10 11:22 PM - Set a domain for cookies as well as a cookie name of "aff_session". Sess_destroy now automatically sends a destruct cookie no matter what just so we can be sure that the user has a cleared out cookie before login. Also found out that while the $_SESSION vars are properly filled in during the login attempt, the read() function finds that $_SESSION is empty right after the redirect. If the sess_destroy() function is disabled before the redirect but re-enabled afterwards, the $_SESSION is read just fine. So this might mean that $_SESSION could not be read just right after login but is okay again afterwards. I just disabled the sess_destroy() command in the read() function. It's not really needed anymore since sess_create() isn't called within the same class like it used to. Implemented ability to hide the number of subscribers and the number of views on a per story basis.

Nichiren 08/17/10 4:19 PM - Made a lot of profile and story stats private while also hiding the stats in the "popular" sections. Removed the most commented section due to lack of popularity and its usage of server resources. Changed the title "Index" to "Page" in a lot of the pages.

Nichiren 08/13/10 9:21 AM - Added ability for a user to clear the applicants to a story (source: Mary517). Memcached country and region selection for three days. Removed session authentication with the database to save on a query from each user - should be okay since major user actions are still behind a password wall. Refined the edit and create story sections to prevent it from checking coauthor stats in the db more than once. Added "write new story" button in author stories section to improve usability.

Nichiren 08/12/10 1:07 PM - Coauthor comments are now green in the story comments section (previously only on the coments page). Memcached totals on browse pages. Added an is_artist field in user table so that the program can check whether or not to run the artist query. The artist query is then memcached if an artist is found. Memcached chapter nav, tags, and is_favorited_already check on stories.

Nichiren 08/11/10 6:03 PM - Added ability for users to create their own polls.

Nichiren 08/10/10 4:50 AM - Fixed 'include' errors - changed path of $this->config->item('root'). Allowed for co-author comments in stories to also be green. Removed the logging of 404 Page not found errors. Database config is now only one file and local and production values are differentiated within. Database now only uses non-persistent connections due to the application hitting the max database connection limit. Fixed profile wall section issue where the common wall function was not actually catching the invalid profile id exception so I just throw it without catching it within the same function. Set up the cache directory in the database file for later use.

Nichiren 08/08/10 11:06 PM - Fixed add chapter problem of body getting a "required" error message when user pastes from a document. Retrieving external page function taken out of import and into utility. Added new image verification processing in is_image function and added new hints for the user as to what to do. Added alerts for new subscribers (Ymingo) and new comment notifications for co-authors (kunoichihakira666). Added the wall textarea box to the wall pages.

Nichiren 08/06/10 6:27 AM - Changed visited links color back to original and only using that color scheme on story chapter subnav. Added blog tagging capability using only existing story tags. The tags are not required. Also moved story and blog view tag suggestion scripts to the top so that the feature is accessible sooner. Slow ad loading prevents the scripts at the bottom from loading. Added section in browse tag view for blog posts of that tag. Made further adjustments to the session library due to continued session problems.

Nichiren 08/05/10 8:52 PM - Now logging how many emails are sent in a day in the Swiftmailer library and using table daily_log. Streamlined mail processing to reduce number of queries and mails sent. Fixed ad and nav issues in IE6 and IE7 due to the aftermath of the new narrower header layout. Changed link colors to highlight visited links.

Nichiren 08/03/10 5:52 PM - Upgraded CKEditor to the newest version to see if that would help with the problems mobile users are having. Redesigned the site banner to be more compact - shrunk the logo and changed tagline font to make the banner narrower. As for ads, anyone not logged in is now directed automatically to using Adsdaq ads to see if this will improve earnings. Needed to rename the ckeditor directory since I forgot about the lag in Amazon CDN.

Nichiren 08/02/10 12:44 PM - Adjusted the wall queries to only return results that are needed depending on the viewer. Added checkbox to blog to mark a post as a news article. Replaced captcha in wall with a time delay due to user preferences.

Nichiren 08/01/10 10:44 PM - Moved all ads closer to the top, added bottom ads to new pages, and used a lot more interval ads. Fixed bug where if a user is logged in and clicks on "I am 18 link", the user is temporarily logged out due to the creation of a brand new session. Added reCAPTCHA to walls due to spam problem. Added wall section for user to see all sent messages as well as individual chat histories with other users.

Nichiren 07/29/10 1:34 PM - Added a num_subscribers field to story to reduce another query from the story page and increase performance on the browse subscriptions section. Also removed check for whether or not the user has favorited a story already when the user is not logged in. Also added an unsubscribe link to the user subscriptions page.

Nichiren 07/28/10 11:59 PM - Decided to change session time to update to 30 minutes since I need the session to update early enough to have an accurate idea of who's online. Also shortened cache time of frontpage latest stories from 10 mins to 5 mins since Anne60 mentioned it. Repositioned most of the bottom and interval ads to be higher up the page. Also made layout changes and added required tags to the create/edit sections of stories and chapters to try and make it less confusing. Rewrote sessions library to use native PHP sessions while still saving sessions in the database for session validity check. This was in response to a few complaints from users still unable to login.

Nichiren 07/27/10 11:42 AM - Ensured any submitted videos do not autoplay. Shortened titles on video index due to layout issues. Got rid of user block checks on stories and profiles to decrease number of queries. Also got rid of the friend check from the profile and reorganized functionality to get around the issues. Removed ability to determine if author of a story is online (lessens a join in the story query).

Nichiren 07/26/10 2:39 PM - Added Memcached to topics page and created a Memcached helper library module to help ease caching of query results. Browse views section now defaults to "All Time", removed the 90 day query, and tweaked some of the sql. Added ability to search user by IP address.

Nichiren 07/25/10 10:06 PM - Forced the use of AFF usernames as the display name for shoutmix chat box.

Nichiren 07/24/10 11:43 PM - Another massive performance upgrade with the use of memcached. Cached all elements of the homepage, user alert queries and user preferences. Also moved the bottom ad in the profile page to the middle. Added pagination links to the top of the browse pages for better usability.

Nichiren 07/22/10 5:10 PM - Fixed request bug where newest requests were out of order during pagination. Stopped using the Fat model Thin controller paradigm since CI wasn't really built for that and I've made the request system more memory efficient. Also added more links to the story pages for making requests and applications to give the feature more exposure. Included Canada in the list of countries to switch ad network code to use Google ads. Implemented ability to deactivate user accounts. Stories, blogs, applications, and the profile will be cleared. Friend and subscriptions are not since those stats are recorded individually for external users and must be updated.

