2009 - the year of a new Chyoo?

[Manu]

Happy New Year, Chyoo authors and readers!

Next year, 2010, will be the 10th anniversary of the launch of Chyoo. But, as many of you know, since the departure of the original Chyoo project developer, the Chyoo application has not been updated as often as it might have been.

So, with Chyoo coming up on its 10th birthday, I was thinking that it's about time that we did some updates with new features and other improvements. But, to do that, we need a road map.

I was looking through the threads in this very forum, including the massive Chyoo 3 thread, and there are a lot of great ideas. But, we need to set some priorities rather than just having a massive list of random ideas.

So, let's talk about what needs to be done and in what order!

 

[GoodBoy741]

How would those ideas be implemented?

 

[Manu]

How would those ideas be implemented?

Once we have an idea of what needs to be done, and in what order we think the changes should be implemented, then we would work on improving the software that runs Chyoo.

I'm not sure right now if it would be better to completely re-write the entire site and re-launch a whole new version, or if we should make changes incrementally to the existing site.

I think that once we have an idea of what needs to be done, then it will be easier to figure out a strategy for implementing the changes.

 

[moonblack]

The first two things that come to mind:
1) A way to quickly and easily find ALL new threads on the story map - this can be a bit of a challenge when there's a large story map. Something like "Highlight previous/next new thread" would be great.

2) Fix the story maps for large stories. An example would be this map Some of the threads are not positioned correctly (example:
28.2 Right. by alpha-xeta
29.1 She accepts by nelo
27.2 Left by alpha-xeta
8.2 "Persuasion." by alpha-xeta
4.3 Temari by nelo
) and others... well, just look at the rightmost part of that particular map. And it's not just this tory, but all stories is such long story line and many threads.

Oh, and please allow for higher numbers of "Maximum Threads". Currently the max is 4, which is not enough in some cases. Why not allow the authors/editors to enter the exact number of max threads, with 0 being treated as "unlimited number"?

These are the first things that came to mind, and numbers 2 and 3 don't seem that hard to do.

 

[GoodBoy741]

Once we have an idea of what needs to be done, and in what order we think the changes should be implemented, then we would work on improving the software that runs Chyoo.

The reason I asked is that I wasn't sure anyone had access to the original software. Without that, it's not only hard to make incremental improvements, it's also hard to start over from scratch. You can't import the files from 2.0 if you don't know how it works, and I don't think many of us would be excited about starting over from scratch with nothing but new stories.

So does anyone have access to the 2.0 code? Would literotica work with people who aren't the original programmers?

 

[TwiztedClown]

A spell checking program would be good.

 

[Zingiber]

Manu,

Thanks for the encouraging words for 2009!

I suggest raising the support/fix-it level for the current Chyoo 2 before undertaking an ambitious Chyoo 3. Any new site software is likely to have issues. Fixing up small issues with the current site is probably good exercise when getting a sense of how big a job a more major update would be.

Here are some ideas for small and moderate fixes/changes for a "Chyoo 2.1"

• Add a link from Chyoo via "Discuss" back to Chyoo Forums.
• Add a contact form linked from "Contact".
• Add a more obvious "policy" page.
• Update the site message. Even "Happy writing, happy new year!" would be good.
• Some of the navigation links are mixed up. (member.thread.list.writer mistakenly has next-page navigation links for member.thread.list, which do not work)
• Usernames are "sort of" case sensitive and "sort of" not case sensitive. In other words, I could log in as "Zingiber" or "zingiber" with my password, but only "Zingiber" has editing rights to my pre-existing threads.
• Story ratings are incorrectly reported on some pages. For example, http://www.chyoo.com/index.php/main.story.list/fresh .
• Add site metadata on the main page to signal adult content to automated content filtering services.

On Beyond Chyoo 2:

Nice Features:

• Story tags! I really like http://tags.literotica.com, and Chyoo could use them.
• Save partially edited threads. The short login timeout bites new writers.

-- Zingiber

 

[Gunde]

In the spirit of Zingiber's suggestions make "Help" actually go somewhere, possibly to Chyoo FAQ (thus not making it necessary to make it a new story every once in a while).

As for Chyoo 3, a built-out and much improved feedback system would be appreciated, in particular due to the collaborative nature of the site; kill off anonymous feedback for good, make it so that writer and critic can easily communicate with one another.

 

[Torg]

In the spirit of fixing existing bugs, which I strongly support, we can use this thread to list them.

The only one I can think of right now is:

1. Rating updates should not make stories 'Fresh'. Only new threads should make stories 'Fresh'.

 

[Torg]

And can I say "Hooray!" I'm excited!

 

[android1966]

WOW. This is exciting news.

Most of the things I can think of short term have already been mentioned.

For chyoo 3, would an illustrated story section be feasible or would it cause too much hassle with having to check threads for copyrighted images?

 

[BenjiDude]

It'd be nice if the (character) limit on the comments was increased and maybe previous comments were listed along with the actual thread, so that others can see what has already been said.

 

[Murakami]

The Lost Technical Question

The reason I asked is that I wasn't sure anyone had access to the original software. Without that, it's not only hard to make incremental improvements, it's also hard to start over from scratch. You can't import the files from 2.0 if you don't know how it works, and I don't think many of us would be excited about starting over from scratch with nothing but new stories.

