Site Update » December 2017 Update · 12:40am Dec 20th, 2017
Hey guys, got a whole bunch of updates for you today.
Tags
This is a small but important step on our way to the tagging system I envision. The existing way we handled things like characters and genres has all been merged into a single tagging system. That won't result in much difference for you viewing and using the site but it makes it a lot easier to add new tags especially.
We now have a couple of new tag types: series and warnings.
The series tag is for identifying what series (franchise) your fanfiction contains. I've added a whole ton of various TV shows, movies, comics, books and games but clearly we will have to add a ton more in the coming future. Stories must also contain one of the four MLP tags which are FIM, EqG, Movie and Comic, as this is a pony fanfic site after all. Feel free to bug me on Discord if you have a requirement for a series to be added.
Warning tags are an extension of the sex/gore tags to add in a whole bunch of different warnings to help people identify content they don't want to read. Think of them like the warnings on game/movie boxes.
Next, I've added a "porn" genre. People have been asking for a way to differentiate between stories that are largely pornographic vs ones which just happen to have sex as a plot point. Well, here you have it.
Finally, I've gone back and removed colours from genres again. I know this will make some people unhappy, but I stand by the original reason why I did it which was to improve the visual readability of tags on story pages. Nonetheless, I've left tag ids as data attributes on tags everywhere they exist on the site, so writing a user style with something like stylish to colour them is very trivial. You can find some code to get you started here.
Follow up: We now have a setting for genre colours on the site settings page so you can turn them back on if you want.
Search
I've added a new search system for stories to the site. The text search now supports a whole variety of different features as well as boolean operations. In short, this means you can type things like #human #romance ( #fluttershy OR #rainbow-dash ) AND views:<1000 to find stories with humans shipped with Fluttershy or Rainbow Dash that haven't been viewed much. It's really powerful and you can find more information on the help page.
Others
I've made a lot of internal layout changes around the site. This shouldn't result in a lot of change but it makes laying things out a lot easier. I also removed a lot of legacy css that was a pain to maintain.
A few user page modules have been updated a bit to look a bit cleaner/nicer.
As usual, let us know if you experience any issues.
Oh thank god the site is up.
I was starting to shake.
this is a good update
But muh genre colors /s
Intriguing new ideas, I eagerly await the whining. n_n
BLUE.
bLuE.
BLEU!
SO MUCH BLUE.
BUT WHERE IS LUNA PONEMOJI??
Thanks for this. Seems I joined at a good time.
Leaves to put porn tag on all of my stories.
Nicely done! I think this is my favorite part:
okay question i'm not mad but why is the notification words blue? just asking
4753389
You and me both haha.
Seems good, makes finding stuff easier.
Now, I wonder if there could be a Bendy tag...XD
People actually wanted a "porn" tag?
~Skeeter The Lurker
4753392
unrelated but when g5 comes around will fimfiction still be around?
This looks good, now I have to see how have this affected my stories's tags.
so far so good
4753389
Ha I literally just sat there waiting for it to come back up
Just saying, but whenever I try to edit the tags of my already published stories, I get a internal 500 error. Has this happened to anyone else, or just me?
That MLP:FiM tag takes up a lot of visual space. Anyway we can at least remove it from the "Card" or "List" view?
I'm going to also have to disagree with you about the colors for tags. While we can overwrite it on desktop systems, trying to do so on mobile is practically impossible (at least for iOS users).
That being said, I like the new colors for the notifications, the bold for the small subtags/characters. Having wider banners on the home page is nice, too (even I have to redo them now, they'll look cooler when I'm done). The changes to the visual text are a nice, too.
Could we get a little detail on exactly what this will do in practice?
4753400
Probably.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Well this will definitely help with Crossover stories... Now I don't have to put the title of the crossover verse in the title anymore...
Doesn't making all the tag looking very similar reducing the readability?
One step toward Genfiction babieeeeeeee!
4753399 You're surprised?
MLP:FIM tag?
Does this...does this mean we're actually a step closer to Genfic now?
Could...could genfic be coming in 2018?!
4753409
Reads like generic ass-covering to me.
Dammit, gotta retag a bunch of stories.
Would there be the possibility of a customizable "series" tag for stories that are set in a particular 'verse? Like if there were a My Little Dashie 'verse, or David Silver's "DavidSilververse", etc.?
I know one thing for sure "Old Character Tags" plugin for Stylish needs to be updated pronto!
I understand gutting legacy css.
*shakes hoof in the air*
Cursed css!
well just have the tags of one category in one color then pls. Don't have the featured character tags share the same color as genre or the new warning tags .
This alone makes for a good update.
4753399 I suspect it makes them easier to filter out. Similar to why a lot of people wanted the 2nd person and Anon tags.
4753418
YEEEEEEEEEE!
Am I the only one who found the old search system significantly easier to use?
Anyway to keep the dropdowns in the character tag selection screen (when making a new story), or was that being an issue?
Welp, back to updating stories.
"Genres: Maximum of 3 (not including human, crossover, second person or anthro)" Me: what?.....
Ah, back to the dreaded BlueFiction, changing the tags reduces the ability to tell tags apart, why can't you add a settings option if your so insistent on this unpopular choice.
4753428
You're not alone. On the upside, it only makes it a few seconds longer than it would've took. Adding character tags is a wee bit a bitch nowadays.
4753399
Sometimes it's helpful to know no effort was made.
4753413
Right?
4753437
S'right
Knighty, you are still The Man, sir. 🙏
May death come quickly to your enemies!
Ok yeah there are a bunch of franchises missing. Maybe you should go to that one much larger but vastly inferior fanfiction site and get a list from there?
Not sure I like this
So, in regards to the stories search if previously I could type like 2 letters (say 'NI') in a tag field to get a nightmare moon tag suggestion (as a first among others) and press it, now I have to bother myself with '#' and typing a whole tag? And the words filter is also gone in favor of more sorting?
*Shrugs* Well, I don't see anything but the usability/ergonomics decrease then. The necessity to change working and neat UI in favor of something new for the sake of it is beyond me.
Would ask to have 'old design' option, but that's useless, as usual.
The new Search sounds really nice. Thanks! The date search doesn't seem to be working for me, though. I just tried:
#fluttershy approved:>2017-12-1and it returned zero hits. Am I doing something wrong?
Uh, quick question: if I'm saving new tags for a story, is it normal to get a 500 server error?
This is actually pretty nice. As someone who hasn't read the comics, it's always annoying to find an otherwise-innocuous fic that starts making a bunch of comics references for no reason.
The MLP:FiM tag is pretty big, though, and takes up a lot of room on stories in card view. Actually, tags in general are huge now on card view stories. Is there any way we could get them down to three-letter abbreviations? And could the Alternate Universe tag go back up on the top with the others, instead of down by the character tags?
Also, how does the old tag limit system work with the new tags?
I don't understand. When I do a new story, it won't let me add characters now.