Nichiren 07/21/10 3:50 PM - Ad network code defaults to Google ads if the user's country is determined to not be the U.S. or if the user has donated to Paypal (Mary517 is our first donation).

Nichiren 07/20/10 11:50 AM - Massive code restructuring completed. Story model code broken into separate Browse model and Import model to reduce size and memory imprint. Featured story functions in the Story model were also moved to the Featured model. Re-implemented the use of separate functions to determine the number of stories for a particular section to also reduce memory footprint. Started favoring the COUNT() sql function instead of the CI num_rows() function.

Nichiren 07/19/10 10:52 PM - Only allowing the chat in the story and chapter views to be viewable if the user is logged in. Should help reduce reported loading times to search spiders. I've optimized all of the controllers for memory by loading classes only when they're needed. I've also fixed a few bugs in the user subscriptions views since a few of the pages were lacking or had broken pagination.

Nichiren 07/18/10 11:59 PM - Created a separate page for new story comments that has no pagination and contains only stories with the newest comments. Previously, new comments were shown in the author stories page but if the story that had the comment was on a different paginated page, it wouldn't show. Implemented ability to specify story background images. Resized story / chapter images to a maxwidth as a result of the new background images since some main images would spill over to their respective background image. Changed main nav from "Request" to "Apply" to try and get more people's attention. Changed login process (user model) to always gather the user's IP and country.

Nichiren 07/17/10 2:18 PM - Took out Winglin import code from story and moved over to import controller. Moved story commenting code into the story controller so that it would no longer need to use flash vars for error messages. Also moved the add story tag code from the view() to a separate add_tag() function in the story controller.

Nichiren 07/13/10 3:28 PM - Got rid of unnecessary session vars from the login and shortened some of the names. Made a massive change with all of the urls on the site by eliminating the "index.php" part of the link and modifying the .htaccess file to make this possible.

Nichiren 07/12/10 4:36 PM - "Who's Online" section should now display only users who have been active within the last hour. Profiles should also now only display the "Online!" status if the user has been active within the last hour. Added a "Newest" section for fanfics and renamed and re-ordered some main navigation elements. Added a section to display newly created fanfics by a user's friends and added new main nav element under Home tab.

Nichiren 07/11/10 11:10 PM - Patched up the karma bug by making sure that karma is not adjust if the user adding or removing the comment is also the profile, story, or blog owner. Also added a check for zero karma for every comment deletion. Added a friends story section so a user can track any new updates made by her friends. Alerts can now be toggled in the user preferences section.

Nichiren 07/10/10 12:18 PM - The "My Stories" section now leads to the profile stories section along with the included author-only features.

Nichiren 07/09/10 5:37 PM - Added ability to comment on blog posts. Modified the blog comment alert system by creating a completely separate new blog comments page which displays all blog posts with new comments and is the page that resets the last blog comment viewed field in the user table.

Nichiren 07/08/10 11:56 AM - Made further SEO changes by injecting tags into the meta description and keyword tags of the story and chapter pages. Also customized the description meta tag of the blog pages. Performed massive updates on the meta tags of almost all the site pages to remove keywords that do not appear on the page (often resulting in a blank keyword meta tag) and slightly modified most meta descriptions.

Nichiren 07/06/10 8:24 PM - Configured profile to store derived values in the user table to lighten load on profile loading. Also moved model loading only to places where they are needed in the profile controller to reduce memory usage. Implemented the new friend alert system. Now recording derived num_subscriber stat in user profile. Redeveloped the global model to store alert times in the user table so that the whole alert system is run off one user query which uses less resources. Implemented alert for new blogs posted by friends.

Nichiren 07/03/10 10:27 AM - Added featured story star to the author stories section.

Nichiren 07/02/10 3:23 PM - Added ability for users to track their friends' blog posts. Added a new friends link in the blog section. Country of IP origin now displays in profile. Users can now do an ajax form search on usernames in the users section. Fixed bug in utility where email verification was not being sent since it was still using the native php mail() function.

Nichiren 07/01/10 9:11 PM - Reorganized navigation to accommodate section for latest blog posts. Changed posted date field to a datetime so the latest section can sort by that metric. Modified the wall comment process so that people commenting on their own walls will no longer receive karma points. Comment deletion now also checks for 0 karma to avoid karma rolling over to a larger number (massive karma bug). There was also a glitch in registration! Most likely due to the change in session handling, the captcha no longer worked preventing new users from signing up today. I've removed the captcha for now. Probably need to look into using recaptcha instead.

Nichiren 06/30/10 6:56 PM - Finally figured out the premature logout issue after all these months. The issue was that our custom maxlifetime for our session was not being respected by the session garbage collector. Since all of the sessions were stored in a tmp folder with all the other user sessions at the shared host, the garbage collector destroyed all sessions based on the lowest set maxlifetime of any other user of that server. The solution was to create my own session directory under my user account so I can run my own custom session garbage collector. Session problem is resolved. Also completed the blogging section of the profile and it is now in production (source: Hazywords).

Nichiren 06/26/10 11:59 PM - Cron for featured stories accidentally ran twice so there are two featured stories for this week.

Nichiren 06/24/10 9:07 AM - The previous server at Hawkhost was nearing its limits and I didn't like their customer service so I moved the site to a beefier server by switching to Webfaction. Initial set up was painful but so far so good. Demoing for one month before deciding whether to stay or not.

Nichiren 06/11/10 11:43 AM - Moved profile pic resizing script to head since admin view was being affected when script was in footer - script didn't run due to admin profiling output. I also removed Adsdaq ad code from top ad to speed up sidebar loading.

Nichiren 06/09/10 10:37 AM - I've removed some navigation elements from the main nav (Home tab) and consolidated some nav elements in the profile nav (friends and subscriptions) to make space for future features.

Nichiren 06/08/10 10:22 PM - Just came back from the Bahamas so it's been a few days since I've been able to roll out an update but this one is a good one. Just implemented the ability for users to be able to co-author stories with other users. Co-authors can modify and add chapters to stories created by the main authors. Co-authored stories are accessible by going to profile -> stories -> as co-author. Source: flirtygirl23. Also refactored profile controller by factoring out pagination code. Fixed bug where author views count as story views (see story controller).

