Development Update Episode 5

15th June 2022

Hey Narratophiles,

Today has been a day that I'd call productively annoying.

You're being productive in the sense that you're actually doing stuff that needs to be done, fixing problems, adding features, making shit work, but most of it is Yak Shaving.

Most of it is getting shit done so you can get other shit done and if it's a really bad day then all of that is only getting done so you can get the real thing that NEEDS to get done.

Today was a little like that. Certainly not the worst day I've ever had like that but annoying still the same.

On the plus side it is finally the last of the little hiccups from the mass of changes that came from the 2.0 update. There's still plenty of work to be done, but all the efforts leading up to the update have paid off.

The 2.0 Update

A couple of days ago was the culmination of about 3 weeks of work, give or take, and I rolled out a raft of updates and changes that made this particular update certainly worthy of a "version bump".

The core functionality of the site didn't change much, if any. But both behind the scenes and in many other ways there were plenty of changes moving the site ahead closer to what I want it to become.

The 2.0 update also ended the self-imposed story posting moratorium. The last few tweaks today have solved the few remaining story posting issues and posting should resume from this point forward.

One of the main reasons for the pause was the desire the change the URLs for the stories and the chapters. This change was for a variety of reasons but a major one was SEO. At this point the site had about 10 stories, if we were going to make any changes, now was the time to do it, so now going forward the story URLs will make much more sense rather than just being story/1 or story/1764 etc. This will help with folks searching the web for "lost" stories so they can find us even if they aren't active participants on some of the subreddits.

What's new and what's changed.

Aside from the aforementioned URL changes we have the following changes.

• Altered development focus. With almost 80% of our users viewing the site on mobile. I've changed focus for how the site is developed, whilst there's still a few vestiges, most of the site will going forward, from a consumption users perspective (i.e a normal reader of the site) at least, be developed for mobile. This has required some alterations for me and a change of thinking, but it's getting easier and the change in perspective is improving the experience for those just interested in reading the stories.

  However, this will primarily apply to the "reader" experience, once the further features of the site are rolled out, especially the author focussed features, these will target tablet and desktop devices as they are the primary tools utilised by content creators. There will be mobile functionality for some of these features where it makes sense and is able to be done without to many compromises but in the interests of providing the features required and making for a good author experience larger screens will be the focus.

• Updates to the chapter "accordions" (the bits that expand to reveal the chapter list when you click on of the story cards). The chapter list is now larger "blocks" that should make it much easier to select specific chapters when viewing on mobile.

• "News" articles added. These will allow for announcements and updates on the site. Don't worry the Development Updates will remain and stay here, but now there is the ability for us to let site users know about shorter and more time sensitive updates to do with the site. Currently the "subscribe" form doesn't work, but eventually that will be updated and a subscribe form for this newsletter added.

• The SEO changes, along with some issues discovered with story posting, prompted a number of Database schema (the design of the DB that stores all the sites data) changes.

  The major ones that will affect the users are the new story URLs and also the separation of the chapter name from its display order. Previously when something was called chapter 1 that meant its display order was one and when listing chapters it'd be displayed first. That worked fine initially, until you come across part 7b and Chapter 6.5 or even 0.5.

  This prompted a change where chapters now have an optional "name" or title that is a freeform string (rather than an integer number) that can be used to display the chapters title... e.g Chapter 1.5 and this is now entirely separate from what order the chapters will be displayed in. This allow actual chapter titles like you find in some books. There are added benefits to this for some features that may eventuate in the longer term but at the moment that's the main one.

• Currently the story "detail" page is a list of the chapters and that's it. Even though it's currently hidden (the mobile focussed version is being used for all screen sizes) on larger screen sizes there will be a dedicated story detail page with far more info about the story and possibly, down the track, the ability to leave comments, ratings and reviews. This has been delayed slightly whilst working out what will and won't be included in each version. As we get closer to rolling this out more details will be forthcoming.

• The same applies to our Author "detail" page in fact both pages are using the same template as a starting point.

• New links have been added in the header bar (the hamburger menu on mobile) to most of the main areas, there are still a few to come but this should make it easier for folks to get around as the content expands. There's also an easy to access link for both the Discord server and the Patreon page.

