Something seems very wrong here...

HeyAll said:

I think it was either you or Laurel who said that the site may be divided up into a few different sections (ie straight, lesbian). Meaning, if you go to Lesbian, it'll have its own bdsm, incest, noncon, ect...

Is that still the case?

If so, what happens to existing stories?

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We have long believed that gay and lesbian stories should have their own set of categories. For example, there should be Gay Fetish, Gay Horror, Gay Romance, Gay Science Fiction, etc. It's not really right that all stories with a gay male or lesbian character end up in one single category.

We want to fix that someday. However, it's not the project we're working on right now. We are working on a number of different features, but they all relate to updating the core Literotica design. We are updating the design not for the primary purpose of making the site look better, but to make the site more convenient for readers and authors.

We want to fix that someday. However, it's not the project we're working on right now. We are working on a number of different features, but they all relate to updating the core Literotica design. We are updating the design not for the primary purpose of making the site look better, but to make the site more convenient for readers and authors.

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That sounds wonderful Manu.

Do you mind if I make 3 suggestions? They're things which I've always felt could help draw in readers.

1) Why not make this the Literotica.com page?

https://www.literotica.com/stories/index.php

Skip the current cover page. It seems unnecessary, and a person would have scroll all the way down to find the story index.

That way, a person coming to Literotica for the first time would directly see all of the story options on the index. If there are any site announcements, it could go on the top.

EDIT: I just realized that Lit needs to have Litorotica.com be the disclaimer page.


2) Have the story font be bigger. (or customizable, if possible)

I've always felt that the font was a bit small, especially given how much space there is on the page.

3) Stories which are flat out terrible, and loaded with errors, should be rejected.

It reflects poorly on this site and drives people away.


Those are just some thoughts to help improve this website. Thanks for reading, and I hope you consider them.

Its not lower views and same number votes and comments. If that were the case my thought would have been lit somehow eliminated views that weren't reads...or something like that.

Its less of everything and far less.

That is why I posted the links to the hubs to show everything, votes, favs, comments are down, not just views.

I know the general numbers things tend to get in many categories and I am seeing far less than average.

Erotic horror I looked at today, terrible. A contest entry has 8 votes since yesterday and its only a 4 page story so its not like length is discouraging people.

Bottom line I stay with my best example. a mother/son story from a author with a bunch of them (not to mention well up on the all time fav list) should see a damn sight more than 41k views in four days and 423 votes 60 favs.... a mature story for me sure as hell should have more then the 19k it does. Hell I normally see that before noon in the day they post.

IF traffic is the same then they are clicking on lit looking around, waving and leaving because they are not clicking anything

Unless....

There is a huge glitch and many views, votes, etc....are just not being registered....if that's the case that would be pretty serious.

But...not as serious as what seems to be obvious....either lit has lost a big chunk of readership very recently or they for some reason can no longer access the site.

All is not well and its not a slow down and if traffic is the 'same' then....look, I don't buy it. I'm not out to argue with anyone or post conspiracy theories, but numbers don't lie.

Maybe it all reverses soon(which would really scream site or access glitch to me) maybe it doesn't.

Point is I am calling attention to something I noticed. People can take what they want out of that.

All I know is the readership seems very different from six months ago when I was posting regularly in Incest. Views way down and not only my "regulars" but a lot of people you'd expect to see commenting seemed to have shoved off. I seem to have a whole new crop of readers than six months ago. Another Incest writer I know seeing the same thing. Seems very different though I have no idea why.

NYC is a ghost town in August.

