Some improvements

[Paolo]

Yeah, Google hates us.
Bastards they are.

[Cainanite]

You see, I didn't know it was Google that was powering that search. Shows how much I know. (Hint: Almost nothing.)

In my fantasy world, there is a web building tool that allows you to search for terms, within the website you are building. I didn't realize it was Google's search that was being used.

My fantasy world is a rich place, populated by impossible ideas. Of course the simple answer was Google. So simple, I never thought of that.

Next you'll tell me, that the Spell Checking Fairy that lives on my computer isn't real. Can't you leave me with my illusions?

Well, I'm off to write my letter to Santa Claus. Maybe he'll bring me a better brain for Christmas.

Santa Claus is still real, right?

[kristoff]

Yeah, Google hates us.
Bastards they are.

Yeah, Bing doesn't like us either. We've tried communicating with both, to no avail. Last time I checked, Yahoo still was OK with us

[humanbean]

how does another sub-index sound? we can call this one DEVICES. stories with objects of at least moderate complexity(eg. axes, hammers, garden shears, scalpels, steel-toe boots, etc... are to simple to count. but things like gas-powered hedgetrimmers, weedwackers, penis guillotines[must. not. fap.], etc... fit this category to a T), and are used to do evil shit to male and/or female genitalia, would be featured in this index

[Nickolai]

Dear Sirs:

I don't mean to sound like a crank here, constantly bitching about things, but, although I am grateful to see a hit counter on the stories, the current version is not cutting it.

As an author I don't care that much about how many people checked out my stories today. What I want to see is a cumulative total.

Is that too much to ask?

Sorry if I inadvertently crossed anyone's boundaries.

Respectfully yours,

Nickolai

[talula]

Naw, you did ok Nickolai.

The hit counter is written in such a way as to try to be fair to both new stories and old. The problem being that as stories are released from the holding pool they might wait for a long time before someone goes to read them. The date on the hit counter is suppose to reflect the date the story was first viewed.

However, it doesn't seem to be working correctly and I don't know why. It is very much like the database is not reading that date correctly and resets it thus the counter gets reset.

It is my intention in the next week or so to write out a script that runs through the database and pushes the submit/release date over and remove the part of code that resets the counter. Actually the resetting of the counter has been re-written today so that just leaves the date.

[gellyfregy]

Oh! Yea, the google search. Google shut us off.

Did they shut us off? It looked to me like they were indexing things right up until the end, at least on the global search. (If I put in the right search, recent stories would show up, cached and all.) I know nothing about the custom search.

Did someone from Google communicate the shutting off, or was it just deduced from some other evidence?

I can imagine they put us in the "adult only" category, but can't see why they'd shut us down completely.

Now with the "nofollow" meta tag and similar, that's US telling THEM not to index us. That makes sense, as long as there's a plan to set up our own search engine.

[Nickolai]

Dear Tallula,

Don't worry about the date. We authors don't need "fairness."

It's not a race or a competition.

We just want to know how many people clicked on our stories.

However, I would favor a "most popular stories" feature, by whatever criteria you want to set it up, because it might direct me to some gems I might have missed.

I've found in my internet forays that it's hard to go wrong when you trust the wisdom of the multitudes.

Sincerely,

Nickolai

[talula]

There is that "top stories" selection which if I recall correctly pulls from stories that have a 4 star rating and has been rated over 10 times. Don't remember the critieria right off the top of my head but it is something like that. Can tighten that up if folks prefer.

tal

[cheetaking243]

I think it's actually only 6 ratings. Because I remember one of my stories showing up there when it got 6 ratings, and they're still on there despite only having 8.

[curious_guy]

A pop-up says that it is four stars with five ratings but it must be six because my story The War had five stars with five ratings for months without showing up in the most popular. When it got six ratings, it showed up.

[talula]

Heheh. Goes to show, never believe pop-ups. They lie.

[axolotl1]

Is there any intention on allowing us to "unfavorite" a story? I'd favorited a couple series for future reading before I realized I couldn't undo it and now I'm stuck with them. ps I'd be glad to help.

[Paolo]

Talula can wipe out your fav's, just let him know.
You'll probably have to make a note of the ones you like and 'fav' them again.

[curious_guy]

How does the most popular work? Is it automatic, or does someone have to go through the stories, find the ones that qualify and put them in the most popular list?