Nichiren 05/31/10 7:52 PM - Now recording which users have visited a profile page (see profile_visitor table). Decreased number of users displayed in "Who's Online" section to 20 to speed up load times. Modified Html helper to set any instances of "autoplay=true" to "autoplay=false".

Nichiren 05/30/10 2:48 PM - Implemented a subscription alert in the login nav for users to know whenever one of their subscriptions has added a new chapter (see global model and favorites). Removed author stories from profile section and set story comment alerts in the "My Stories" section instead. Updated "My Stories" section to display 30 stories in the first page.

Nichiren 05/29/10 11:59 PM - Emails still going to the wrong people so I limited the number of stories that can be processed at once to one per cron run. Fixed pagination in Artist section. Fixed bug in emailing subscriptions where stories were not being deleted from the email queue.

Nichiren 05/28/10 6:32 PM - Massive changes to the profile section. Reorganized the layout by placing the Wall section below the user info. Profile picture is now dynamically resized based on maximum constraints (see profile controller). Image check function now uses getimagesize function to check for a valid image upon profile save. Full wall view now uses the same code as the wall on the profile due to both walls now spanning the entire page width. Added Wall nav to profile nav and changed "Interest" heading to "Personal Message". Edit: no longer using getimagesize as an image checker - it works on my local machine but not when in Hawkhost production server (particularly for imgur but works for photobucket). Dynamically resizing image now using jQuery instead of php using the previous proportion calculations code.

Nichiren 05/27/10 11:59 PM - Added an apply link to any story foreword page that has a request. Added ability to mark yourself as an artist of types graphics, video, or reviewer (see profile). Added separate artist section under request nav (see request). Added a profile nav to the profile, friends, subscriptions, etc pages and also removed the buttons from each page. The only buttons left are in the profile - Friend this User, Ban, and Invite. The profile nav should give enough space for additional pages and paves the way for the personal pages feature. Fixed bug in video view where submitter username link wasn't leading to the submitter's profile. Added "stories" and "comments" tabs to the profile nav and removed the comment history link from the bottom of the profile as well as the query that generated the number of comments value.

Nichiren 05/26/10 6:21 PM - Made minor layout fix for IE 6 where the "Add stuff to frontpage" link was not showing properly (used padding top instead of margin). The nav bar was also slightly out of place for IE 7 so I adjusted the "top" attribute to get the sub nav adjacent to the main nav. This should conclude all the layout changes for the desired browsers (even IE 5.5 looks okay). Added chat to story and chapter views, edits, and creates.

Nichiren 05/25/10 5:36 PM - Made some layout fixes for IE 6 to render properly. Very tentatively tested on an IE netrenderer site but it should be usable at least.

Nichiren 05/24/10 9:34 AM - Fixed bug where subscribers were getting email updates for the wrong stories. The emailTo array wasn't being reset after every pass (see admin controller).

Nichiren 05/23/10 11:16 PM - Fixed bug in displaying "Next" and "Previous" links in the story due to the sidebar nav reorganization yesterday. All logic for that has been placed in the controller. Also implemented the new email queue to keep from sending a great number of subscriber emails every time a user adds a chapter. The email details are saved in email queues and are deleted every time the email is sent. The emailing function has been moved to the admin controller and is now run by cron. Fixed bug where the story subnav was "doubling up" since the chapter nav function was being called twice (see story controller). Marked author comments in stories to help differentiate from visitor comments. Fixed next/prev links again - the subnav processing needed to be done AFTER the story/chapter details are fetched in story controller. Fixed another bug where if a user gets logged out while editing a story, there would be a bunch of unset variables - fixed this in the story controller by fetching story/chapter details before the try/catch block since the catch block also requires the same details (see story controller - add, edit, add_chapter, edit_chapter). Fixed layout in IE 7.0 but the layout is no longer centered (aligned left). Still broken in 6.0. Fixed slight top ad issue with Opera - Set topmost user nav to have font in pixels and adjusted width of search box so that the top ad would go down a bit more by moving the page up.

Nichiren 05/22/10 11:59 PM - Reorganized HTML/CSS layout to have ads load at the bottom of the page so that slow ad servers wouldn't prevent the page from loading. Ended up shortening the footer due to the new absolute positioning of the sidebar. Also fixed the browse untagged stories view by adding the Story_model to the browse untagged function.

Nichiren 05/18/10 11:59 PM - Disabled any auto-playing features of embedded media (i.e. no more music or videos that auto-play as soon as a user page is loaded). See html_helper class. Modularised the pagination code in the browse controller. Called models in the browse controller only when they were needed. Removed auto-loaded models from story model. Added missing models in other controllers due to auto-loaded models being removed from the story model. Did a thorough test of features but further testing is needed.

Nichiren 05/17/10 11:20 AM - Halfway refactored the story controller and removed story/chapter retrieval from the constructor into their own private methods to be called by the main story/chapter methods. Also removed the flash variables and reduced the number of redirects in favor of loading the view. Moving the logic into the controller might not be so bad but just be careful with the foreword. Fixed age calculation bug. New Mod ability: display user IPs in profile as well as all other users with that IP.

Nichiren 05/15/10 12:45 PM - Forced bare domain redirection to www subdomain due to logins being treated as separate from each other. Did this in htaccess file.

Nichiren 05/14/10 9:49 PM - Due to some reports of the login being broken again, the only thing I can think of is the story comment alert I put in place in the profile at 05/10/10 to update the session if there are new story comments. So I removed that session update from the profile and created an auto-loaded global model to check for new wall and story comments for every pageview. I created a new field in the user table to track when the last time the user viewed messages and it is updated whenever the user visits the profile section. Alerts are displayed in the login page nav. Michi_o just let me know that the baredomain asianfanfics.com and www.asianfanfics.com are being treated as separate sites! So logging in on the baredomain redirects the user to the www. version of the site hence making it look like the login didn't work. It did work but only for the bare domain! I'm changing the config file to have the base url domain to just be a "/". Need to see how that affects things but this is a breakthrough!

Nichiren 05/13/10 11:46 AM - Made the chat default on the frontpage for users with no set preference.

Nichiren 05/12/10 1:48 PM - Chat section now requires the user to be logged in. Turned Add Chapter link into a button since some new users seem to be missing it. Also added new login logging to figure out why some users with set user ids are still going into the login page.

Nichiren 05/11/10 2:28 PM - Friends lists are now in alphabetical order as per ime_fr's suggestion. Make request section has been re-designed to make finishing the request button more prominent so that users can remove the request from the system when the request if completed. Requests are now also displayed in descending request date order. Fixed pagination issue on Friends list where subsequent pages were not found.

