News Archive

  • 200 weeks
    Downtime & Server Move

    Hi all. Firstly, apologies for the extended period of unexpected downtime. Obviously any kind of downtime is non ideal, but unexpected is more annoying all around.

    On Friday morning (GMT) we experienced a hardware failure on our database server. To our knowledge there is no data loss of any kind. We have fairly regular backups hosted off-site, regardless. The exact cause isn't entirely clear at this time, but instead of wrestling with trying to get the hardware sorted (it was a dedicated server) we decided that this was a good opportunity to make a server move we've been planning for a long time over to Digital Ocean.

    Read More

    236 comments · 15,370 views
  • 277 weeks
    BBCode updates

    Performance improvements

    Over the last few days I've been working on improving the performance of the BBCode parser. I've managed to implement a few major optimizations, reducing the run time in common cases to around 1/4th to 1/20th compared to the older version. This has reduced total server-side render times on some of the more complicated test pages I've been using to around 50ms–70ms, which should be a noticeable improvement.

    New features

    Opacity

    Read More

    49 comments · 4,892 views
  • 300 weeks
    Recent Changelog

    We've done various unannounced changes of the past few weeks so I thought I'd group up the things we've done so you guys know what's changed.

    • Added account linking page for Patreon / Twitter
    • Added ability to cross post stories, blogs and bookshelf additions to Twitter
    • Added twitter userpage module
    • Added account deletion page
    • Reorganised user toolbar dropdown to better fit more items
    • Added session management page to see logins and active sessions on your account
    • Added new articles system and moved some existing ones into it
    • Redesigned PM page a bit to be cleaner
    • Increased font size in major places across the site to improve readability
    • New cookie consent controls for EU users and updated privacy policy
    • Recommended groups list on groups page - WIP
    • Tooltips in many locations around the site with helpful tips

    Read More

    114 comments · 6,019 views
  • 301 weeks
    Help Articles

    Something I've worked on the last couple of days is adding the ability for us to add arbitrary "articles" to the site which we can use for various things. Sort of an extension on the manual articles we've added in the past like the bbcode page, writing guide, etc.

    So far I've added 3 guides:

    I'd love to know if you guys have any idea for articles that would have helped you out when starting out or anything else that comes to mind.

    65 comments · 5,179 views
  • 328 weeks
    Night Mode

    I've been working on it for ages but only really got the impetus to finish all of it off over the last few days. In the "settings" dropdown at the top on desktop, or the bottom of the slide out bar on mobile you'll find a toggle for night mode. Enjoy!

    Oh, and although I've tried to cover everything there is a 100% chance I've missed styling some things so apologies in advance for any funky pages.

    246 comments · 6,794 views
  • 329 weeks
    Additional Search Update

    Hey folks,

    Over the last few days I've added a few things to the new search system. A lot of people were unhappy with not being able to filter various things as quickly as they used to be able to. To that end, I've added a little filter dropdown to the right of the search box which effectively contains everything the old sidebar used to. It even has some niceties like quick word count filters and a highly rated filter.

    Read More

    132 comments · 5,298 views
  • 330 weeks
    December 2017 Update

    Hey guys, got a whole bunch of updates for you today.

    Tags

    This is a small but important step on our way to the tagging system I envision. The existing way we handled things like characters and genres has all been merged into a single tagging system. That won't result in much difference for you viewing and using the site but it makes it a lot easier to add new tags especially.

    We now have a couple of new tag types: series and warnings.

    The series tag is for identifying what series (franchise) your fanfiction contains. I've added a whole ton of various TV shows, movies, comics, books and games but clearly we will have to add a ton more in the coming future. Stories must also contain one of the four MLP tags which are FIM, EqG, Movie and Comic, as this is a pony fanfic site after all. Feel free to bug me on Discord if you have a requirement for a series to be added.

    Read More

    630 comments · 13,770 views
  • 330 weeks
    Math BBCode tag

    I've added [math] and [mathblock] BBCode tags, which can be used to display formatted math. We've had a few requests for this, particularly for group forum threads and blog posts. Most math-related TeX syntax is supported. (We are currently using MathJax to handle the layout.)

    The documentation from the BBCode guide is repeated below for your convenience.

    Read More

    84 comments · 4,408 views
  • 353 weeks
    Fimfiction API

    If you're not a developer you can probably ignore this post.

    It's been like 6 years, but hey, things take time. The API is currently very WIP still but it's ready for people to get working on in our development chat room.

    API documentation can be found at https://www.fimfiction.net/developers/api/v2/docs and you should join the Discord Chat and PM me to add you to the private API channel and I can help you get started. The functionality is very limited right now but I'm dedicating all my time to it at the moment and would love to have people add their input to the process.

    60 comments · 7,397 views
  • 358 weeks
    New BBCode Tags

    Hey guys,

    One of the features in this new update was reader-side paragraph formatting. This helps improve consistency for readers across the site, especially for those of us who can’t stand reading indented text on a computer screen.

    However, one thing that wasn’t accounted for was the legitimate need for specific indenting of passages and for certain blocks of text to have no paragraph formatting. Some examples would be lyrics and poetry.

    Taking this into account, we have come up with a couple of new tags that remedy this situation which are documented below (copied directly from the bbcode guide)


    [indent] Indent

    The indent tag can be used to, unsurprisingly, indent portions of your text.