I don't know if it's related to what Lovecraft is talking about with views not registering or glitches that might be causing problems, but I have run into nights where I have trouble getting the pages within the site to load properly.
I get the page pop up that says 'bad gateway error' or whatever it is and have to refresh or close the window out entirely and pull it up from my bookmarks again to try another time, hoping I can get to where I'm trying to go this time around.
I haven't posted much recently, as I took a year or so away from the site. Since I've been back to the site the landscape, as it were, has been fairly different than it was when I left. I don't have nearly the readership that others do here, but I got to where I could expect a certain amount of views, votes, comments, and favorites on my submissions. On the one I put in incest since returning, it has been well received according to its rating by votes and the comments, but the *number* of votes and comments are lower than I would normally expect.
Is it a part of how long I have been away? Well, I would say that almost certainly plays a part of it, but I would be hard pressed to say that it covers the entirety of it. The submission was the final chapter of the most popular work I have on here, and was something that was constantly asked for on a regular basis up until the month or so that I actually got it onto the site.
For about five weeks everything just kind of got quiet. I thought nothing of it at the time; I was busy. But now, seeing that there are others who have noticed something off about how the numbers are adding, I'm starting to wonder. The story still ended up in the incest hall of fame (well, it was. Double checking just now, it seems to have swapped places with the chapter that came before it, which is odd as the third chapter has a higher rating, and neither of them have the rating the second chapter is listed under in the hall of fame. I imagine that the hall isn't updated often, but whatever), which surprised me considering that it didn't have nearly the traffic of the chapters before it. Seeing as chapter two is in there now, that seems more fitting, but why was chapter three in there in the first place if the traffic for it was as sluggish as it has been? I'm going to be checking now and again to see if the two chapters swap out again. I don't know how the HOF works, so I may be missing something here.
I don't know, just putting out what I had noticed. I thought it was just me. I don't know how a lot of the site functions, so I usually chalk stuff like this up to my own ignorance and carry on with simply writing. Now, though, I wonder.

I'll be happy to look further into the stats, but I just double checked page views over the last six months and they are very steady. If there is any change, it's that people are looking at more story pages, not less.

From looking at sitewide stats, it's not easy to tell which specific stories people are reading, but I'll dig in and try to make sure that our public stats (the ones that readers and authors see) are matching up with the sitewide numbers.

Again, we definitely appreciate the feedback as everyone uses the site differently and often a specific author or reader will catch an issue before we do.

for the hell of it I sent a few e-mails to readers that I correspond with from time to time simply asking if they see anything different here. Trouble getting on, trouble seeing stories, or voting.

I heard back from two last night and both said everything looks the same to them, but they have noticed the stories they read seem to have less comments than usual and one mentioned he sees far less new comments in the feedback forum.

Also on Carnal Flowers point about seeing newer readers(always great) but regulars seeming to be vanishing...

Like everyone else here with a body of work we do start to see the same people commenting all the time. Obviously with such a low amount of comments on my last incest story they mostly seem to be missing.

One in particular not only remarks on every story of mine but usually is first. They remarked on my incest story Wednesday, but has yet to show up on my contest entry and mature is her favorite category...

Now I doubt she fell off the Earth in two days, but it makes things more puzzling.

If traffic is the same...again...they aren't clicking on anything or for whatever reason they are registering no activity.

In incest I have seen only one author and series that as the usual numbers there everything else seems low and low by quite a bit.

Also worth noting and has me leaning towards glitch...is now that I am watching closely...I am seeing small bursts of a bunch of votes and a few favs and comments all at once....then tumbleweeds again...almost like...okay, here we go then...nope.

Something smells funny here.
.

For the record, I had a new mother/son story today. It's almost the first 24 hours, and it has over 800 votes with 25k views.

I'm not saying there's a glitch or anything, but I literally can't remember a first day view total that low for a mother/son story. Also, the view/vote ratio is really high (for any category).

Just something to note.

This could be stretching things, but maybe there is fall-out over the Ashley Madison hack. Given that a lot of married people are on Lit, especially those who haven't had sex for eons for various reasons, maybe a good number have decided to cut out erotica and dating sites for a while, or permanently...

Only one of the possible explanations would account for what has been described here.

* Seasonality: It's hard to believe that traffic could drop by an order of magnitude over the course of a month – even in August.

* Ashley Madison hack: Should have some effect, but seems like it wouldn't have nearly big enough an effect. People don't behave that way.

* The site's dying: Alexa says LIT traffic is down year over year, but the decline has not been precipitous.

* Server problems: If there were problems with the site big enough to cause a huge drop in traffic, we'd notice.

* Google: A change in Google's algorithms can cause a big drop in traffic, but I wouldn't think most visitors come here via search, and Alexa suggests that's true.