Nichiren 05/10/10 5:48 PM - I brought back story comment alerts but only in the profile and not in the pages nav bar. A minor improvement from before is that it will alert the user of new comments whenever they're viewing their profile and not just when they first login. A drawback to all of this is that I've once again re-introduced the setting of session variables on the profile that could possibly cause unstable login problems. We'll see. I also increased the number of displayable stories in the profile to 50 so those users with a lot of stories can take advantage of the story comment alert system.

Nichiren 05/09/10 11:59 PM - Flash vars might have only been part of the login problem. I also removed the story comment alert from the login session and most importantly, hacked the session class to no longer regenerate the session id so it now only refreshes the last activity. I've set the config file back to the default time to refresh of 300 and expiration to 7200. Users are now reporting no issues. Keep in mind that the new contextweb flash ads could also be contributing to these session problems.

Nichiren 05/08/10 11:00 AM - Users were reporting that they were often getting logged out when visiting or editing profiles. It might have been caused by the flash variables. I removed them and I've already started to receive reports of that fixing user logins. I'll wait and see for more feedback. If that is the culprit, it's time to remove all flashvars in the system and probably take the time to refactor code to the thin controller - fat model paradigm.

Nichiren 05/07/10 11:44 AM - All applications are now emailed to the requestor given that the requestor's email has been verified. Also added the "make request" link to the Request section of the navigation and added further instructional text in other request pages.

Nichiren 05/06/10 1:31 PM - Center aligned all story images. Removed form and form_validation from autoload and modified controllers and views accordingly. Watch for errors here.

Nichiren 05/05/10 1:17 PM - Made a complete redesign of the navigation. Updated sitemap. Added more descriptive help text in story create page.

Nichiren 05/01/10 10:44 AM - nl2br'ed the wall comment section.

Nichiren 04/29/10 9:28 AM - Changed rated R to H. Switched CKEditor to S3/CloudFront. Updated About section to be more comprehensive.

Nichiren 04/28/10 11:59 PM - Implemented the application process of the Request section.

Nichiren 04/25/10 8:08 PM - Implemented half of the Request section specs. Also changed profile view slightly by allowing pictures to be linked to the original versions of themselves.

Nichiren 04/23/10 8:45 AM - Progress report: Increased number of visits by 184% from 3/28/10 to 04/22/10 since the seo tweaks were implemented. Bounce rates have also decreased by at least 2%. At least I know that user stories are more easily being found now and people are staying to read them - should make them happy. Shoutbox customized to be a bit longer and have faster refresh rates and unlimited posts.

Nichiren 04/22/10 11:59 PM - New age restrictions are in effect. Users must now verify age to access rated stories. Added ability to block users from commenting to proactively curb spam. Fixed bug in profile comment box where the comment is erased if there is an error. Consolidated all header javascript into an external js file.

Nichiren 04/19/10 10:02 AM - Implemented a Recommended Fanfic section based on a popularity ranking separate from the algorithm used in determining featured stories.

Nichiren 04/18/10 9:04 PM - Separated the chat and tag section in homepage and removed chat from default to speed up load time. Increased number of stories on page to 20 in latest stories section. Remodeled the affiliates page. Made a new top nav bar above the banner to highlight the browse, write, tag, and settings sections since new users have trouble finding them. Created karma triggers and new karma attribute in user entity. Shortened pagination link span to 10 since 20 was too wide and went off-screen.

Nichiren 04/15/10 11:59 PM - Finally managed to authenticate Winglin users for the story import utility obviating the need for urls and honesty policies. Replaced user age calculation with a simpler over 18 checkbox. Now displaying age in profile. Replaced old News section with RSS links to Omoku and reorganized navigation.

Nichiren 04/14/10 11:59 PM - Minor refactor of number of stories query. Fixed wall bug where pm's were not being validated in full wall view.

Nichiren 04/13/10 4:43 PM - Fixed bug in error pages.

Nichiren 04/11/10 11:59 PM - Had login grab username on record to display name instead of from the login username field. Fixed a bug where the "complete" marker was not showing for the story view. Replaced the news section with a link to Omoku.com

Nichiren 04/10/10 4:20 PM - Added URL check to image verification.

Nichiren 04/06/10 11:59 PM - Set up email verification of email and switched email hosts. Also fixed offset bug in author stories and profiles still showing up for non-existent profile ids. Filtered out story comments posted by the author from the featured story algorithm.

Nichiren 04/03/10 8:35 PM - Wow, finally fixed that pesky "headers already sent" error that keeps coming up only in the logs and only in the production server whenever a user decides to do a story backup. Needed to add an "exit()" statement at the very end of the function since I already manually send header content-type. Also using a new blank avatar now since the old one was blurry and to prepare for CSS sprite conversion (whenever that will be).

Nichiren 04/02/10 9:14 PM - Slugified all story urls. Placed a check during tag deletion to disallow removal if there is only one tag left for the story. Implemented untagged view to display stories with no tags. Set up cron to optimize db once a day and clean log files once a month. Implemented email alert removal.

Nichiren 04/01/10 11:32 PM - Placed overflows in all index pages for story content. Added characters and tag string to featured story on index page. Added Rated and Completed tags in Featured section. Implemented ability to filter stories by combinations of tags (only four tag fields used in tag section).

Nichiren 03/31/10 2:14 PM - Enabled gzip compression. Limited usernames to 20 characters.

Nichiren 03/30/10 10:28 PM - Sanitized saved profile text in the "About Me" and "Interests" sections. Wall posts, author story descriptions, and author comments now have overflow for very long text. Fixed bug where chapters marked as "do not show" are still displaying the "Next >>" links to the next hidden chapter. Made pagination links bigger and fixed minor alignment issue of comments table in profile.

Nichiren 03/29/10 11:59 AM - Fixed bug where tag view was not showing all the stories. Also fixed bug where tag selection while creating a story would not save the story id under tag suggestions. Opted to not save the tag under tag suggestions when creating a story. Also implemented ability to see who has approved a suggested tag as well as the ability to see which stories suggested the tag.

Nichiren 03/28/10 10:15 PM - Made more SEO tweaks and reconfigured how restricted visitors are sent to the login page. Moved some top links to the footer and reorganized some of the navigation. Implemented safety check in edit/create pages in case user is logged out while writing story. Allowed for tag suggestions where tags that don't exist in the system are placed into arbitration for mods to approve or reject. Updated featured story algorithm. Fixed story tag strings due to tags being deleted ad hoc. Updated sitemap. Added a "View All Author Stories" link since author stories are capped at 20 in the profile and someone's finally broken that.