So does anyone have access to the 2.0 code? Would literotica work with people who aren't the original programmers?

No one ever answered this very important technical question. Will a complete re-write be needed? Also, what language is the system in? Could the code be put up somewhere so people could get a look at it to figure out how hard/easy it will be to play with? Will a change of location be needed (perhaps due to an account lockout caused by a missing account holder)?

 

[Murakami]

Any news? It's been awhile (ok, a week) since the last news. We can't let this fall by the wayside again.

If we can get the code up, then we could get started. Depending on the language, I'm I or other members could at least fix a few of the minor annoyances fairly quickly.

 

[Zingiber]

No one ever answered this very important technical question. Will a complete re-write be needed? Also, what language is the system in?

I have a fairly strong sense that Chyoo 2 is PHP + MySQL. ("index.php" as the main script is pretty suggestive, and I have seen occasional database errors). The pages appear to be in XHTML/1.0 format (well, almost... there was an unclosed <img> tag detected by HTML Tidy) with simple but fairly consistent use of CSS hooks via the HTML "class" attribute. The standard CSS stylesheet for Chyoo ("http://www.chyoo.com/styles.css") gives a minimalistic, almost monochromatic black-on-white look but goes no further than setting up simple standard fonts, sizes, and regular or bold face. The front page appears to be a static document which is refreshed perhaps once a minute, rather than being rendered each time by querying the database.

There was a text format conversion between Chyoo 1 and Chyoo 2 that caused some mix-ups in character encodings for dashes, quotes, and apostrophes so that one might often see HTML entity values such as &#8217; in the resulting page.

As long as Chyoo can have some consistent programming resources, I expect things will improve.

Could the code be put up somewhere so people could get a look at it to figure out how hard/easy it will be to play with? Will a change of location be needed (perhaps due to an account lockout caused by a missing account holder)?

 

[GoodBoy741]

If we can get the code up, then we could get started.

Sorry to say it, but I don't think anyone has the code. Unfortunately, this thread is just a wish like, same as the "CHYOO 3! Need your feedback and suggestions..." thread.

 

[Murakami]

Ok, then can anyone write the site from scratch? Alternately, could anyone contact Literotica and talk to them about this issue? Maybe they could give us the code (it's technically abandonware if the author is missing).

If we have site to put it in, it should be possible to write a script to run through all of the stories and copy them manually thread by thread (I think).

 

[gizmoo69]

For me, the priorities should be the bugfixes and fixing the annoyances that people have already mentioned previously, like making the 'help' and 'discuss' links work, removing the 15 minute timeout, fixing the "Stories" box in "My Home", fixing the "Fresh" stories and "Top Stories" lists, removing the 4 thread limit, etc.

Longer term, I would like to see more colour in the site. B&W is boring. I would like my own av in CHYOO, and perhaps even the ability to add pictures or colours to my stories. I would also like more interactive name inserts, so that you're not limited to {FIRST_NAME} and {LAST_NAME}. I vaguely recall someone suggesting that story creators should have the tools to add in their own inserts, so that if you want readers to be able to choose the protagonist's hair colour or 5 girls' names for that completely personalised orgy scene, you can.

So basically, fixes first, colours and customisability second. I have no idea how practical my suggestions are though.

 

[Murakami]

The problem that has been pointed out, though, is that no one who is currently around has any access to the site internals. The original creator vanished and took the server access codes with him. The only way to make any change is to remake the site from scratch and transfer over the content. Only then can any substantial changes be made, because only then will there be people with access to the site's code base. At least, this is how I understand it.

 

[Zingiber]

The problem that has been pointed out, though, is that no one who is currently around has any access to the site internals. The original creator vanished and took the server access codes with him. The only way to make any change is to remake the site from scratch and transfer over the content. Only then can any substantial changes be made, because only then will there be people with access to the site's code base. At least, this is how I understand it.

I thought there were merely not enough developer hours for Lit to put into a site that isn't fully launched (no ads, not self-supporting as far as their staff/expenses are concerned). Nobody around with any direct experience with programming and modifying the PHP scripts, I can buy that. But the MySQL schema can't be that complicated.

We could see if Chyoo.NET's code base is still around. That got pretty close to supplanting Chyoo when there were no story approvals for many months.

-Z.

 

[Murakami]

I know some HTML, but I have never done website programming. I mostly do offline stuff (C, C++, Python, Java, etc.). I'm willing to pitch in, but I don't have enough free time to learn all about how to make websites right now (though I would like to at some point).

That said, if there is anything I can do to help let me know and I'll try my best.

 

[deathofcards]

Another point is something I discovered if you have taken over the editor role of a story it will only show-up in your lists if you have actually written for this story. Which is why several of the stories I had editorial control for have placeholder threads in them containing only the line ignore.


One other thing better support for other browsers. I'm a Firefox user and enthusiast and to be honest now completly dislike Internet Explorer. Although I do have an IE plugin for FF. Chyoo is the only website I've found which looks awful in FF and have to use the IE tab for.