News Archive

  • 274 weeks
    BBCode updates

    Performance improvements

    Over the last few days I've been working on improving the performance of the BBCode parser. I've managed to implement a few major optimizations, reducing the run time in common cases to around 1/4th to 1/20th compared to the older version. This has reduced total server-side render times on some of the more complicated test pages I've been using to around 50ms–70ms, which should be a noticeable improvement.

    New features

    Opacity

    Read More

    49 comments · 4,870 views
  • 297 weeks
    Recent Changelog

    We've done various unannounced changes of the past few weeks so I thought I'd group up the things we've done so you guys know what's changed.

    • Added account linking page for Patreon / Twitter
    • Added ability to cross post stories, blogs and bookshelf additions to Twitter
    • Added twitter userpage module
    • Added account deletion page
    • Reorganised user toolbar dropdown to better fit more items
    • Added session management page to see logins and active sessions on your account
    • Added new articles system and moved some existing ones into it
    • Redesigned PM page a bit to be cleaner
    • Increased font size in major places across the site to improve readability
    • New cookie consent controls for EU users and updated privacy policy
    • Recommended groups list on groups page - WIP
    • Tooltips in many locations around the site with helpful tips

    Read More

    114 comments · 5,990 views
  • 298 weeks
    Help Articles

    Something I've worked on the last couple of days is adding the ability for us to add arbitrary "articles" to the site which we can use for various things. Sort of an extension on the manual articles we've added in the past like the bbcode page, writing guide, etc.

    So far I've added 3 guides:

    I'd love to know if you guys have any idea for articles that would have helped you out when starting out or anything else that comes to mind.

    65 comments · 5,166 views
  • 325 weeks
    Night Mode

    I've been working on it for ages but only really got the impetus to finish all of it off over the last few days. In the "settings" dropdown at the top on desktop, or the bottom of the slide out bar on mobile you'll find a toggle for night mode. Enjoy!

    Oh, and although I've tried to cover everything there is a 100% chance I've missed styling some things so apologies in advance for any funky pages.

    246 comments · 6,754 views
  • 326 weeks
    Additional Search Update

    Hey folks,

    Over the last few days I've added a few things to the new search system. A lot of people were unhappy with not being able to filter various things as quickly as they used to be able to. To that end, I've added a little filter dropdown to the right of the search box which effectively contains everything the old sidebar used to. It even has some niceties like quick word count filters and a highly rated filter.

    Read More

    132 comments · 5,270 views
  • 327 weeks
    December 2017 Update

    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.

    Read More

    630 comments · 13,753 views
  • 327 weeks
    Math BBCode tag

    I've added [math] and [mathblock] BBCode tags, which can be used to display formatted math. We've had a few requests for this, particularly for group forum threads and blog posts. Most math-related TeX syntax is supported. (We are currently using MathJax to handle the layout.)

    The documentation from the BBCode guide is repeated below for your convenience.

    Read More

    84 comments · 4,393 views
  • 350 weeks
    Fimfiction API

    If you're not a developer you can probably ignore this post.

    It's been like 6 years, but hey, things take time. The API is currently very WIP still but it's ready for people to get working on in our development chat room.

    API documentation can be found at https://www.fimfiction.net/developers/api/v2/docs and you should join the Discord Chat and PM me to add you to the private API channel and I can help you get started. The functionality is very limited right now but I'm dedicating all my time to it at the moment and would love to have people add their input to the process.

    60 comments · 7,364 views
  • 354 weeks
    New BBCode Tags

    Hey guys,

    One of the features in this new update was reader-side paragraph formatting. This helps improve consistency for readers across the site, especially for those of us who can’t stand reading indented text on a computer screen.

    However, one thing that wasn’t accounted for was the legitimate need for specific indenting of passages and for certain blocks of text to have no paragraph formatting. Some examples would be lyrics and poetry.

    Taking this into account, we have come up with a couple of new tags that remedy this situation which are documented below (copied directly from the bbcode guide)


    [indent] Indent

    The indent tag can be used to, unsurprisingly, indent portions of your text.

    [indent]The indent tag can be used to, unsurprisingly, indent portions of your text.[/indent]

    It also support levels of indenting

    Read More

    168 comments · 6,377 views
  • 355 weeks
    Fimfiction 4.0

    It’s been a very very long time coming, but we’ve finally updated the site again. this is by far the biggest update we have ever done. There is a cavalcade of new features but the biggest changes are under the hood and affect how easy it is to extend the site and performance. A change log of everything I can remember can be found below.

    There are bound to be unforeseen bugs. If you come across anything major please let us know in the comments (or preferably in the #site-help-and-dev discord channel).

    Miscellaneous / Site Wide

    • Dropped support entirely for pre-IE11
    • Updated inline searching across the site to order much better. Eg. Typing "Ra" into the tag selector actually shows Rainbow Dash first. On shorter lists like bookshelves, we use a different algorithm that lets you type things like "ril" and it’ll prioritise a shelf called "read it Later".