* Data recording: The likeliest explanation is that a software problem is causing views/stars/favs to not be recorded. The only discrepancy we've observed has been in the counts, not in site performance or operation. It may also account for a lack of comments, but I'd expect users to notice of their comments weren't being recorded.

Comments are losing ground to favorites, and have been for years. As soon as readers realized they had unlimited story/author favorites, they began using that as a way to show their support rather than typing a comment.

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/All_3_Names_stats_11_14_10.htm

2010 average of 6.28 comments per story and 1.03 favorites

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/All_3_Names_08_01_15.htm

2015 average of 10.04 comments per story and 15.72 favorites.

It's not just my numbers, either. I saw the same phenomenon when I was tracking the themed contests, gathering numbers from a broad range of authors.

About the only place this doesn't hold true is in Loving Wives.

Considering how long this trend has been going on, authors should expect their number of comments to continue to decline. It will probably hit an equilibrium point eventually, but I don't think we're there yet.

My money, so far as reduced views go, is that there's a new filter in place that's catching and excluding more of the onslaught of bots and spiders that are on every website every minute of every day.

I'm not really seeing any significant shift in favorites or vote totals, either in my own work or on the toplists.

Bumping this because I saw this on the homepage today. Seems there is an issue with searching for stories which could cause lower numbers for stories if people aren't finding them.

https://www.literotica.com/

RejectReality said:

Comments are losing ground to favorites, and have been for years. As soon as readers realized they had unlimited story/author favorites, they began using that as a way to show their support rather than typing a comment.

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/All_3_Names_stats_11_14_10.htm

2010 average of 6.28 comments per story and 1.03 favorites

http://www.darkniciad.com/hotlink_pics/All_3_Names_08_01_15.htm

2015 average of 10.04 comments per story and 15.72 favorites.

It's not just my numbers, either. I saw the same phenomenon when I was tracking the themed contests, gathering numbers from a broad range of authors.

About the only place this doesn't hold true is in Loving Wives.

Considering how long this trend has been going on, authors should expect their number of comments to continue to decline. It will probably hit an equilibrium point eventually, but I don't think we're there yet.

My money, so far as reduced views go, is that there's a new filter in place that's catching and excluding more of the onslaught of bots and spiders that are on every website every minute of every day.

I'm not really seeing any significant shift in favorites or vote totals, either in my own work or on the toplists.

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One of our goals with the upcoming Literotica redesign is to increase the amount of feedback that authors get from readers. We believe that users who are registered for the site (and logged in) are the most likely to give regular feedback to authors. Several of the new features that will be rolling out with (or shortly after) the redesign will give readers greater incentive to become Literotica members and to follow authors who they are interested in.

I'm not 100% sure that the upcoming changes will lead to more comments, but I'm hopeful that they will. I definitely think that the new features will give authors a better way to keep track of readers who are interested in their work - and will allow readers a much better way to keep track of their favorite authors.

Manu said:

One of our goals with the upcoming Literotica redesign is to increase the amount of feedback that authors get from readers. We believe that users who are registered for the site (and logged in) are the most likely to give regular feedback to authors. Several of the new features that will be rolling out with (or shortly after) the redesign will give readers greater incentive to become Literotica members and to follow authors who they are interested in.

I'm not 100% sure that the upcoming changes will lead to more comments, but I'm hopeful that they will. I definitely think that the new features will give authors a better way to keep track of readers who are interested in their work - and will allow readers a much better way to keep track of their favorite authors.

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Hello Manu,

Will authors have any input towards the resigned & new features? I feel we have much to offer in terms of ideas and ways to boost this site.

just curious,

thank you

HeyAll said:

Hello Manu,

Will authors have any input towards the resigned & new features? I feel we have much to offer in terms of ideas and ways to boost this site.

just curious,

thank you

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Yes.

All of the upcoming changes are based on feedback from Lit users (authors and readers) over the last few years. Authors will also be the first ones invited to test the new Control Panel when it's ready for BETA.

There will be a few changes to the way that Lit works which might shock a few people at first (especially related to the concept of favorite authors/followed authors), but we're confident that the new system will be much more beneficial to both authors and readers in the long run.

