Site Update » Library Update - FAQ · 12:33am Oct 9th, 2014
Hi guys. These are certainly interesting times we're living in, what with the onset of Bookshelves (as prophesied by our forefathers) and the return of notifications for posting Group Threads to our feeds. It's been noted that there are a few common questions people seem to be asking about how to navigate this brave new world the update's brought us, so we're going to try to address those in a space where everyone can see it.
It will be a dangerous road, and undoubtedly there'll be many questions that aren't fully covered here, but I believe we can do it! Together we are stronger than we ever were separately, and we shall surely brave this beautiful storm.
Moreover, if you have questions that aren't covered, feel free to just ask. Remember also that the update has been continuously refined since it went live last night, so any missing functionality/problems you've noted since the update occurred aren't necessarily the permanent state of affairs. Things'll only continue to get cooler.
Ask Categories (just control+F to these if you're looking for anything in particular):
1. Bookshelves
2. User Interface
3. Other
Let's go!
1. Bookshelves
There're undoubtedly going to be a lot of questions about these, so let me try to tackle as many of them as I can.
What do I do if I just want to see the stories in my bookshelf that have just updated? I don't want to have to dig through my bookshelf to find which stories have unread chapters...
This one's a pretty easy fix. All you have to do is click the red "X Unread Chapters" link next to your Bookshelf of choice in the library dropdown, as pictured:
This'll take you to a page that'll show only stories in that bookshelf with unread chapters.
I have a bookshelf with unread chapters in it, but it isn't displaying them. Why?
Part of this issue, originally, was a bug, which has hopefully been fixed now. If you're still encountering this issue, make sure your bookshelf of choice has the "Track Unread" function turned on, else your bookshelf won't try to keep track of unread chapters.
Make sure that thing is green.
What does Quick-Add do?
Quick-Add basically just makes it so that you'll see a button for the bookshelf at the top-left of any story you look at. It's just a neat little feature for making it super easy to add/remove stories to/from a given bookshelf.
The bookshelf buttons you see there are all for bookshelves with Quick-Add turned on.
I think I know what the Favorites and Read-It-Later bookshelves are supposed to do, but what function does the Tracking bookshelf serve?
Trick question, actually. None of the default bookshelves do anything special. They're just defaults everyone starts off with, for the sake of bringing over your old Favorited and Read-Later'd stories. You can delete them all and start from scratch, if you want. Tracking is just another default to start you off with, for people who like to watch out for updates on a story, but don't want to call the story a "Favorite."
So, basically, there's nothing special about any of the three bookshelves you start off with, and nothing unique'll happen if a story's in one as compared to the other. They're just your starter-kit.
I have a bookshelf that I keep stories in, but I don't want the author to know I've added their story to it...
This can be resolved pretty easily. Just set your bookshelf to "Private", which'll prevent people other than you from seeing it, and authors from getting notified if their story is added to it. "Unlisted" will accomplish something similar, if you so desire it. The main difference on that end is that Private bookshelves are only accessible by you, whereas other people can see an Unlisted bookshelf if they specifically have a link for it.
UPDATED QUESTION: How do I see someone's public bookshelves?
You can do so now! Just check the little Menu bar next to a user's name, and click the "Library" tab on it. This'll bring you to a page listing their public bookshelves and such!
I want to see my bookshelves in order of when they updated! How?
Bookshelves currently default to sorting stories by the order in which they were added to the bookshelf. If you want to be able to see them in the order of when they've been updated, you can use the Filter button at the top right to sort them however you want:
As for being able to change the default method for how your bookshelf sorts stories out, that functionality is also in the works, so hold tight and a rainbow will soon appear from the darkness.
New Question: There's something weird with my bookshelf. It says I have X number of stories in it, when there's clearly Y number of stories in it.
This is seemingly due to a bug, which has since been caught. It should be fixed once you add or remove a story from that bookshelf.
New Question: How can I get email notifications for when a story in one of my bookshelves updates?
This is another thing you set when you create/edit your bookshelf. Just go into the Bookshelf's options and make sure the "Email Updates" button is turned on, like so:
and Fimfiction will email you to inform you when stories in that bookshelf get updates.
2. User Interface
UPDATED QUESTION: How do I see if a story is Complete, Incomplete, etc.?