Nichiren 03/27/10 10:39 AM - Fixed loophole where user can add tags based on the old rules in the create story page.

Nichiren 03/26/10 9:54 PM - Implemented private wall posts in profiles. Re-wrote the error pages to be slightly more useful.

Nichiren 03/25/10 8:32 PM - Added tags to the rest of the index pages and remodeled the tag section to have a cleaner interface. Finally put in an autosuggest feature for tags - took way longer than it should have. Also redesigned the tag table for better performance.

Nichiren 03/24/10 8:24 PM - Overhauled tagging system. Allowed for easy removal through tag removal links. Allowed for displaying the tags of each story in story index pages. Disallowed non-alphanumeric tags and removed dashes and underscores from current tags. Reduced number of tags in css file.

Nichiren 03/23/10 10:35 PM - Fixed bug in invitation system. Also fixed bug in the video section where the delete link was not being displayed to the submitter.

Nichiren 03/22/10 11:59 PM - Tweaked queries for homepage, profile, and story pages for performance. Fixed bug in story comments page. Fixed bug where user was able to save a blank title in a story (happened when the title was purely html and it got stripped out AFTER validation).

Nichiren 03/20/10 11:59 PM - Finalized login code for issues that users were having with their login and verified with the users.

Nichiren 03/18/10 4:02 PM - Added tooltips to certain sections of the site to help users with the functionality available.

Nichiren 03/17/10 11:30 PM - Successfully moved the entire Asianfanfics site and forum to the new host today and I couldn't be happier with the performance and functionality gains. Along with ftp and http, even the query speeds are blazingly fast compared to the previous host's according to my profiler. Unfortunately, the affiliate image links are now permanently broken due to discarding the messy subdomains so I'll have to ask each affiliate to replace the old links to the new ones but at least there aren't that many to ask. I've also instituted a daily / weekly rotating backup for the database for peace of mind. I also updated the sitemap and added an additional html sitemap for the site.

Nichiren 03/15/10 10:57 AM - Used native sessions and the global referer variable to redirect a user to the previous page after login.

Nichiren 03/14/10 11:49 PM - Created Rated fan fic and chat sections. It also seems that the reason some people have problems logging in is due to unserialization errors of the session. So I simplified the session as much as I could in the login phase and also got rid of url tracking through the session. I also created an invitation system for users to invite other users to restricted sections.

Nichiren 03/13/10 11:01 AM - Implemented ability to mark stories as Rated and display stories on the front page as Rated or Completed. Also implemented the ability to not publish a chapter until ready.

Nichiren 03/09/10 8:54 AM - Implemented temporary shoutbox from Shoutmix until I build my own. Shoutmix is too limited.

Nichiren 03/08/10 10:44 PM - There was a problem with deleting stories that has been resolved. User was unable to delete stories. Also fixed sidebar so that if the user is not logged in and clicks on any of those links, the user will be redirected to the login page.

Nichiren 03/06/10 2:58 PM - Added a latest videos section on the homepage but made everything customizable by the user as to what shows up on the homepage. Also tweaked the DB tables to use composite keys where it made sense to do so. Tweaked banning a little bit as well as the moderation system.

Nichiren 03/02/10 11:23 AM - Updated the Winglin importer to allow the user to import a story that already exists in the user's directory. The imported story would simply overwrite the old story. Added a who's online section on the homepage as well as a link in stories to view who has subscribed to it. Finally gave in and put in the ckeditor in the edit profile section. I also moved all the site images and css files to S3 while grabbing the minified jquery file from the Google CDN.

Nichiren 03/01/10 9:08 AM - Winglin is back up today! Just marking it here to see how much traffic will dip from now. Re-tested and made a fix to the Winglin importer and set the timeout limit to six minutes instead of the previous three. The navigation has been re-styled due to user reports that it was being completely ignored and one thought it looked like an ad. Also made a fix so that chapters can also have embedded youtube videos. Need to keep in mind that once users start putting in auto-playing music, I'll need to code to disable those.

Nichiren 02/27/10 6:56 PM - Fixed minor errors and warnings. Changed the layout and style of the buttons in the profile, authors, and subscribers/subscriptions views and added a View Subscribers button in the profile.

Nichiren 02/26/10 8:53 PM - Enabled story backup feature in story foreword page. Browse users and who's online now uses divs exclusively. Added a "characters" field and displayed it in all story indexes. Stylized edit and delete links. Finally re-did the view counter. Browse by views actually seems slower now for some reason but at least I record the total views in the story now. Implemented the ability to find out who is subscribed to a user (only on sidebar). Also changed all html entity decodes to use UTF-8 and ENT_QUOTES.

Nichiren 02/25/10 9:38 PM - New layout for story tables (namely, no more tables). Slightly revamped the home page too. All of which should lessen the amount of html being sent to the user.

Nichiren 02/24/10 10:43 AM - Re-ordered chapter numbers with their respective stories to make more sense and added the ability to use the main story image for all chapters. Also, now using chatango at the homepage and in chat but it has issues like disallowing you from using the same temporary name when you leave the page.

Nichiren 02/23/10 2:42 AM - Streamlined user roles and removed unnecessary queries. Still need to hunt for more unnecessary queries (if any). Note to self: you really should get some sort of unit or automated testing going on here.

Nichiren 02/21/10 10:26 PM - Made more speed tweaks today. Trimmed down the profile section and replaced long character strings in profile story descriptions since those broke the layout, removed unnecessary user fields, and tweaked the comment queries. Also gave myself the ability to ban users.

Nichiren 02/20/10 9:52 PM - Added ability to subscribe to a story and get alerts for whenever a new chapter is added. Also made featured stories change every weekend instead of set days of the month which would be easier to maintain going forward. Also renamed "Favorite" sections to "Subscriptions", displayed the number of subscribers to a story in the foreword section, marked all completed stories as "completed!" in the story title, unmarked email alert fields of users whose emails are invalid, moved search box from sidebar to banner, and changed the default browse index for views to 24 hours instead of "All Time". Spent the rest of the day making speed improvements by restricting description sizes, optimizing sql queries, using less php to parse text, and removing unnecessary javascript (local time conversion). Most speed tweaks were done in the home page and the browse pages and I've so far brought down the average memory footprint of the site from 100 MB to 30 MB in Chrome. Need to wait and see if it holds.