    [indent]The indent tag can be used to, unsurprisingly, indent portions of your text.[/indent]

    It also support levels of indenting

    Read More

    168 comments · 6,392 views
Dec
16th
2014

Site Update » Tagged Blog Posts · 3:57am Dec 16th, 2014

Since the bookshelves update happened, the tagged blog post system for the feed has been working off the old favourites data. Some people probably noticed that, and it's something I forgot to fix ages ago. Anyway, it's fixed now and there's some changes.

First of all, tagged blog posts are bookshelf dependant. Each bookshelf now has an option for whether to show tagged blog posts in your feed or not.

Additionally, those blog posts in your feed now clearly say what story they have tagged.

By default all bookshelves have tagged blog posts on.

Report knighty · 3,247 views ·
Comments ( 82 )

Awesome!
Plus, first comment! :yay:

Cool stuff! Thanks for adding that in!

Be sure to tag your blog appropriately if you're going to Peachland and can't work on Twilight Sparkle eats Peaches.

Some people probably noticed that,

Wait, so it wasn't just me?

Why am I seeing this twice in my feed...?

Did you double post or something?

~Skeeter The Lurker

Well, regardless, thanks a bunch al-knighty! :twilightsmile:

Oh whoa. That's weird...

It's showing up as both a site and a normal with the same exact comments on it...

~Skeeter The Lurker

Nice. :pinkiehappy: Also, that explains why I got a tagged blog from a story in my read it later shelf earlier today, despite not following the author.

knighty
Site Owner

2656590
2656599
It's the same blog, I just forgot to make the feed only show non site posts for user follows.

2656606

Ahhh, alrighty.

~Skeeter The Lurker

2656604
That makes sense to me too! The same thing happened to me!

Comment posted by KaBar42 deleted Dec 16th, 2014

Just keeps getting better and better. :twilightsmile: Thank you for the extra options!

2656606

I'm not sure how important this is, knighty, but I think you might have added a little bit of extra unintended code or it's Twitter fucking up for me.:twilightblush:
i1382.photobucket.com/albums/ah262/KaBar42/Mobile%20Uploads/28FF4027-E8DE-471D-B60F-37758768FA67_zpsl11yakjy.png?1418702890410&1418702893213

Hmm... not bad. I haven't noticed it yet, but if I get a tagged blog in my feed, I'll notice it. Pretty impressive in my opinion.

2656585 Are you sure about that? :trollestia:

The bookshelf feature continues to show its use and versatility! And the addition of the specific story tagged to the feed notice is an unanticipated but welcome addition as well!

Hmm. On the one hand, now I can fine-tune my blog updates and start getting posts I wasn't aware I was missing. On the other, I just now had to go through fully 19 shelves and set them as desired!

I HATE YOU KNIGHTY, YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD!
Just kidding, this is actually pretty nice on the whole. Keep it up!

2656588
I've moved on to tacos.

. . . . mostly.

Was slightly confused by the information in this post, but the people commenting (and the subsequent replies) sorted it all out for me.

I should stop trying to comprehend things whilst drunk

2656661
Tomorrow is Tuesday...

Comment posted by Agri_Yob deleted Dec 16th, 2014

I was wondering why my feed was so much more populated. Thanks for the heads up!

Additionally, those blog posts in your feed now clearly say what story they have tagged.

<3

On a different note, I came in here ready to rant, because my feed was getting spammed up by posts for stories on my read later list, and apparently I managed to notice this in the window between that feature going live and the per-bookshelf options going live. Thanks for the options.

What is a bookshelf
is dis new

hell yeah jaydex got featured :^)

When I read the title, I thought we would be able to put a tag in our blogs or something, like 'safe' or 'mature', whatever... Silly me.

2656644
But still. What if... :\
mmph. You're right....

2656606 Cool thanks for the info, Knightly.
So far my favorite feature is the estimated reading time because it makes for a fun game for me.
I love your little Easter egg by the way. That was a very nice touch.

Great! I managed to come across this feature before there was an option to select which bookshelves it would apply to, so I was more than a little baffled. But now everything's perfect again! Tack så mycket, knighty!

This is awesome!

Does anybody know if this change is retroactive? i.e. I made a post a couple nights ago, will it be sent retroactively to people with my story on one of there bookshelves?

It'd be really cool if we could search in our bookshelves again.

So, no more getting blog updates from your Read Later list? Sounds good.

Oooh! So that's why I kept getting blogs from authors I don't follow! I honestly thought it was a site glitch or something; or something I did :rainbowhuh:

Thanks for the update news, now I can clean my feed up a bit :twilightsmile:

Thanks, Knighty.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

I like all of this.

Just saying, mobile phones' version of fimfiction.net no longer gives access to stories browsing's options or filters.

2656756

It was a hidden feature since the beginning of the internet.

Finally! It keept for ages everyday to check out my marked stories tosee if any of them got an update of not. Well it wasn't that mutch bad since I can open my favourite sories in the timlene which was the last updated one. Afther all it was a nasty surprise to see I haven't got any more updates afther the shelf update and I resigned some of my favourite stories to followed.

What's a tagged blog post?

2657853 What are marked stories?

2658509

When you're writing a blog post, you can mark it as relating to one of your stories. Then people who subscribe to updates on the story will also see that blog post in their feed.

This update allows people to turn that off if they really want only the chapters.

I... have no idea what any of that means. :applejackconfused:

GAH! So this is why my feed is clogged with junk! I'm getting flooded by the 1k+ read later crap! Glad I managed to see this one amongst the deluge, now I can fix it.

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