It hasn't been removed, but it has been changed slightly and moved a bit. If you want to see if a story's complete, incomplete, etc. look for the colorful icon at the bottom-left of its page:
knighty edit: This has been moved back down below chapters now
How do I see when someone was last online? That seems to have been removed too!
Again, it's still there, but it's been shifted around a little bit. "Is X user online?" has been moved to a little symbol beside's the person's name on their page:
If the symbol is green, this means the user is currently online. If the symbol is gray, that means they're offline. If you hover over an Offline symbol with your mouse, you'll also be told how long it's been since that user was last online.
UPDATE: Why am I no longer getting story updates in my feed?
You should be getting them now. knighty brought them back. Hooray!
Getting feed updates for Group Threads is nice and all, but I don't like the threads from one of these groups I'm in, and I'd like to turn them off. How can I do so?
All you have to do to stop getting Thread updates from a given group is go to that group's page and uncheck the "Notify Me When Thread is Added" box in the settings:
Once you do that, you should stop getting thread updates from that group.
3. Other
Did this new update bring a whole bunch of 502 errors? I'm not sure I'm willing to trade the cool new features for a less stable site...
Worry not. The 502s are a temporary thing, mostly caused by the transitioning of all the new systems. They're already less frequent than they were when the update went live, and will continue to decrease in frequency as the tiny demons that live in the servers start getting used to things.
There appears to be X horrible bug with how the site keeps track of certain numbers...
The update's been getting refined since it was launched, so bugs like these are being fixed as knighty/Xaquseg can get to them. Feel free to let us know about any bugs you've caught (screenshots explaining the issue, if you can get them, would help a whole lot), and we'll do our best to obliterate them.
I really hate X thing/miss X feature that got lost in the update. Is it possible to see that changed/get the feature back?
Again, the update's been undergoing refinement, and not everything that you see at current is representative of the final state of things. If you miss something that got cut or loathe the new look of something, do be sure to let us know, and we'll take that into consideration as events continue to unfold. No guarantees that everything people would like to ask for can be fulfilled, but we'll try to keep an eye out for wishes we can grant.
That's about all I could think to catch for now. Will keep this updated as more common questions make themselves apparent. Again, if there's anything you're wondering about that isn't covered by the FAQ, feel free to ask down below.
Have a nice day.
If you still have further questions, leave a comment!
Well, that answers a lot of things.
Still, though. Knighty kind of overreacted.
I've found some of the new features, just like some of the old features (link making, for example), don't scale very well to my phone. But over all, very cool expansion. I also like how slick everything looks now.
Also, where can one find an author's total story views now?
May you live in interesting times.
-- ancient Chinese curse
it's taking some time to get used to, but it does help on a few things.
I find myself in the pleasant position of liking everything I'm seeing with this update. Thank you, admins, mods, and server-demons!
What about unlisted bookshelves? Do authors get notifications for those? Do they appear in the sidebar list when someone already has a link to one of your bookshelves?
The live reader count is pretty neat, it should be pretty interesting to see how many people are reading a new chapter of a story with a large fanbase. I just have one question, are there anymore unannounced features that we should be looking for?
Is it possible to disable the notifications about your story getting added to a library? I really don't care and I just woke up to twenty notifications about it. Seems hellishly spammy.
Pretty simple to get used to.
Now to figure out a quick way to add a fuck ton of stories to one shelf at once.
Without fucking up the site, of course.
~Skeeter The Lurker
What's the secret hidden testing update thing?
2519192
I second that.
The interface is a bit of a pig's breakfast on mobile...
Regular site is excellent though, thank you for all the hard work!
I did notice something wonky with the bookshelf counts. I managed to loose ~10 stories from my default "Favourites" library after adding stories to additional libraries...
2519212
Authors do not get notifications for unlisted bookshelves, nor do unlisted bookshelves appear in the sidebar if you're looking at someone's public bookshelves. Unlisted bookshelves are essentially private bookshelves, with the main difference being that they can be accessed if someone has a link to the unlisted bookshelf.
The biggest loss I've noticed so far is the "This is a sequel to [STORY LINK]" and the Sequels bar. Hope those come back soon!