    Read More

    1,363 comments · 21,427 views
Jun
13th
2020

Site Update » Downtime & Server Move · 3:39pm Jun 13th, 2020

Hi all. Firstly, apologies for the extended period of unexpected downtime. Obviously any kind of downtime is non ideal, but unexpected is more annoying all around.

On Friday morning (GMT) we experienced a hardware failure on our database server. To our knowledge there is no data loss of any kind. We have fairly regular backups hosted off-site, regardless. The exact cause isn't entirely clear at this time, but instead of wrestling with trying to get the hardware sorted (it was a dedicated server) we decided that this was a good opportunity to make a server move we've been planning for a long time over to Digital Ocean.

Clearly this is not an ideal situation. Moving servers requires a *lot* of configuration changes, especially when moving from a dedicated server setup to a more clustered VPS approach and ideally we would have had time to test it while the existing site was still live. We've done our best to check everything is working but unfortunately it's obviously been a bit of a rush job to try and get the site working again and move on from there. Other than potential code issues, part of the challenge here is finding an appropriate level of resources for the site to run on which we have deliberated on extensively but will remain theory-crafting until we see true load.

Hopefully there shouldn't be any particularly notable issues on the new setup, but while it's in a stage of infancy it's unlikely there aren't a few issues that haven't cropped up in our testing.

Again, apologies for the downtime and for any ongoing issues.

I'd also like to give a massive shoutout to Xaquseg who has orchestrated the entire work here and has done an amazing job at what is typically a very thankless job. Please send your thanks to Xaq, who deserves any and all credit for this work.

Report knighty · 15,316 views ·
Comments ( 236 )

I survived the Great Fimfiction Crash of 2020.

It's alright, I'm sure many folks blame 2020 in general. Happy to have the site back!

eyyyyy

Thank you! :heart:

Good to be home. I missed you guys.

Good to have Fimfiction.net back :twilightsmile:

Good job getting everything done with no loss, given the circumstances.

We appreciate the hard work.

5283112
This should be a t-shirt

Thank you Knighty and Xaquseg!

We understand

I'm certain you guys worked hard to get everything back up. Without you, fimfiction would not be what it is. So thank you guys for all you do!

Much appreciated, it's good to be back.

Derpy do the job?:derpytongue2:

Knighty having issues in his personal life
Fimfiction

Site goes down for a day
fimfiction

5283112
And all I got was a loudly T-shirt.

It’s great to be back. ^^

All good. At least everything's back to normal.

As a system administrator myself, I know all too well. Great job Xaquseg at getting this back up! Here's to a more stable server future.

It's probably All My Fault. My latest story had been submitted & was just waiting to be uploaded. Clearly, I've been hanging around Estee too long & that caused the server to go down before my story to be posted.

Let us know beforehand

Huzzah! Thank you for your hard work on this!

Comment posted by BradyBunch deleted Jun 13th, 2020

5283125
To be fair I’ve never really seen knighty post about his personal life?

Comment posted by Tiber Septim II deleted Jun 13th, 2020

5283131
I am certain, in the future, they will be sure to give notification before unexpected hardware failures.

IT LIVES!

Thank you for the work.

Thank you for the hard work and swift site recovery anyway Knighty.

Thank you Xaquseg!

Xaq is great, thank you!

Thankya for keeping us folks informed, and I dunno where to thank Xaquseg to give them the required thanking. Still, glad that we were kept in the loop and hope things are pretty stable! :twilightsmile:

I'd also like to give a massive shoutout to Xaquseg who has orchestrated the entire work here and has done an amazing job at what is typically a very thankless job.

THANK YOU XAQUSEG!

5283112
We all did.

Edit: By that I mean I share your relief as I'm sure MANY others do. Sorry.

Thanks for all the hard work guys, and especially Xaq!

5283137
He doesn't, not really (and God bless him for it) but his twitter feed does hint at him having a less then ideal time of it lately

Thanks for the work on getting the site back up.

Glad to see it's back. At last

Right when you're about to buy a new car anyway might be the best time to total the old one. You still don't want to do that... probably... but as times to do it go...

Thank you for the hard work bringing us back.

Thank you for fixing this problem Xaq, you have worked so hard on bringing this place back alive. And for that, I thank you.

Thank you! You guys rock!

Thank you Xaq!

Thanks to all those people that helped get Fimfic back up. Because we like pony stories.

Glad to see everything's back up and running! You guys are awesome with how much work you put into running, and fixing, this site!

We appreciate you guys working hard it’s understandable stuff happens in life for a whole server move that was pretty quick even if there are going to be bugs

Thanks for the update, and for your and Xaquseg ‘s hard work behind the scenes to keep fimfiction alive! :heart:

Thank you Xaquseg, knighty and everyone here who keeps this website running, day after day.

It's ok, good to see this site back. It's like home. :) Also Knighty and Xaquseg, thank you for keeping this site running.

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