If you have suggestions or concerns, either now or once you see the first version of the new Lit design, we definitely want to hear them.

Is this the same error everyone is getting?

I just tried to submit an edited version of my story and this error popped up. My story is showing "pending" after I confirmed a form resubmission by refreshing the page.

All seems right, for now.

I'm glad to hear it Manu,

I'd like to reiterate that my biggest suggestion to this site is that the font size (and text) is small. It should be bigger. And if there was a way for readers to customize their ideal font size, even better.

thanks

Sammael Bard said:

Is this the same error everyone is getting?

I just tried to submit an edited version of my story and this error popped up. My story is showing "pending" after I confirmed a form resubmission by refreshing the page.

All seems right, for now.

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Did you submit that at night time?

I usually see something like that around 10 pm west coast when the sight approves & loads new stories.

Other than that, I sometimes get the DB Error.

HeyAll said:

I'm glad to hear it Manu,

I'd like to reiterate that my biggest suggestion to this site is that the font size (and text) is small. It should be bigger. And if there was a way for readers to customize their ideal font size, even better.

thanks

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I heard Mozilla Firefox allows users to change the fonts, colour and size on the websites where it detects reading material. That's a pretty dang good feature, I think.

HeyAll said:

Did you submit that at night time?

I usually see something like that around 10 pm west coast when the sight approves & loads new stories.

Other than that, I sometimes get the DB Error.

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I submit my edit early morning. We live in different Time-zones, so it must've been night time in California.

Sammael Bard said:

I heard Mozilla Firefox allows users to change the fonts, colour and size on the websites where it detects reading material. That's a pretty dang good feature, I think.




I submit my edit early morning. We live in different Time-zones, so it must've been night time in California.

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10:16 pm PST is the site's witching hour - it goes down for several minutes and refreshes. It's almost always up again by 10:20 pm.

It's funny people are complaining about not getting 45k views when I'm delighted to break over 1k ;P LOL. I guess it's a matter of volume of posting stories, but still...dang man....

Man, time for me to write some brother-sister action Or is it mother-son action.

If it's either/or as to what will tickle you to write, and you want to have your mind blown by the numbers once it posts, the obvious choice is Mom-Son. It's undoubtedly the most popular pairing in the most popular category.

Don't be surprised if you surpass your best numbers in fifteen minutes with a decent Mom-Son story.

Alternately, if incest creeps you out, another high return category is Mature, writing an age-difference story. If you have any ideas along those lines, that rush of traffic will likely floor you as well.

GoldenMaia said:

It's funny people are complaining about not getting 45k views when I'm delighted to break over 1k ;P LOL. I guess it's a matter of volume of posting stories, but still...dang man....

Man, time for me to write some brother-sister action Or is it mother-son action.

Click to expand...

Sammael Bard said:

I heard Mozilla Firefox allows users to change the fonts, colour and size on the websites where it detects reading material. That's a pretty dang good feature, I think.



.

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Yeah, it came out a few months ago.

I even made a thread about it.

If you're on a story page (such as Lit) there is a book icon next to the refresh button. It makes the text very large, and you customize the color of the background and the size of the font.

It makes reading so much easier.

GoldenMaia said:

It's funny people are complaining about not getting 45k views when I'm delighted to break over 1k ;P LOL. I guess it's a matter of volume of posting stories, but still...dang man....

Man, time for me to write some brother-sister action Or is it mother-son action.

Click to expand...

Nice to see someone from the bay area here.

HeyAll said:

....I'd like to reiterate that my biggest suggestion to this site is that the font size (and text) is small. It should be bigger. And if there was a way for readers to customize their ideal font size, even better.

Click to expand...

On a Mac, if you press the apple key plus the + key, everything in the browser window gets enlarged a bit. I would think there's a Windows equivalent.

SikFuk said:

On a Mac, if you press the apple key plus the + key, everything in the browser window gets enlarged a bit. I would think there's a Windows equivalent.

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For Windows, Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Up will magnify the page by 10% in chrome browser. Similarly, Ctrl + Mouse Wheel Down will zoom out by 10%