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 · 4,898 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
  • 302 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 · 6,807 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 · 5,302 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 · 7,403 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 · 6,395 views
Jun
25th
2015

Site Update » New Server · 5:14pm Jun 25th, 2015

KNIGHTY WHERE ARE THE UPDATES. I DON'T SEE ANY UPDATES.

That's because there hasn't been any. We just spent the last 3 hours moving to a brand new cluster setup for the site, rather than sitting on 1 box like we have been for 4 years. It's almost like we're a real website now. We've been at the absolute peak of our old server for a long time now and this new setup takes our usage down to next to nothing and gives us TONS of room to expand, and makes it incredibly easy to support easily 20x the amount of traffic down the line with minimal effort on our part. You should see even faster page loads (though they were already pretty darn fast) from now on.

Report knighty · 4,929 views · #new server
Comments ( 278 )

And people will still bitch.

~Skeeter The Lurker

Damn, this is faster. :derpyderp1: :derpyderp2:

It's almost like we're a real website now.

*Ahem* What do you mean by a real website? We're not one?

I salute you, Captain. We, the unwashed masses, appreciate your efforts so we can enjoy horse words!

inb4 "BRING BACK ROLEPLAYING!"

Good news to hear all the same.

Maxing out the servers? That would explain some of the issues in the past.

Based knighty

Holy crap this is a really fast server. Thank you Knighty!

Always knew that Scootaloo and Fluttershy were secretly related.

Very nice. I love how much effort you're putting into this site. :heart:

3180697 You could wait, like, five minutes to bring the negativity. I was just gonna say this:

Kickass, knighty. :moustache:

Any chance of no PM limit then?

3180726
Wait, there was a PM limit?

Now to the general fictions, please

So.... We can RP again?

Fantastic work, Knighty, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best, I give this 1000!

3180730 yes there was/is I hit It quite a few times

Thank god for the new server. Site's never been particularly quick for me (Australian internet huehuehue), but damn it's quick now. I'm finally feeling like my internet isn't that of a third world country! :fluttercry:

3180739
Well? What exactly was the limit?

3180730
Most people never reach it

3180744 I'm not sure exactly but you have to send a lot of PMs

Does this mean the end of the 404? :pinkiegasp:

3180752
Oh, it's not related to the length of a single message? 'Cause I sent a couple monsters to someone I was proofreading for.

3180755 no it's not it's the amount you send not the length of one

3180720 Brown noser. :trixieshiftright:

Lol. Jk. This actually is stupid fast. If we could just get the mobile site fixed so the side bar doesn't block stuff, life would be complete. :twilightsmile:

Also, does this mean we get notifications back?

You should see even faster page loads (though they were already pretty darn fast) from now on.

Wanna test this on this thread?

3180746 In two years, I still haven't reached it. I guess I never will now. Lol.

3180744 I think I actually hit it.

3180771
It's a daily limit, I'm pretty sure.

Page generated in 0.078 seconds

Nice. Performance is a great feature all its own.

3180774
Pray tell, when and how?

3180761 Man, fuck off with that bullshit.

3180753 The end of the 500.

So this site is hosted on Linux servers, right?

Server stuff! I love server stuff! So you guys actually maintain the servers yourselves? For some reason I was under the impression that you paid a hosting company to do it.
3180782 Pinkie may or may not have spilled some frosting based glue on the bridge.:pinkiehappy:

Genfiction is that much closer to readiness.

I can really feel that it's a lot faster than before!
Great job, guys! :twilightsmile:

D-does this mean no more 502fiction? God damn knighty, I hate you, ruined the site forever.

3180786 Bro, I said I was kidding. :fluttercry:

Commencing spam post in 3. . .
2. . .
1. . .

3180783 I think, but I am not sure that this is it. Whenever I open the P.M. box on any page I have a few missing from the list, but I think you all are talking about the P.M. when you click on the icon.

Login or register to comment