UPDATE: May 23rd, 2009 HUGE update, guys. The archive has now been brought into the 21st century, thanks to my Kirk-like stubbornness and the help of Robin Serrano (again! my hero!) and a certain guy who may have to get homemade cookies.
Lots and lots of new stuff here. The most important one is that there is now a new classification for stories called "Universe." Because we did not have the capabliity to use Classifications before, you will notice that all the stories in the archive are currently set to Universe: None except for the handful of AU/Mirror stories and the ST:XI (aka 2009 Abrams-verse) stories posted in the last week or so, which I classified myself.
This means it's up to each author to edit their own stories to add the Universe classification. I ask you to please, please do this if you have a few moments -- my plan is to clean up the stragglers in a month or so, but it would greatly save time for me if you would classify your own stories.
For the purposes of the archive, if the story takes place entirely in the XI universe (post timeline shift) then it's ST:XI. If it intersects with the original universe and/or includes any of the other original universe characters (other than Spock) then it's a crossover. Please choose the Universe that best fits your story, then choose a crossover fandom if it seems appropriate.
What this means is that if you would like to search on only ST:TOS stories or only ST:XI stories, you now can. Click on the Titles link in the menu or use the Advanced Search feature to choose which universe(s) you're interested in. You can either search for only one universe, or eliminate any that don't interest you.
Other new features:
- You can now start or participate in story challenges.
- There are now classifications for Crossover Fandom and Story Type.
- We can add more classifications in the future if necessary.
- You can now post stories with a coauthor.
- The tinyMCE WYSIWYG editor will now allow you to format your stories with a visual editor. This should help a lot with formatting issues, and make it much easier to use bold, italics, etc.
- The Top Tens feature will show you top ten stories and authors in a number of categories.
- On the sidebar is a pulldown which will let you choose one of three skins. The bold red one is called "boldlygo," while "blanc" is a nice clean, dark type on white layout for those who prefer it. "teal_deer" is in cool blues if that's more to your reading taste.
- You can now put stories in a series. To do this, add your stories individually first, then create a new series from the Account Info -> Manage Series page, then add the stories to it and choose what order they go in.
- If you go to Account Info, you can now Edit Preferences and make an age statement which will enable you to bypass warning popups for adult content. (Works only in Internet Explorer.)
- There is now a "Report This" button at the bottom of each member profile, so that if you come across a bogus or spam account, you can easily report it to the admins and we can delete it.
- The archive is considerably more secure in general and should be much less prone to attack and spam.
- Due to structural changes in the databases between versions, the counter that showed how many times a story had been read cannot be brought into the new version of the archive. The new counter will continue to function, but the old values are not salvageable.
Other changes:
Since it is now possible to mark stories "Complete" when posting, the policy against posting Works in Progress is lifted. You may now post chaptered WIPs to the archive. Please:
- Make sure that you post each new part as a new chapter to make it easier for readers to follow.
- Make sure you set the category to Works in Progress, and ONLY Works in Progress. When the story is finished, you can add the Fiction category to the complete story.
- Make sure you don't mark the story complete until it is finished.
There are a lot of other cool, nifty new features here, and there may be some minor bugs as we get caught up with the new software. Please let me know if you have any questions or problems, and have fun!