Monthly Archives: February 2012

Figuring things out

Finally getting the hang of one of the elements of the software suite that runs the forum and the website that I haven’t previously delved into.  It’s going to prove extremely useful for the LST3K pages.  What it will allow me to do is to accept uploads of documents even if the person donating a story or auditioning to be a riffer hasn’t signed up for the website.

The former makes a lot more sense than the latter.  Eventually, it will make a lot more sense for riffers to sign up, because I’m going to code utilities that let us work on the riff in concert on the website, rather than sending files back and forth via email.

It’s an important element of making those pages truly useful to me and to users.  Another will be the ability to paste complete stories or riffs into a rich text form as another means of donating/auditioning.

Now that I have the basics of that down, I’m going to work on hooking up the anti-spam database to my various contact forms.  Once I have those working correctly, I’ll be in position to hook up the LST3K pages as well.  Initially, that will just be protecting me from spam, but as I roll out the user interactive features like uRiff, it will be keeping spammers from tossing cans of spam at people reading user submitted riffs as well.

I’m also seriously considering some website exclusive stories ( beyond my unpublished work on “My Work Extras” and the ancient porn stories on “About -> Writing Genesis” if you haven’t noticed there’s stuff not available anywhere else there )

Odds are that these will be interludes — heavy on sex, or stories with no sexual content from Danica’s World.  Likely examples would be:

Telling Geflon’s backstory that fits in with Casting Off Convention, To Catch a Merchant Princess, and the forthcoming Lowborn.

Things like relating how the girls managed to ‘borrow’ Andrea’s toy and learn the command word for it several chapters back in SOTM.  All of that happened off-screen, and only the aftermath is in the published story.

Stories about Andrea before she ended up at Zoraster’s complex.  Because she was a virgin before meeting Danica, it limits the potential for stories I can post on Lit or SOL, but there are plenty of stories I could tell to highlight her life before the story.

I’ve just had a lot of ideas kicking around that aren’t really right for publishing in my traditional venues, but which I believe regular readers of the stories in Danica’s world would very much enjoy.

Feel free to comment here, email, or post on the forum if there’s a story you’d like to see told.  Much of Blackhawk Hall and the whole of Ebon Genesis owes its origin to a reader’s suggestions.  Many times, those are inspirational and really get me moving.  At the same time, that inspiration gets other stories moving as well.

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A little maintenance work

Did a little maintenance work on the website tonight.  I finally went through and added description tags to all the pages.  While they don’t mean much to website ranking nowadays, they should really be there.  So, now they are.

Still need to go back through later and double-check everything with the xhtml validator.  I’m determined to keep my code carefully validated from this point forward so it’s all in compliance.

EDIT: A little later…

Installed a new app for the forum that lets me create custom sidebar content.  Even though the forum isn’t the “go to” location on the website at the moment, I want to have some important information from the front page show up there in case anybody decides to eventually bookmark it.

Rolled out the first one so that the forum now shows the latest story released, and provides a link to the “Latest Releases” page.

More as I decide there’s a need, and I’ll probably look into doing the same sort of thing with the blog sidebar.

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1500 on Sanctuary

Up to 1500 words on Sanctuary.  The old version was over 4k, but it was just moving too slowly.

Odds are that after I release the final draft, I’ll post that original on the Unpublished Work page.

Me and my scene transitions.  That’s what was holding me back.  I’m such a stickler for smooth transitions that I won’t accept good enough. I end up stubbornly fighting until I get it perfect.  That’s exactly where I was stuck on this one for a couple of days.

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Have things moving

I’m still concentrating on Sanctuary, but I also have the next chapter of SOTM moving, and I’m doing some work on Lowborn as well.

Work continues on the LST3K section of the website, and as warmer weather ( and a vacation ) creeps up, I’ll be able to do some of the expansions of the About page as well.

I’ve added a section to the forum to submit stories and audition to be a riffer on LST3Ks.  That’s part of the work on the LST3k section, but can be used right now, if you wish.  It can be used for talking about the series, though you’d be better off going with the main “discussion” forum for now.

All of this is leading toward the “My Worlds” section, which will have the most content that people are interested in for behind the scenes info.

If anybody has a website, twitter, facebook, or anything of that nature, links are much appreciated!  I know that linking to an adult site isn’t something most people would do, but if you’re not bothered by that, it’s a nice draw for new eyes on my stories.  The feedback is what I’m all about.

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Bit of a lull

I’ve been in a bit of a low-motivation run the last few days.  I’m getting the itch back now, but I think I needed some downtime.  As I’ve mentioned before, Sanctuary of the Wood has priority because of my long-standing tradition of always putting out a new story in the series for Earth Day.

Beyond that, I’m also working on adapting the code for the anti-spam measures I’ve implemented on the forum and blog to apply to my contact forms.  This is important because the LST3K section will have a couple of initial user interactive features, and eventually have many more.  I want to be able to check for the spammers there and block them from coughing up spam in these sections as well.

The code to check isn’t that complicated, really.  Neither is the code to automatically update the database, but I’ll probably skip that part and just save a log of any spammers caught in the other areas of the site so I can manually add them.

I’m also throttling back the plugin on the blog, because the standard spam blocking has always worked before to keep the actual posts from showing up.  What the new plugin does is keep the spammers from registering and clogging up my database.  However, it also blocks spam comments completely.

When I give more leeway in the new plugin, it lets more stuff through.  However, the original plugin still catches all this.  It also saves the spammy links when this happens, though.  That allows me to submit “evidence” of the spam as well as the fact that I’ve encountered a known spammer.  Eventually, that will be far more valuable information as the databases expand to start checking for spam and malware links as well as the data they already provide.

Can’t do that on the forum, because right now, the spammer attack is too concentrated there.  If it ever slows down, I may throttle that back as well, for the same reason I’m throttling back on the blog.  I want my website to be a source of protecting other websites from these spammer scumbags by providing every ounce of data about them I can.

Naturally, there’s a lot of story ideas and partial work floating around.  There’s just not enough progress to really deserve a report here.  I just want to keep the blog updated so that nobody thinks I’ve dropped off the face of the earth when I’m in a bit of a lull with forward progress.

As I’ve said before, the forum/shoutbox is another source of information.  Some things get posted there at times when the blog isn’t getting updated.  This may be because they’re just small things that don’t deserve much more than a quick post on the Shoutbox, or because they’re forum specific, or because that’s just where I happened to be when I thought about something *laugh*

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