Nichiren 02/19/10 6:59 PM - The chat section was having problems so I changed the chat to use the shoutbox instead.

Nichiren 02/18/10 8:02 PM - Implemented profile views today.

Nichiren 02/17/10 11:29 PM - At long last, I finally decided to implement "Previous" and "Next" links for each chapter of a story. AznNews4U suggested the feature months and months ago and it was Dolce that reminded me about it. Hope it doesn't cause too many problems. Also, the Browse button on the nav now points to an alphabetical listing of all stories on the site.

Nichiren 02/06/10 9:56 PM - Finished the Winglin story importer. Made some changes to how stories are created and chapters are added to accomodate the importer so watch out for any errors in these areas.

Nichiren 02/02/10 3:10 AM - Changed FCKEditor to CKEditor to try and mitigate a reported issue where the user was unable to type into the story body. Still need to monitor if this solution is successful.

Nichiren 01/27/10 7:36 PM - Made a MASSIVE update today to ALL of the pages on the site to clean up HTML/CSS code so Nichi, if something doesn't look right, refer back to this date! I also just realized that the new tagbox will always cause me to fail the HTML 4.01 Strict standard =(

Nichiren 01/21/10 3:06 AM - Managed to trim the global css file by 7 KB. This makes me happy. I could minify it but it's a PITA to make quick changes. Added a tagbox in the sidebar using a thirdparty tagbox service (this should be kinder to my bandwidth than using one of my own). Also fixed a bug in the browse users section where there were multiple results being returned for the same profile.

Nichiren 01/14/10 12:08 AM - Ugh. I just found out that one of the images hasn't been linked properly for over a month now. There has to be a way to test for these things. Anyway, I just added the ability to un-favorite. I'm surprised I left that out of the original plan.

Nichiren 01/12/10 5:10 PM - First dev update for the new year! I made a minor overhaul to the browse user section so that users can be more easily found by the first letter of their usernames. The default sort order for the main user page is now by most recent login time. I've also made image verification checks in the view pages for the profile and story pages. The verification already exists when a user first enters their image but sometimes, those images are taken down for one reason or another so they end up showing up as broken images on the site hence the need of image verification on the fly. I could not implement this in the browse user section and the gallery, however, since it increased page load times dramatically. I just might have to write a script that periodically checks everyone's images and automatically removes bad links but that's something I'll have to think about some more.

Nichiren 12/19/09 9:46 PM - Finally got to make an update after a month (apparently 10 minutes short of a month) and what an update it is. The gallery section is up and it should be a good update for people who like to read books based on the cover. I also fixed the image validation for the stories to prevent broken image links. Apparently I only had it in place for the profiles and not the stories. Oops. Hope this update is problem free.

Nichiren 11/19/09 9:56 AM - I'm sick today so this is one of those rare mid-day updates. Made static domains for images to parallelize downloading of static elements. Also consolidated and minified the major stylesheets and moved most of the javascript calls to the bottom of the pages. These were all done to try to increase page loading speed. The larger images in the affiliates section are also gone now to conserve bandwidth. Fixed bug in profile section due to karma points and decided to htmlencode the about me and interests profile areas. Finally, added .htaccess hotlink protection to site images (except affiliate banners of course).

Nichiren 11/16/09 12:19 AM - I've tweaked the featured story picker algorithm a bit and it also now disallows a user to become the featured story more than once within a 5 week period. I've also implemented a karma point system to help users quantify their chances of becoming the next featured story as well as hopefully bolster the number of comments made on this site. I've also placed the most popular tags on the front page.

Nichiren 10/09/09 11:00 PM - Made a few minor design tweaks yesterday to make the look more uniform across the site (same font, color, etc - see sidebar). Video tagging is now fully functional and works similarly to story tagging. I think all these changes should tide me over for a while until I get another crazy idea in my head.

Nichiren 10/07/09 11:34 PM - Implemented the browse by tags area of the video section. Should be easier to find categorized videos now. I just need to add the ability for users to add and remove tags for a video and the whole thing should be set.

Nichiren 10/05/09 12:43 AM - I made changes to the video section so that the submitter or moderator can edit the video details. Also, changed the banner image as well as other minor design tweaks since I realized that my bandwidth utilization more than doubled since I instituted the last banner image. I think it looks a lot cleaner now too.

Nichiren 10/04/09 12:21 AM - I managed to put up a new videos section. Not my best work coding-wise (I was getting tired) but I think it works pretty well. Some adjustments still need to be made. It's taking a lot longer than I thought but this'll be done soon. Hope people like it.

Nichiren 09/17/09 10:42 PM - It's been almost a full month since the last time I've updated this page and that's probably both good and bad. Good because it probably means that I'm starting to get to the point where I'm satisfied with the site and bad because it probably means that I'm also getting lazy. Either way, I set up a new affiliates section that should be filled up soon (hopefully) and a bit of a new design with the banner designed by aznews4u. Also started advertising a bit through AdWords. Hoping to break 300 users by the end of the year!

Nichiren 08/18/09 10:29 PM - I went over the "slow query log" and it seems that the overwhelming majority of slow queries originate from the home page. I think I've tracked the cause down to the fact that I display whether or not the author of each story is online as indicated by the asterisk next to the name. The reason for this is that the query returned duplicate rows (ex. when the same user is logged in through different browsers/pcs) so I used the sql keyword "DISTINCT" to only return me unique rows but I think that only masked the fact that my query still returned more rows than I really needed. I don't think the login indicator was all that important on the homepage anyway so it is now off production. I still left that indicator on the user profile though.

Nichiren 08/16/09 3:15 PM - Implemented member spotlighting on the front and profile pages. Maybe it would encourage people to put up avatars of themselves. Either way, it's always nice to put your users in the forefront of everything you do.

Nichiren 08/15/09 9:47 PM - I made a few minor changes since the last update here. Posted updates on this page have been getting fewer these days. Maybe that means I'm almost done (yeah right). Anyway, implemented a password reset feature to head off anymore requests for password retrieval. I couldn't do it anyway even if I wanted to since I one-way hash all the passwords. I also finally placed location fields in the profile section. It took a lot longer than I thought it would but at least I now have ready-made location solutions for my future projects. I'm feeling up for another site redesign but I wish I had some help with it. I still have a few more things to do though before then.

