New Lit Control Panel Testers - Info, Updates, Reports & More

Been off the Grid

Missed my invite to participate so late to the party. I can see the influence of mobile design techniques at work here and you need to be very wary changing to meet design criteria that are not yet settled. The big font is one of them - it is very irritating, especially to non mobile users, and is very irritating to read. I would stick to 10pt if you can. Maybe you can develop a localised css page we can use on a per device basis.
Beware win10 in desktop mode, a number of web designers assume win 10 is a tablet and format the screen accordingly and it drives me potty.
Overall I like the functionality. My first observation is that my list of favorited stories is missing some of the older, and thus more important entries. I misuse this list to manage series I am reading, and I think from some author comments, I am not alone.
Some authors write related stories that begin 'before reading this you must read that and the other.' Some way of linking stories so that if I have read and enjoyed this or that, I know without wasting time that the other is now here.

The story series linker also needs to be a bit more heuristic, it struggles somewhat if the author misspells a title, adds a space, isn't that adept with the shift key etc. Some times it fails completely to identify two stories in a series for no obvious reason or lists the same 20 stories twice as two series.

I will have a more detailed functionality review later.
 
One major issue as far as I can see is separate login screen for forum and authors panel. Single login would be much better integrating forum and publishing activities.

I suppose this is a major programming challenge that is why it is like that.
 
One major issue as far as I can see is separate login screen for forum and authors panel. Single login would be much better integrating forum and publishing activities.

I suppose this is a major programming challenge that is why it is like that.

Thank you for the comments on this.

Do you mean that logging into the Control Panel does not log you into the forum and it did in the past? Or logging into the forum does not log you into the Control Panel? Or are you specifically talking about the "Forum" link that was removed on the left side menu (but now appears in the header)?

There are some big updates coming to the Lit forum as well in the future, but that's a ways away still.

Thank you again!
 
Thank you for sending and posting so much feedback on the new Lit Control Panel so far everyone.

We are reading all of it and gathering opinions as well as tech data on this side. We're working on a lot of small speed/performance issues now.

As far as interface changes (not bug fixing), these are the first three priority issues that we have pulled out of all of your reports and comments:

1. Authors would like to see un-rounded data for Views/Comments/Favorites.
2. Authors would like to see the Story Listing blocks compacted down a bit.
3. Activity feeds can be improved with visual hints (icons) showing the type of action for each notification.

We are working on those three suggestions and hope to have something to show you soon.

Please keep sending and posting suggestions, feedback, and bug reports!

Thank you again! :)
 
Thanks Manu and group,

I think another cool feature would be something that’ll make it easier to edit stories (pending review, obviously).

For instance, on the forum, after you post, you can edit the whole thing. Why not have something where an author can click edit in their profile, then do the fix.

Maybe the edit would be color coded so that the moderator can instantly spot the changes...or something like that.

It'll be a heck of a lot easier than the current system of resubmiting the entire story. Plus it'll raise the quality of writing on this site if people can easily fix thier goof ups.

Heyall
 
Feedback

I like the Followed/Following features - Definite plus.

One thing I dislike is the rounding of Reads, Favorites and Votes to the nearest .1k once they go over 1000. I like being able to see those numbers still going up daily on older stories, and can't see that when the numbers are rounded - a story averaging 5 reads per day would only show a change every 3 weeks.

Limiting the display of my stories to 10 per page seems low. Either raise the limit, or let me decide what it should be.
 
Just tried to load a new story using the new Control Panel, using a .txt file, as I always do. Submitting from a Kindle.

Error message received: "sorry, can't process this kind of file."

Returned to old Control Panel and loaded the .txt file and did minimal tidy up, as always. Story submitted old school.
 
Very small bug - while a new story is being checked by the Admin (when the "pending" link in the old panel turns into plain text), in the new panel it is not displayed as "pending" but as "sent back". That might irritate some authors.
 
I'm still trying to figure out how to add stories to my future reading list. I first tried entering author's names, then stories. I finally went to an author's page and entered the URL, and that didn't work, either. :confused:

Perhaps some instructions on how to add stories to your future reading list would help. Thanks.
 
Finally got around to checking everything out.

Tested so far in Chrome on desktop, Chrome, Opera, and Firefox on my old Asus tablet and on my new Samsung.

So far, everything I've played with has performed equally across all browsers and platforms. Yet to test are Firefox, IE, and Opera on desktop.

I'm in agreement with the majority that I'd like the unrounded numbers on my stats. I'm not troubled by the whitespace on desktop at all, and on tablet, it's significantly reduced in portrait mode.

The new header bar is going to be vastly superior for getting around the site compared to the old click-click-click to get anywhere.

Love being able to see the totals for followers as Les. It's a lot higher than I expected, really.

The one glitch I've come across ( which from reading other comments, may be something new ) is that I can't see the list of my followers. Whenever I click on that tab, it tries to load and gives me an "Application error. Reloading might help." This happened in every browser and platform I've tested it on so far.

And, no, reloading didn't help :)

Still a lot to mess with, but that's my initial thoughts. Now to send a message to Laurel to see if I can get this pen name included :p
 
Follow up: Now that I have access in this pen name, I started checking with IE, and I'm getting the same consistent results. So far, no cross-browser or cross-platform issues.

I also checked the "My Followers" tab in a different pen name for the first time, and realized something. It works just fine for me as Dark with just shy of 900, and as Les with just shy of 800, but chokes when I try to check as RR with over 1200.