I'm not sure if I like the new system with avatars and border colors. Considering how the options for mine are default black, grey, another grey, and a lighter shade of grey, I kinda was hoping that it was a color selection process.
But for everyone else, I'm sure it's super cool.
2519200 Except that you, and the other two site bloggers, lack any kind of symbol next to your name. You are the unspoken elite who can lurk completely anonymously, for no one knows if you exist at that moment or not. 'Tis a tiny thing, but one that strikes fear in my heart as I wait for the mighty RBDash47 to attack from the shadows and post a scathing blog ruining the names of all good and true authors with not a hint of warning.
Obselescence i am still having the problem with the Unread chapters can you help me fix ti
I really like the new features, and I'm already making use of them. Bravo for giving us this power.
I am already going mad with it. MAD I SAY.
2519222
I don't think there's an option to disable those notifications, per se, but it should hopefully be pretty easy to clear them just by checking the notifications page, or using the "Mark All Read" function.
2519232
Hm? Those seem to still be present:
i.gyazo.com/6a59078ed5d553f5e4f4e8eae34ae2ea.png
I dearly miss the ability to see who (and how many) have favorited my stories. This used to be part of the story stats, but seems to be gone now.
Could we have some way to get a list of all the (public) bookshelves a story is in? Pretty please?
2519248
Question, odds of that getting changed back?
Removing a tooltip and replacing it with a blank icon seems very much like a downgrade. All the confuse towards this change owes to that.
For authors who use the story-tagged blog function, do we automatically get those updates for all bookshelves? Or perhaps only ones that track updates? Or some other variable?
My question is can I make sweet love to this website? Or this journal? I can't tell which is sexier but these updates are giving me the vapors.
This is a small thing, but I would like to be able to see people's registration dates again, so I know whether a new story is resounding with new users or old ones.
Thanks in advance!
2519241
>MFW I see you're right
33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyyh5s73JG1rn95k2o1_400.gif
How do I stop getting site updates?
So a story I wrote had a blank amount of favorites. After the update the amount of bookshelves is almost double the amount of favs. Is that the people watching it or putting it on read later?
2519248
Xe's talking about the sidebar ones. Those were pretty handy, but I'm not sure if they were used very much.
(I had every intention of using them... if I ever came up with something that warranted them.)
Site blows on mobile, can't see user stats, completion other than guessing etc
2519248 Huh, I checked earlier today and didn't see them. Apologies.
2519269
I think exact registration dates are missing at current, but the "Member for X time" information is still present on the card that pops up if you mouseover someone's name, so that's hopefully an acceptable substitute, pending the possibility of Registration Date's return.
2519250
I think knighty's discussed the possibility of this feature, but don't know its current status. It may be in the cards, is all I can say for now, I guess.
2519257
Dunno those odds. The aesthetic details of how the site presents information is pretty much knighty's call, so it's up to whatever he decides on that end.
I've noticed that the icon (grey or green) isn't always next to user names, but right now the internet on my end's kind of wonky, so that might be my problem and not a sitewide issue.
How does the site handle new stories by authors we're following? Will they show up in the feed as they always have, or do we have to go hunting for them?
Is there a way to see how many people/which people have favorited a story of mine? That used to be in the stats; now it isn't.
Speaking of stats, I miss the unique view count in the author's box. It gave me something to aspire to. While I can see reasons why it might be beneficial to leave it out (like newer authors being ignored because of the low number), is there/will there be some way to find it for the curious? I'd been planning something special for my readers when I hit a certain viewcount, but I'm not going to add up views on all my stories by hand, thank you very much. I'm no programmer, but it worked before . . . it can't be that hard to make it work again, right?
And what about bringing back the words read stat? I wasn't around back in those glorious days, but I've heard many a user pining for that stat.
Other than those minor quibbles, it's looking nice and shiny. Once the 502 demons have settled down, it looks like we've got us a real pretty site. Anyone who says otherwise can go back to fanfiction.net and enjoy their friendly interface.
Will we be able to search/filter for stories in our entire library (instead of going through each bookshelf one at a time)?
This doesn't have to do with the update, but my laptop won't log in. The username and password are both correct. Anyone know how to help?
It would have been nice to be told these things BEFORE the update went out. Would have saved a lot of effort.
