February and March Site Updates
Hi! It's been a while since my last blog post but that's only because I'd been working on a ton of site updates and writing these blogs posts take me forever (I'm probably better at writing code than I am at writing - irony, I know). It's easier if I list out what I've done over the past couple of months:
- First things first, many sections of the site should load much faster now especially listings sections with different sort options like views, subscribers, comments, etc. This is something that's continually being worked on since it isn't perfect but it's getting there.
- One of the first things I did this year was to completely replace the profile navigation with something less slow and annoying in that it instantly drops down instead of having to wait for some slow animation (I don't know why ever approved the old one). It should also work much better on mobiles now.
- Authors can now see how many bookmarks each of their chapters have.
- Two factor authentication has been added to help you further secure your account against unauthorized access. You can enable two-factor authentication in your settings as long as you have a verified email to send the auth code to.
- Further hardened site security with most sections now run through https for logged in members. You should now also receive an email whenever you (or someone else!) changes your password or the account email.
- The polling system was one of the very first things I made for the site which I also haven't changed in something like five years but I modernized it for 2017 so that it can now take up to 20 choices and is now displayed as a bar graph similar to how chapter stats are shown. Unfortunately, due to increased site security, the old way of embedding polls is no longer secure so had to be discontinued but I will provide a new way of embedding polls in your stories and blogs posts very soon!
- You can resize the textarea fields now! (This is one of those annoying things I should've fixed a long time ago)
- The Google search box is back and living in the listings pages for all of your searching needs. (The reason it had to be taken off the site was because Google complained that it was being used in the... [M] sections so it had to be taken off immediately. It's only embarrassingly recently that I realized that I could at least put it back in the listings pages probably without too much trouble from Google.)
- Tags that you exclude from your browsing results are now run in most listings sections, not just in the tag listings. (You knew that you could exclude specific tags from your listings results, right? Just go to the tag you hate and click on the "Exclude this tag from all searches" button and you'll never see those stories again -- until you re-include that tag again, of course.)
- You can now filter out all non-stories in all listings by using the "Show stories only" toggle. (Another one I should've done a long, long time ago but only came up with it now)
- All story listings now include [M] results as well (just like when we first started) but you're also able to easily filter them out again using the "Show non-rated stories only" toggle.
- [TW] stories are no longer auto-marked as subscribers-only.
- Authors can now set their story save offline preferences to enabled, disabled, or let only your friends save your stories offline.
- Your profile page now includes more stats like total story upvotes, story followers, blog followers, and feed followers.
- Your profile page now also includes your most recent blogs, stories, and polls (but I'm sure you noticed those!).
- Fixed issues and improved the Opera Mini theme for Opera Mini users.
- Moderators are now able to (temporarily or permanently) ban single chapters instead of having to ban entire stories for a single reported chapter (I always felt bad in cases where the author obviously didn't know something was against the terms of use and I've asked the moderators to always reach out to the author first and talk about it but like in a lot of things in life, some issues are time sensitive. Allowance for single chapter bans should help a lot in these cases.)
- Speaking of moderators, a new moderator joined us this month (if you're reading this, welcome again!) which brings the number of active site moderators to three. Moderator identities are private (they were public before until they were harassed and doxxed and that's why we can't have nice things) but I know it's always nice to be able to reach out to someone directly so I'm thinking of starting a designated Community Manager role for the site but only if we have enough volunteers that are willing to help out the community by answering questions and being the go-to site experts. I'll start this pilot program soon if there's enough interest in it.
- Fixed a bunch of bugs / drank a lot of coffee.
- It's a bit of an open secret but testing of the AFF Android app began sometime in February and has been improved upon since then with mobile alerts and a more convenient save offline feature (as some of you early testers and Gold members know). I just promoted the Beta release to production today and is now ready for general download. The iOS version is still in the works and may be ready in the coming weeks pending the completion of the fundraiser (This is the first AFF project where most of the coding was done by other developers and they tend to like to get paid!). The app(s) were actually more expensive than I initially budgeted for but instead of starting a new fundraiser, I just matched it myself so we could get both versions out at the same time. The reason this update is all the way down here is because I want to make sure that there are no lingering issues to the app that need to be fixed before a horde of people start downloading it and leaving it bad reviews but we went through alpha and beta tests so I'm hopeful! Just search for "Asianfanfics" in the Android Play Store and the description should say "The official Asianfanfics mobile app" or you can just get to it here.
- I've added more benefits for AFF gold members and below is the full list of benefits with the new additions italicized (also, story stats used to be cleared away when a server was restarted but not anymore for gold members):
- Earn 4X more karma points when you make a comment or get an upvote on your story
- Instant notifications: Enabled and daily message limit increased
- Event history capacity is doubled
- AFF Railgun: Faster page loads (most useful for people on slow connections or mobile networks)
- Ads are off for AFF Gold members
- Subscribe up to 50 tags for your tag feed from a default of 25
- Chapter statistics for your stories are now stored for a year up from the default of 5 days (gold members have the ability to set a date range)
- Maximum number of invited readers for invitation-only stories increased to 500 from the default of 100
- Gold member authors receive notifications when a subscriber unsubscribes
- Gold member authors are able to view all members bookmarked to a chapter
- Gold member authors are able to view the chapter bookmarks bar graph in their story statistics page
- I've also managed to fix the ad issue people were seeing (some McD's ad) and that should be gone. I know a lot of you have ad blockers on and I understand, I hate ads too. But unlike the bigger sites with investor-backing (where the business model is grow crazy fast first, wait until you have a ton of users, sell, and only then start monetizing everyone because now no one can leave since it's too big to fail), this site is mainly supported by karma / gold member purchases and ads. I really wish I didn't have to depend on ads to keep the site running but until purchases ramp up, I unfortunately still have to. On the other hand, I try my hardest to make sure bad ads don't get through and I'm really selective of ad networks that want to go on the site to make sure they don't introduce any. If you have an ad blocker on for us because of a bad ad from before, give us another chance and whitelist us. It'll really help in supporting the operations of the site which include the servers, the new mobile apps, and sometimes lawyers (I wish I was kidding)!
I'll be working on a few new things for April that should be pretty interesting so I'll be keeping my head down again until they're finished. I'll also be heading to California in late April to take a bit of a break from work (AFF isn't my full time job!) and meet up with a few AFF members there (I guess it's the first unofficial AFF meetup haha). Hope all of you are doing well and for those of you in school, good luck with exams!
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