Nichiren 07/19/09 6:56 PM - Implemented ability to search through site using Google's search box. Also made more tweaks to the site ads to make them more appealing. The browse tags section has finally been revamped. I've eschewed a proper tag cloud for a simple table layout sorted in alphabetical order with the story counts next to each tag. Figured it would be easier to search for stories that way. I've also fixed a bug in the registration process where first time users don't show up in the "Who's Online" section.

Nichiren 07/18/09 6:40 PM - Allowed ability to delete comments from stories and walls. Story and profile owners as well as the respective comment owners are allowed to delete these comments.

Nichiren 07/11/09 1:01 AM - Managed to get chat to work a few days ago but it's down now due to some issues that my webhost is dealing with. Unfortunately, they've been having a lot of issues lately and I've been experiencing increading amounts of downtime. I might have to start looking for other webhosts.

Nichiren 07/05/09 2:47 PM - Modified the profile wall a little bit to include a "View all xx comments" link at the bottom. This is to prevent very long comment walls on profiles so I have the profile wall restricted to 20 comments.

Nichiren 07/04/09 11:37 PM - I gave everyone a friends list so people can keep track of the people they know here. I think it's about the right time for one since I'm seeing a lot of friendly users about. Hope this feature helps.

Nichiren 07/03/09 10:26 PM - I changed the way that sessions are handled to give the site a few more capabilities one of which is the ability to determine the login status of a user which should be evidenced by the new "Who's Online" section and the orange asterisks appearing everywhere. Also put in some new validation for story titles that they at least be three characters in length and that the title does not already exist in the system.

Nichiren 06/28/09 8:25 PM - Several new enhancements this weekend. You can now view the comments that you've made in other stories on your profile. Also, you will now be alerted at login whenever you have new comments on any of your stories since you last logged in and the profile page will also indicate which stories have the new comments. Visiting the associated story will no longer cause the story to be marked in the profile page. The new anonymous icons should be pretty obvious as well. Pretty minor stuff really. Still have a few major interesting things in the works. Sometimes there's such a thing as having too many ideas...

Nichiren 06/23/09 10:24 PM - I've made it a requirement that anyone posting a comment must be logged in to do so. This would enforce accountability on statements made and also cut down on spam. Thankfully, these haven't been problems yet but I think it's a good policy going forward.

Nichiren 06/21/09 7:02 PM - Added a sprinkle of Ajax to the front page that would automatically update the latest stories without an explicit refresh. It took a little doing but it's not really a major update since the stories aren't being updated fast enough for it to be useful which is also why I have the refresh rate set at 30 seconds. I'm actually hoping the front page wouldn't hit the auto-refresh too often since it's just a bandwidth drainer. Anyway, all this is really just a precursor to another interesting Ajax add-on that I'm planning on implementing site-wide so stay tuned.

Nichiren 06/20/09 10:54 AM - I changed the editor from TinyMCE to FCKEditor which would hopefully mitigate the issues that some users were having when updating stories. Also fixed a minor bug where a story's "complete" checkbox was not properly being set.

Nichiren 06/17/09 12:44 AM - Just added a browse by users section and fixed a bug in the profile. Slowly getting the fundamentals implemented and it seems like everything is pretty stable. After I get all of the basics done, it's on to the flashy stuff. That should be interesting.

Nichiren 06/12/09 12:35 AM - Implemented the browse by past featured stories section and fixed a bug where the addition and deletion of a tag for a story was not working properly. Also fixed the lack of rounded corners for IE8 a while back. At least IE's as close as they've ever gotten to implementing proper web standards but their newest marketing page irks me (as much as it would any sane web developer). Incidentally, I found this little gem mocking Microsoft's antics. Ironically, the mock page ranks higher on a google search for "IE8 comparison page" than the genuine page itself. I wonder how long it'll be up before it gets taken down.

Nichiren 06/04/09 6:41 AM - Made a quick fix for IE 8. Don't know what to do about the lack of rounded corners now though. Still have to find a fix...

Nichiren 05/31/09 8:37 PM - We will now have a featured story on the front page every 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of the month. The featured story is not chosen by anyone (no one human I should say) and is actually picked out through an algorithm I created based on various weighted factors. I can't divulge what those factors are since someone can potentially game the system but I will give the hint that the more active you are on the site, the higher the probability would be that your story would be the next featured story. For example, the amount of times you comment on other people's stories is ranked rather highly (*hint hint*). This feature took a really long time to implement but my hope is that it would get people to talk to each other more and have this place become more like a community of authors instead of just a place to post stories. More updates to come soon!

Nichiren 05/27/09 11:31 PM - Just a quick update tonight for a feature that aznews4u has been asking for: news story commenting! Stop by the news story section when you get the chance and check her stories out! That was pretty much it for the mandatory enhancements on my list. I'm going to start working on a new feature that I'm pretty excited about. Stay tuned!

Nichiren 05/25/09 11:42 PM - If you tried logging in sometime tonight and it gave you an error message, sorry about that! I've finally managed to grab some time off to work some more on asianfanfics.com. I've completely refactored the code for most of the sections in the site to try and make it a lot more maintainable in the future. I've also included a few minor visual tweaks that should help with usability. No one should notice anything drastic but I made some massive changes to code and organization so if anyone notices anything weird (like stuff not showing up!), please let me know as soon as you can!

Nichiren 05/17/09 1:09 AM - Remodeled the news section to actually contain real news (site updates are now under "Updates"). Also fixed IE bug in user profiles.

Nichiren 05/14/09 8:52 PM - Hey guys. It's been a while since I've made an update (I'm swamped with work these days!). I just added a "Completed" section in the "Browse" pages. You should be able to browse those stories that are marked as completed. Thing is, it doesn't seem like anyone's completed a story yet! So if you have any stories, you can mark them completed by editing the foreword or the chapter and there should be a checkbox there to mark your story completed. I also added more security in terms of the users now having to enter their password whenever they delete a story or chapter. In other very unrelated news, I also got hooked into watching one of Rainie's dramas (Miss No Good). I haven't laughed like this for a TV show in a long while.

05/07/09 11:23 PM - Oh Internet Explorer. How I loathe thee. Fixed another IE6 bug today. Just the standard messed up box model. By the way, I implemented a new Browse Views section so you can restrict browsing the views by day ranges. I also see that someone wants a real news section instead of my semi-daily rants on my IE angst. I'll see what I can do about that.

