Last Few Month Improvements, and Upcoming Changes

It’s been ages since I last posted a blog entry.  Not much has changed since last time due to various reasons mainly involving Universty work load, but this is a summary of the changes which have been made in that time:

• The sort options have been tweaked
  The Highest Rated and Lowest Rated option was renamed to Most and Least Popular to reflect that the order was always based on an internal ranking rather then the average rating. Highest Rated and Lowest Rated were added which now order by the average rating.
• muses-success.sorrowfulunfounded.com now silently redirects to the appropriate page at muses-success.info
  Before hand the URL continued to work as before the switch, but all links went to the URL.
• The issue with searching loging a user out upon clicking a result has been fixed.
• We started a new Twitter account that randomly tweets the title, author, and genre of web novels at a rate of 12 per day. @webnovels
• Updated the Links page with new links
• Various other tiny improvements and fixes
• Chapter Count can now be set
• XML Sitemap

Changes to be made next week:

• The default rating of 5 will now show Not Rated instead.
• (Probably) Ordering by Update Schedule

New Features Coming Soon (but when is undecided, September is likely)

• Authors will be able to claim listings that they have written, and they will be displayed in a profile box
• Author Control Panel (currently incomplete)
  Authors will be able to update their chapter count without getting approved each time as well as request a thumbnail reset, and upload an image to be displayed below the tabs. They will also have the option of posting a sample chapter.
• Redone Homepage (complete, but depends on other changes)
• More Statistics per Listing Revealed
• Better URLs
  We inherited the current URL scheme from WordPress. This update for example changes listing URLs from http://muses-success.info/browse/view/listingname to http://muses-success.info/listingname. Existing URLs will continue to work.

I’m also considering developing a specialised content management system for web fiction, and have created a topic on the forums seeking input.

New Listing Design, Bookshelfs, Comments

I’ve just made live a few upgrades to the site.

These include:

- New Listing and Reviews page Design
- Bookshelfs to keep track of what you are reading. (heavily based on the anime/manga lists at myanimelist.net — which I love) You can track each chapter you read, and we have a convenient RSS feed that updates on a per chapter basis. This works great with the WordPress Sidebar RSS widget.
- Listing Comments – you can now comment on each listing to give feedback, but not actually have to write a full review
- Guest Ratings – guests can now rate listings. Of course, they don’t have the power a registered user would to affect the rankings, but they do have some effect.
- Reviews ordered by helpfulness

I think that’s all. If you find any bugs, please report them in the forums.

Purchase Links

We have added a new field to the contribution form. You can now contribute a link to a site where your readers can purchase a copy your book in print.

This is great for those you whom have books listed on say Lulu or Amazon.

The link is displayed at the top of your listings on their detail pages as “Purchase Print Edition”.

For an example, see School for Adventurers.

As always, listing a purchase link is absolutely free!

Please no affiliate links!

New Site Search

We just rolled out new site search code. This new search replaces our previous Google-based offering. It should provide more relevant results and unlike before, you don’t need to leave Muse’s Success to see them.

It currently searches listings and reviews.

New Features: Random Listings and Thumbnails

A few days ago, we silently launched a Random Listing feature that is linked to from the main navigation bar under the title. This link can be bookmarked. The (Random) link in question will take you to a random listing with each click. We hope this feature aids you in finding new things to read.

Today, we also added thumbnails to the “Browse Stories” pages. This feature was originally requested a few months ago by NiSP in our forums. These should hopefully aid in your decisions about what to read and make our listings more attractive. The ability to disable them will eventually be added for people whom prefer no images or those with slow connections.

The Promised Changes to Ratings

I’ve gone ahead and enabled the rating system that I promised back when I originally rolled out the new site software, and it seems to be working fine. It now takes into account both normal ratings, and the ratings given in reviews, as well as some other things that will remain secret.

I will be continually tweaking the ratings to take more things into account and for them to remain “fair”.

Listing Pages Fixed

We’ve just rolled out a few bug fixes to the listing pages. I would like to give thanks to Chris Poirier of WebFictionGuide for going over the code and fixing the issue. He saved me an almost complete rewrite.

The fix basically means that browsing listings limited by letter, and/or genre now works correctly. Previously, limiting by letter was causing several issues that prevented the appropriate listings from being displayed.

If your wondering about the lack of updates, it’s because I have major final assignments due this month. I’ll make up for it in December when you can expect the updated rating system to be released. Yes, the one we promised when the site first went live. I actually have the code already, but I would like to play with it some more, and make sure it does not have any site breaking bugs. Of course, the true test won’t occur until it is live when I can test it with proper data.

You can probably expect a new feature or two in December as well but I’m not making any promises.

Also worth mentioning is that we now have a role-playing section in the forums. If you like role-playing and web fiction, I suggest making the most of it.

~ Chris

Launching the new Code!

We rolled out the new software for Muse’s Success about an hour ago.  Its mostly working although I’m sure there are bugs that we haven’t noticed, and there is nothing like having real users testing the service live. 

The code still needs a lot of work but it is usable and is feature comparable to the old Muse’s Success which is the benchmark I set for release.

We did lose OpenID support but that will return once I work out how to make CodeIgniter act friendly with it. Those with OpenID accounts should feel free to email me at chrisclarke@sorrowfulunfounded.com with a username that they want and I’ll take care of the conversion. Those whom had normal usernames with the WordPress version of the Muses Success should be able to just log in seamlessly.

Forums have returned. I’ve gone with a minimalistic approach to them. So they currently have none of the bloat that comes with traditional forums. Just the forum and nothing more.

You can now update existing listings and reviews. To update a review, just resubmit and upon approval, it will replace your old one.

The rating system is currently an enhanced version of the old one. I will enable the new version once we have more data to work with. 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll work on ironing out any bugs which are discovered. If you find anything major please email me privately. Contribution points to those who submit bugs. If two users report the same bug, I will reward the points to whomever was first.

Once I’m satisfied that we are stable, I will begin adding new features.

I hope everyone likes the new Muse!

~ Chris

Welcome to the Blog!

Hello,

Here at Muse’s Success, we’ve decided to create a blog so that you can keep up to date on the latest developments related to Muse’s Success, and get the scoop on some of the plans we have for the future.

Blogs are an excellent medium for communication and your input is important to us. We appreciate your feedback in all areas but especially related to new features, improvement of existing features, bugs, and the user experience.

That said, here is what’s currently happening:

Darkthorn is currently going about adding new novels to our catalogue by the bucket-full. We aim to be a comprehensive catalogue of online web novels, and she is off to a great start. You can assist by utilising the submission form and submitting your own web novels and those of your favourite authors but remember to browse first, we might already have it. We’ll attempt to handle the submissions within 72 hours but it’s usually much quicker.

Anticipating the limitations of WordPress’s, I’ve began creating new software for the site to use which will bring an improved browsing page, fairer ratings, and an improved view listing page. I’m aiming for completion by the middle of October but it could be later or earlier depending on University course work and assignments. Muse’s Success is important to me but so is my grades, and its not my only non-University project.

That’s all for now, your submissions are appreciated as are reviews.

—
Christopher Clarke <chrisclarke@sorrowfulunfounded.com>
Sole Developer / Co-Founder