As you might have seen in some of my previous blogs, we've been hard at work converting the old website to the new and shiny one.
In this iteration I am tackling the hardest and most critical aspect of the website. The story and critting process itself. *gulp*
To give you guys a little taste here are some of the highlights of the new changes
Submit story page
- Rich WYSIWYG text editor, no more fiddling around with tags. Just copy&paste from your editor and you're good to go
- Include images in your submission (premium)
- Story is saved automatically as draft so you can finish and submit it later
- Free pass has been discontinued, you now pay number of credits proportional to the number of slots you are bumping.
Crit page
- Crit is saved in your browser's local state as well as on the server and therefore you should never lose any work even if you lose all internet connectivity. The crit will simply be uploaded automatically when you connect.
- Same rich text editor as in the submit story wizard, colors, hundreds of emojies, upload images and all that nice stuff
View story & crit pages
- More formatting options
- Better mobile support
- Better printer support (just select print directly, no special 'printer friendly' page)
- Mark crit as 'done'
- Report crit
- Revise crit after it has been submitted (premium gold)
- Revise story now allows you to revise using the rich text editor just as when you are submitting the story, no more fiddling around with 'edit paragraphs' and 'freeze inline crits' and all that nonsense (same premium restrictions apply)
View all crits page
- More intuitive layout
- Easy select&deselect crits
- Nice printer friendly view
Grades
- Grade questions have been deprecated. Now just give 1-5 stars
- Thank you note and grades have been split up, you don't need to grade to send note and vice versa
- You can change your given grades. If you make a mistake in grading or simply change your mind just reset the grade and have another go.
Novels
- Novels have been simplified greatly
- Revisions and 'chapter containers' have been deprecated. Now just pick a chapter number when you submit a story.
- Easier to rearrange chapters and include/exclude submissions, no more need to 'disconnect' to keep your novel tidy.
- There is a little less functionality in the novel system as a consequence of these changes but the decreased complexity is more important.
- Outlines have been removed and 'glossary' added instead which is more useful in my opinion.
- All in all, the novel system is much more natural to work with and easier all around in this new iteration and requires no training. When premium members submit chapters there's now no reason not to use this.
There are more changes to come which I am excited to share with you in the near future. Many thanks to Lmdewit for testing and providing feedback.
Now I need more volunteers to test this for me and try to break it in new and interesting ways. Let me know in the comments below if you want to help.