News Archive

  • 201 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 · 15,385 views
  • 278 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 · 4,897 views
  • 301 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 · 6,022 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 · 5,183 views
  • 329 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 · 6,804 views
  • 330 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 · 5,300 views
  • 331 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 · 13,773 views
  • 331 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 · 4,410 views
  • 354 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 · 7,400 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 · 6,393 views
May
19th
2015

Site Update » Client Side Image Cropping · 7:07pm May 19th, 2015

Spent the last day working on this. Avatars, group images and banners now support client side cropping when you upload images. You can move the view finder by click and dragging, resize by grabbing the anchors (hold shift to scale in all directions) and double click to fill the maximum area possible.

This will be coming soon for story images but it requires some additional work and wanted to test it in the open for avatars/group images as they're not so important is something does in fact go wrong.

This should mean a lot less OC images where they're only in the bottom right, as well as an easer time for everyone really.

Let me know if there's issues (there might be).

Edit

This is now done for story images too. Story images now have a forced aspect ratio. This makes it a ton easier for me to layout pages and also makes sure you guys get all the pixels you should have been using all this time :V

The aspect ratio is 2:3 and the ideal upload size is 1024 x 1536 as that's the max size we store.

Report knighty · 5,110 views ·
Comments ( 234 )

Thanks for the added flexibility Knighty.

This will be coming soon for story images

Soon clopfic writers will have an even easier time using cropped porn for story covers.

Damn, that is useful. Solid update, Knighty. :heart:

Finally. Thanks Kniggles.

Can you add censor bars too? Would help with all those excessive cleavage problems.

knighty
Site Owner

Be easier to see full screen porn images and where they link from if it's implemented right. Like only seeing full screen cropped if you have MATURE disabled or the full image if you have MATURE enabled.

Very nice update. Thanks, ya big fat spaghettio.

This is (one of the) best things! :rainbowkiss:

T6

Thank you, our most based overlord Knighty!

Can this eventually mean uniform story cover sizes some time in the future? Please? :unsuresweetie:

knighty
Site Owner

3080989 Have a guess what this was partially built for :V

This is a wonderful idea and update! Thank you, O Mighty Admin of ours!

Maybe now I can get my avatar to look just exactly the way that I want it to look!

And that goes for my story cover pictures, too, when I get around to posting the darned things (as well as my story-chapters) here, too!

3080989 Oh, I sure hope so!

3080991 Whoops! Forgot that you said that already, Knighty! My apologies!!!

This should mean a lot less OC images where they're only in the bottom right, as well as an easer time for everyone really.

I don't remember being able to put images in the OC character box

Okay, that's kind of cool. The cropping even works for me from the mobile site. Thanks, knighty! :twilightsmile:

But I like my badly cropped image so much that I've kept it this way since 2011!

3080915
Nice find. forgot about that one.

Looking good.

Are there any hopes of getting gravatar support [1] at any point?

3081006
I believe he's referring to avatars. For all those people who are too lazy to crop it themselves.


[1] Avatars from gravatar can be displayed using a url produced with the hash of a user's email address. Their servers can also resize it as requested, serve different ones based on maturity ratings, and serve a specific default in case of error or the user doesn't have one set.

--Sollace

3081178
Oh.

I wouldn't know since I crop mine on my iPhone

knighty
Site Owner

3080989 Aaaaand done

Many thx Knightly! :pinkiehappy:
Time to consider updating my image...

Dude, you are awesome for doing this. You made my life so much easier, so I thank you for that. :heart:

3081157

YES, WHAM A LIZARD

This is awesome, before I used to have to go into paint.net to crop my avatar, now I can just do it without added software!

3081257
Awesome!

…crud, now I have to figure out a new cover format :derpytongue2::rainbowlaugh:

That's ... fuckin' cool man.

Righteous.

Well, that's the end of having wide cover art for me, if I understand this correctly. I'll just have to either cram pony scenes into a more narrow space and make them tiny with lots of negative space above and below, or start formatting all my covers like movie posters.

Yay?

I'm really torn about this. I like the idea of standardized cover size ratios, in some ways. It makes the site look cleaner. But now everybody has to have the same style of cover art. Obviously, yeah, but seriously, it will all be the same. No more square covers, no more wide covers, only tall covers. No variety beyond what's already been uploaded, and what's already here will negate the clean look of the site unless a lot of covers are updated to fit the new standard. There are a lot of "classic" ponyfics around here that don't have tall covers. Just sayin'.

I dunno. Maybe I'm not understanding this update, though it looks to be this way from the story editing page. I guess I'll just start making poster-style covers. I've thought about it before, anyway.

3081257
So… 16:10 portrait, eh? Having tried my hand at laying out the story cards myself, I get it, but I'm really curious to know what percentage of existing covers are even close to that. I am so glad that's not going to be my problem. :facehoof:

knighty
Site Owner

3081604 A small portion unfortunately... we debated a lot over what to do with current ones. Just gonna have to make do with them being wrong and fix them up on any displays where I want to use portrait. Also I'm probably going to make a last minute change to 2:3. Seems to be pretty common in professional publishing. Ours is ever so slightly different.

Thanks for another update Knighty =D

I might have to get new covers to try out this fancy smancy feature at some point.

I'll ask a stupid question now; what are the rules regarding NSFW images cropped via the site's cropping tool?

knighty
Site Owner

3081760 No different to existing rules. After it's cropped, nothing else remains.

3081791 Just wanted to make sure. Thank you very much.

So it begins. :pinkiehappy:

Huh, didn't know that Berry pic was based off Ode to the Bouncer. Fun.
New connections everyday. Also, woo, visual consistency.

Sad to say I don't believe I'll be able to take advantage of this great new feature, at least for my current lone piece of cover art. It's a wide cover piece, and the bits that would be lost by cropping it are simply too important to cut out. Ah well, too bad. :fluttershysad:

What about wide coverarts, man?

3080991
I was going to say this earlier, but I was cut off by 502s. Not sure I like this move to standardised cover art. I really hope this is not something that's going to e shoved down our throats for the sake of consistent site design.

Some of us like to have different sized cover art, like having them wider than they are tall. In some cases I'd say that actually looks better than tall ones. It seems a little unfair to force everyone into the same 6:10 box.

Edit: After looking at it, it seems to be exactly what I feared. One size for everyone, and no option not to crop it.

0/10 No support.

--Sollace

:rainbowhuh:
Ummm... Can I ask how this is meant to help when anyone with even basic editing skills should be able to crop an image before trying to upload it?

Most of my images are landscape, so is this saying I'm going to have to lose half of my pictures now, or at least be unable to post landscape images in the future?

3082214
Existing one seems to be staying as they are, for now. But you can't upload anything of another size because it will always crop to 2:3.

--Sollace

I personally don't like the forced ratios for cover art. It doesn't seem to give much more benefit than maximum sizes. Although, I've never done this sort of Web design before, so I wouldn't know for sure. But it still is annoying, and it will probably encourage people to just put white space in their cover art now, and make it look worse than before.

knighty
Site Owner

3082199
3082214
Consistent size is more valuable than you think. It was something I regretted very early on with fimfic so if it had never been an option to upload wide pictures you wouldn't miss it. I'm sure you can manage to make portrait art for your stories.

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