So somewhere between 900 and 1200 followers, there's a query timing out, an overflow, or something of that nature.
 
While I'm at it, I think that linking the "Works", "Following", and "Followers" headers below your avatar and title to their appropriate sections would be useful. It would save one click in going from the following tab to the my followers tab. It also feels like it should be linked.

My first instinct was to click those to reach those sections, anyway.
 
Just submitted a story, and the submission form doesn't process curly quotes/apostrophes/commas in the new control panel. The old one does.

Suffice to say that's a little frustrating. It will force me to do a find/replace for every bit of that punctuation one at a time before saving my draft for Lit. That's after I've already done a find to insert italics and replace my em dashes, which the old control panel processed as double dashes.

Can't really call it a bug, since it may be intentional, but it would be nice if it would process them like the old submission form did.

It also doesn't seem to process the italic tags in preview, which could be a problem. You can't easily tell when you've forgot to close a tag, which could result in large swaths of italics in the final posting.

On the bright side, my .txt file uploaded as expected. No issues. Subsequent edits in the story text window after a preview went fine.

Then I went back to the old control panel and edited it so I could upload my draft with the curly punctuation. :)
 
"Sent Back"?

I used the new screens to post a story (Second Year After Ch. 02) yesterday (10/17). The old "View Submissions" screen shows it with a publication date of tomorrow (10/19) and a status of Pending, as I would normally expect to see it the day before it was merged into the site. The new "Works" screen, however, shows it in the "Sent Back" category.
 
My only real concern, from my first quick look, is the format of the Submissions List. Others have said it too - it needs a "sort by most recent published" option, not just alphabetical order.

I LOVE this idea!! I have been considering suggesting it for a while, but it may be well-known I have a history of being disliked by many members & staff here, so was not about to be the first to bring it up.

Also, I agree we need to block people who troll any sections, but I would ask with that agreement who makes the call? While some authors post on these forums about editing their stories (especially after a submission is submitted but denied), others clearly submit & have their work accepted without much-if-any editing. Those stories getting negative comments should not be seen as spam or trolling. In fact, if anything, they might have their comments noticed/marked, & added to a list someplace of potential editors for authors to choose from.
 
New interface

I really like it and look forward to its continued improvement.

I like the idea of reading lists though I haven't used it yet. I know that this is just the start and maybe you already have plans to do this, but it would be useful to have an "add to reading list" link alongside story titles.

I was disappointed to lose the little red hearts on my activity but I see that on my tablet, running Firefox, they have been replaced with another icon which is equally pleasing. However on my laptop, running Google Chrome, they don't appear.

The profile save button seems to work now though it did not seem to have changed my profile. On that subject, it would be useful to have a single click button to let us see our profile as others see it.

Being able to see the number of followers I have is an improvement.

As an author, I like coming straight into the activity page. However, I suspect that people who come to the site only to read the stories would prefer to have the category menu as a landing page.
 
The new member area should have a notification area for upcoming contests, comments on forum posts and things an author might care about aside from the comments and favoriting.
 
We have rolled out two highly requested changes to the new Control Panel to improve the interface for authors:

1. In the Activity Feeds, we have added icons for each of the important types of activity that can happen with your submission (Favorite, Comment, Published, etc). We have also added an icon for new Follower. You can see these new icons here:
https://www.literotica.com/my/#/activity/works

2. We have compacted the height of the Story Listing block on the Works screens and increased the number of works per page. You can see that change here:
https://www.literotica.com/my/#/works

Please have a look and let us know if you have further suggestions for improvement.

We are now working to restore the raw number of views/comments on stories.

Thank you for all of the ongoing feedback! :D
 
25 is better than 10 but that's still 10 pages of scrolling for me.

The added icons and such makes it better but that grey writing on a white background is very hard to read. Black or a darker shade of gray would help a lot.
 
The added icons and such makes it better but that grey writing on a white background is very hard to read. Black or a darker shade of gray would help a lot.

Thank you for the feedback on the changes.

Which gray text do you mean specifically?

Thanks again! :D
 
25 is better than 10 but that's still 10 pages of scrolling for me.

How do you use your Works page - are you browsing or looking for specific stories to check on?

On this page:
https://literotica.com/my/#/works

You can type part of the name of a story in the search box (look for the text that says "Search Works" above the first Story Listing block on the page) and it will show you all stories with that word/string right away (no need to hit "enter").

Thanks again.
 
How do you use your Works page - are you browsing or looking for specific stories to check on?

On this page:
https://literotica.com/my/#/works

You can type part of the name of a story in the search box (look for the text that says "Search Works" above the first Story Listing block on the page) and it will show you all stories with that word/string right away (no need to hit "enter").

Thanks again.

Most of the time I scan the list of stories to see what number of them does not have the red H. I get bombed quite a bit. If the number without the H goes up, I ask for a sweep. Other than that, I use to the list to do links. Now that the list has favorite totals, I'll be browsing those occasionally.

The search function will help finding one story.
 
I meant to ask earlier, what will happen to the recent activity page? That is where I get a lot of my information. Searching 238 stories for a new comment or favorite would be a pain.
 
2. We have compacted the height of the Story Listing block on the Works screens and increased the number of works per page. You can see that change here:
https://www.literotica.com/my/#/works

I have a submission pending with a date of posting (tomorrow), but this page didn't show it on the list and under pending, it says 0. Just a fluke, or are submitted stories not going to show on a list between submission and posting?
 
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