• As a supplement to the URL changes, the early stories have had server redirections put in place so anyone visiting the "old" URLs will still find what they are looking for. Although this only applies to stories, the old chapter links WILL NOT redirect and will 404. However the new story/chapter URLs can be used to directly link to a specific chapter of a story.

• The initial steps towards user accounts and the ability to use "social logins" (initially, Google, Reddit, Patreon and Discord) have been added. These are probably the next "major" feature to be worked on. Allowing us to have user accounts and some of the added features they will provide/allow.

• There is some basic code for comments included, with the possible addition of comments on Stories (likely), Chapters (possibly little less likely) and Authors (likely). The structure of the code addition will allow us to add the ability to comment on essentially whatever we choose. The "delay" here is more a case of working out an acceptable UI (especially on mobile) and also dealing with issues such as moderation etc. Either way, obviously, this won't come into being until we have user accounts. I'm not going to be the idiot that allows "anonymous" comments on content like this.

• In a similar vein we also have the basic code for adding tags to whatever we choose. This is far more likely and less reliant on user accounts etc and will definitely be coming soon for stories and possibly even individual chapters. This should help more as the site catalog grows and people have to start searching for things, at the moment the site is small enough that discoverability and finding what you want isn't an issue. Hence this not being moved closer to the top of the priority pile :)

• Story & Chapter Listings. Progress is being made towards every story listing and chapter listing on the site essentially being the same. Whilst they may not operate the same and have the same functionality they will at least LOOK the same so folks know where to find the information they want/need and ensuring it's just as clear to read and easy to find on mobile as it is on desktop. Speaking of which whilst there weren't many responses to the desktop format poll there seemed to be a definite preference (for those who DID have a preference) for table format rather than the "cards" being used on mobile. The cards will likely remain in chapter listings regardless as there's generally less pertinent info to display, but for stories, for the time being at least the mobile view will be used until some work can be done on the table view to get it into a usable state at which point that will become the larger screen default. Eventually I hope to be able to allow people to choose in certain places which layout they prefer when using larger screens.

• Along with some updates and tweaks to the Author listing, Tag listing and Category listing pages I've once again tried to have some consistency in the look of all of those pages. Some of the content on these pages is still placeholder but will be updated as time allows.

• We now also have Statuses for both Authors and Stories. This will help people understand things such as if there is more of a story to come or if an author is active or not. Once the sites help sections are active there will be more detailed explanations of what each of the statuses mean. Also as far as Stories go the subtle (I hope) colour shading to each of the story cards, on the front page especially, related to the story's status.

• The Front Page has added some new features and will continue to undergo changes. The news (articles) section has been added as a dropdown and recent the story list has been limited to 12 stories. Eventually this will be also added to a dropdown (probably defaulting to open) as we may end up moving to a point where we are having stories added serially (chapter by chapter like what is common on reddit) and thus the newly updated chapters will need to be easily accessible. The front-page will feature some of them and there will also be dedicated site wide "feed" pages for both new complete stories and newly uploaded chapters, although over time once we have user accounts etc it will likely be assumed that folks will be using their own curated user feeds, where they can configure what appears and what doesn't based on their preferences. Once that happens the front page will likely transition to being focussed more on discovery of new content.

OK, that should about do it for this update. I realise there was a lot to cover but it was a big update and covering all that shit and letting folks know what's going on is part of reason for these Development Updates.

Some of you may be aware I was struck low for much of the last week or so with some rampant seasonal “lurgy” that went through a bunch of households of folks we know. Whilst I'm still not 100% (OMG the snot....) I'm doing much better now and so development and story posting can and will resume apace.

So enjoy the upcoming content folks and many many thanks to all of you who took the time to read this and the last update and those who decided to subscribe.

Speaking of subscribe, let me encourage all of you to help support the project, if you're able, by joining the patreon which can be found at https://patreon.com/sinclairkosh. As we move to introduce user accounts and the like there will be more and more benefits along with first access to features for our patrons. Thanks for even checking it out.

-- Kosh