I have one unread story in my regular default favourites on the bookshelf, but when I go to check, nothing is there, its just invisible. That is sort of annoying to me, whats that problem?
I love this update in general, but i wish there was an option on each bookshelf cor updates to go to your feed, it feels an lot simpler that way in my opinion
Again, great update, hopefully this option could be implemented, but eh, i'll live
2519279
The counter for bookshelves the story's in does include things like Read-Later, yeah. So it'll generally be higher than the absolute favorite count a story had pre-update.
2519259
I think tagged blogs are currently inoperative, actually, but knighty mentioned it should be easy to adjust them to work with the new bookshelf system, so that's probably another thing that'll be fixed up soon.
2519301
New stories by authors you're following will show up in the feed, as they always have. The number of favorites on a story isn't very applicable anymore (since "Favorites" is no longer a mandatory feature for people), but you can check the story stats to see how many bookshelves your story is in/the number of people tracking it, which is functionally very similar.
Words Read isn't coming back, I don't think. I believe it has to do with the burden it puts on the server (essentially it has to dig up every chapter you've ever marked 'read' and amalgamate the word counts from them to produce a 'Words Read' count), which is a bit more than can be justified for something as small as "Words Read."
2519259 I would also like to know this.
I'm sure you've commented on this somewhere, but I can't find it here. Are updates to stories still causing emails, is there something that I need to enable to cause this, or was it removed?
24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7woe31NIf1qzrlhgo1_500.gif
Me and the cat want to know just one thing, Obselescence-sama.
Where do you get that kickass green name thingy?
EDIT: Never mind, I also asked someone else about this issue and they told me it was a font-set error. A little creative googling managed to find a solution after that.
I'm not sure who to ask about this, but since you're a mod, perhaps you would know if there's a fix for it.
I think it's some kind of conflict between Java and Firefox but I'm not sure. What I do know is that a while back a bunch of my buttons stopped displaying properly so that I have to mouse over them to figure out what they are. For example, looking at the buttons above the comment box right now the first button is
F0
32
The second is
F0
33
and the third
F0
CD
They still work when I click on them, but it's quite annoying. Besides having to mouse over everything to find any button I'm looking for, some of the things on the screen (like the bar at the top) seem to be sized and/or spaced improperly, leading to lots of little appearance glitches and making finding things even more difficult.
2519315
Hm. Bringing it up with knighty. According to the database, the unread chapter count should actually be at four. Are you still getting the issue/is the Unread Chapter count still stuck at 1?
2519279
Where do you find this number? I've been looking high and low for it.
Edit: Ah, now I see it. The number is in the small print in the "General Stats" box above the now-only-one-month-at-a-time graph.
I've been looking forward to this update basically since Tracking got merged with Favorites. As far as I'm concerned, it's a glorious new day.
2519326
Okay, cool.
Blog posts too?Scratch that, I saw some blog posts today.Okay, now I see it. It's kind of sneaky. I need to read whole lines, not just the first three words and give up if there isn't a plot.
Ah well. How about unique views for an author (please say it's coming back
)? That little thing that used to be in the author's box on his or her user page?
Not working, clicking Library still crashes my browser. it was fine before the update, now I can't read anything.
Yeah to be perfectly frank I'm over the moon with 99% of the updates. Big thanks to Knighty/Xaqseg/ the others for rolling this out, and you mod-folks for translating all of them.
The prospects of what I can do with Bookshelves have been making me giddy all day and may well finally get me to... well, actually read more things on this site. 'Cause yeah that's all I need
The only thing I say I miss is having stories I'm following showing new chapter updates in the feed. If there's any consideration in bringing that back, I'd appreciate it. I never paid attention to when my Favorites list did a general "update" notification/color change, but you'd be surprised how effective clonking me in the head with a metaphorical mallet directly in my feed is!
Finally, since it appears you're one of the liaisons to the big cheeses, I may as well go and ask here: will a message Preview button for PMs ever be in the cards?
Not related to the bookshelf stuff, but related to the update overall. Are there plans to bring back the new group listing? How are new groups going to advertise other than going around saying "Join my group."? May want to look into that.
2519333
You can set a Bookshelf to send you Emails for updates. I don't know the full details of how it works, but having just tested it with an unpublished test story/bookshelf, the functionality should be there in some capacity.