05/03/09 10:48 PM - Busy couple of days. Fixed a few more bugs today mostly regarding the "Most Viewed Stories" section but it's mostly squared away now though and I can thankfully scratch that off my TO-DO list. Exhausted now so off to a nap. Just a few more features to go...

05/03/09 1:29 AM - I've made a large number of updates which mostly concern the browse pages. Obviously, each category is now broken up into their own pages. I've also had to revamp the inner workings of how each story's views are recorded and I ended up temporarily breaking things for a bit but everything should all be fixed now. Please let me know if you manage to find anything that seems out of the ordinary for you. Thanks!

04/29/09 11:06 PM - Added a "Most Commented" section to the browse page and had a friend tweak the logo a little bit because the old one (don't know if you could even call the old one a logo) just looked weird. I'm glad that my list of features is slowly getting implemented and I should have most of them done in just a few days. Maybe then I could actually spend some of my time spreading the word about the site! In the meantime, help spread the word!

04/27/09 10:58 PM - Added a "Most Viewed Stories" section in the Browse page, made some SEO tweaks, tried to adjust the site ads to keep them from displaying those annoying personals (I'm decently sure no one here clicks on those...), and did some minor coding maintenance. All in a day's work. One day when I'm out of bugs to fix and features to implement, maybe my news section would actually be filled with real news! Someday...

04/25/09 2:16 PM - Woo! Redesign! Took me a few hours to figure out a good minimalist layout and I still need a real logo but I think it turned out okay. I still have a lot to do but I'm pretty much out of things to write about. Oh I was watching Dhani Tackles the Globe on Travel Channel the whole time I was redesigning this site. Great show. Maybe that's where I got my inspiration!

04/23/09 10:58 PM - I just made a major overhaul of user profiles yesterday and today. You should now be able to view all of a user's stories on their profile as well as be able to post a comment on their wall (presumably to let them know how awesome their stories are!). Give it a try and feel free to let me know how things are going for you. My username is Nichiren. Keep on writing and I'll have a few more features (and maybe even a site redesign) in store for you sometime soon!

04/20/09 11:04 PM - Sorry Internet Explorer users. Accidentally modified a few files the wrong way and the layouts got messed up in IE for about a day or so. I usually have Firefox, Chrome, or Opera running and I didn't notice the change in IE until someone pointed it out. Hopefully everything is back to normal now. Just out of curiosity, what are the chances I could convince all of you to switch away from IE? Us web devs would be eternally grateful.

04/19/09 6:51 PM - The story tagging process has finally been refined and should be a little bit more intuitive. Adding and deleting tags is now possible from your main story page going forward. At some point in time (when there are more tags), I'll have to make the tag cloud actually look like a tag cloud...

Update 11:32 PM - Figured I'd do a little extra today and give you the ability to enter a main image for every chapter of your story. I'll tweak this a little further in the future but the main reason I kept it to where you have to manually add the image url to each chapter is for the case where you might actually want to have a different main image for that chapter. By the way, I also added a story view counter at the bottom of the foreword page. It counts all the times a user views your foreword and any other chapters of your story.

04/18/09 4:40 PM - I finally got around to figuring out how to convert all of the UTC dates to your local timezones so you shouldn't be seeing "inaccurate" dates and times for your postings anymore! It honestly took a lot longer than it probably should have and it definitely felt like I just hacked it together due to my rusty javascripting skills. Please let me know if your posting times are inaccurate for you via the contact form and I'll try to fix it right away.

In other news, I'm pretty surprised that asianfanfics.com is #3 in the google search for "asian fan fics" and #4 for "asian fanfics" considering we hadn't even been indexed until just a few days ago. It's a testament to google bot efficiency I suppose. Nevertheless, seeing that made me think about SEO and I decided to do at least the very basics in proper SEO work to tweak the results a little more favorably. Search engine rankings don't really interest me too much considering I'm aiming for this site to be passed on through word of mouth but it certainly helps.

04/12/09 11:15 PM - I spent most of today researching flexible and easily customizable forum software and ended up deciding on smf. I'm pretty happy with it so far and the interface has been intuitive for the most part. My only issue now is that you have to re-register again in that forum which is a bit of a hassle. I'll try to figure out a good way to automatically register a user in the forum when they sign up for asianfanfics.com but for now, please feel free to register there as well and let me know your feedback!

04/11/09 - Finally added the contact form I've been wanting to add for a week now. I've also managed to validate most of the site in HTML 4.01 Strict which I'm currently patting myself on the back for. I say "most" since I can't account for invalid html in user generated stories. It was a real PITA.

04/10/09 11:08 PM - Made a lot of bug fixes today. Unfortunately ended up putting a lot of restrictions on story tagging since some issues weren't being handled very well by the program. Also created a news section so I don't clog up the front page with my boring updates! I really hope that that's the last of the bugs and I can finally move on to some enhancements this weekend. A forum would be nice sometime soon...

04/10/09 1:52 AM- Made another change to the layout (both columns on the left now) since I noticed that a lot of your pictures weren't showing properly due to the layout. Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend to add the features that I've been wanting to add. I'll probably ask for help sometime in the future for someone to help design the spot where "AsianFanFics.com" is right now up in the header. It's looking kind of lonely and bare.

04/09/09 12:01 AM- As some of you using IE may have noticed, I've done an overhaul on the page layout and the rounded corners should show now. The main content column in the center is no longer fixed in width so those of you with larger monitors can resize your browsers to get more text on the screen. I made a couple of other tweaks that aren't worth mentioning and I'm planning on moving the right hand column to the left hand side so it doesn't mess with the images you guys post as long as there are no objections. I still have a lot more features and updates planned so stay tuned.

04/08/09 01:48 AM- Just made a few minor but important updates today. I auto-stripped html tags from the short descriptions because stupid me never realized that bad tags in the description would mess up the main page layout. Also, I enabled the ability to comment on stories anonymously (which was more of a pain than it should have been). If there doesn't seem to be any more bugs *crosses fingers*, I'll start working on a contact form so you guys can at least let me know of any bugs on the site, problems you're having, suggestions, or to just let me know what you think!

04/05/09 - Welcome to the newly opened Asianfanfics.com! Asianfanfics.com caters to writers of various different types of fan fiction ranging from celebrity fan fiction to more obscure genres of fan fics and we have specifically designed this site with reliability and ease of use in mind. As writers ourselves, our primary focus is on the author and we seek to make your experience as effortless as possible. Feel free to read more about us here.