Announcement: Site upgrade

The site has been upgraded with some snazzy new features! Please read on to find out some very important information.

We've upgraded to a new system. things are a little different, but it means that we're better equipped to deal with the masses of information we're dealing with here. We'll also gradually be adding some new features over the next few weeks. Huge thanks need to go to our awesome team of beta testers who answered the call a few months ago!

If you don't want to read this whole thing that's cool, but there is one really important thing you need to do and that's re-queue any waiting submissions. They are still saved as drafts but they are not in our queue where we can see that they need to be looked at. Check out the Help page for more about how to use our new queue. Check this page for a problem I guarantee you'll have.

Moved stuff, changed stuff, and new stuff

The following items are now changed.

• The URL for this site is currently http://hawk.kotorfanmedia.com. We will move www. over here soon when we're satisfied that all the content has come over properly.
• Better search. The search engine will take a few days to finish building its tables, but when it's done, you can search by keywords and filter the results by their category. You can also search for users. Sweet!
• ALL URLs to stories and author pages have changed. Please check out 'My account' to find out your new author page URL. Please update your forum signatures and other goodies appropriately.
• The Dashboard is now simply a group of links in the sidebar. Use Create Content to make a new story or art piece. Use My drafts and queue to see your queued items. You'll notice that you can treat art and stories separately now, too. Use My Account to edit your account details.
• Submitting your stuff to the queue is now under a heading called The Queue on the edit post page, and features some different options: draft, ready for publishing, returned, and safe edit. Safe edit is a new status you can use to make an edit on something that's already been published, without having to remove your story from the site.
• Teasers are now part of the content of your story. It will either be the first 600 characters of your post, or you can set your own teaser up by putting the teaser at the top and using the teaser button on the editing toolbar.
• User list - The user list is back, yay! Click a user's name to see their info. The ‘Tracker’ tab on a user’s page shows you all their stuff. All users are listed, even if they’ve never posted a fic or piece of art.
• Viewing category pages - Browsing categories is now kind of like search as well. When viewing a category page for something like ‘Female Revan’ you can click ‘Romances’ there in the sidebar to narrow it down to all the stories about a female Revan, of any alignment, which are romances.
• Comments - You can now give your comments a title. Additionally, you can reply directly to someone's comment, instead of just sticking it at the bottom. New comments are highlighted, and you can see from a glance at the homepage how many new comments have been made.
• Customisable homepage - There are some goodies on the homepage that you can decide to show or hide, such as what's new and who's online now. You can turn these off if you like in your profile!
• Single account - We are about to roll the forums into this new system, which means you no will longer need two separate accounts for the forums and the Dashboard. We anticipate doing this really soon!
• Better handling of edits - You no longer need to remove your item from the site for a revision — people can continue reading the old version of the item while the revised version sits in the queue. The revised version will take over once it’s been approved. Too easy!
• Fancy buttons on the editing gizmo - When you create or edit an item you’ll find that the editor has style buttons and stuff now too. You can also resize the area to see more or less stuff according to your prference. Snazzy! The editor also uses the current page template so you can see exactly how it will appear in context. If you don't like it, you can turn it off in your profile.
• Polls - We can now use polls for voting on stuff. Votes are tallied and revealed to the admins so that we can see who may be responsible for playing silly buggers with the voting. You can also change your vote if you change your mind.

Missing in action (some for now, some for good)

The following features have been removed or significantly altered and will not carry over:

• Old forum posts will soon be gone. The new forums will be on a blank slate at this stage, though the old posts will still be archived and available as a read only form. The JJT games can come back to the regular forums now, too, but only when games are finished.

• Display names - Your login name is your ONLY name for now. If you are really desperate for a name change, please contact us privately and we'll change it. However your name is now permanent, so you can only ask us once.

• Pagination You no longer need to bust out your stories into multiple pages. That doesn't make it OK for you to submit a 25,000 word chapter, though.

• Thumbs up - Thumbs up did not come over. The biggest reason for this is that it’s a grotty hack that was always held together with spit and rubber bands, and does not play well with the importer we used to come into this new system. We can use polls for contest voting now.

• BBCode in postings - BBCode is no longer required for posting stories (it is still being supported for the forums, and any old content using BBCode will still keep its formatting, but it’s not needed in the future). Please don't use it anymore! Since the buttons are right there and the styling shows you what it looks like immediately, we figure people won’t miss it heaps.

• HTML Importer - Did anyone even use that thing?

• Image hosting - We will not provide hosting for people’s pictures for them. imageshack and other places are free, and are really great. We will keep old pictures so that no one’s posts get stuffed up.

Coming soon

• Expanded categories for stories - You will soon be able to categories your stories with more characters, keywords, and romantic pairings, if applicable.
• Thumbs up replacement - Although the old thumbs couldn't come along for the ride, a replacement is on the go.
• Sweet new design courtesy of the lovely and taltented rimwalker! It's so freakin good that it's taking me ages to work out how to get it into the new system.

If you have any questions please feel free to post them here and I'll endeavour to answer them!