New Author Profiles BETA Feedback Request

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

I believe that the new format has larger boxes for each entry to make them tappable on a phone screen, so I can understand why they did that. I know that it's far from ideal for us desktoppers but people with shorter attention spans who need everything at the beck of their fingertips run the world now, and if lit wants to keep the traffic up they kinda need to cater to them.

Well, there IS that thing called "responsive design" that displays the page in different ways based on how big the screen is, but I guess someone heard about "Mobile first" and misunderstood something...

 

[vootvoot]

I really like the look of the redesign!

I do have one big usability complaint though (I haven't read through this thread, so not sure if it's been mentioned yet) - paginating everything (ie the "Show more" button) makes it take me way longer to find favourites and works. I much prefer having everything on one page that I can instantly scroll and scan through to get an overview. Pagination also stops me from being able to use ctrl-f, which is a big disadvantage.

This is particularly painful for users who have a large number of works or favourites. Eg I have 300 favourites (a fair amount, but not totally excessive imo), and it takes 5 iterations of "click show more, wait for page load, scroll all the way to the bottom" before I have them all visible and can search through them. This is a pretty frustrating process. Plenty of users have many more works or favourites.

Somewhat off topic, but I actually have the same issue with the story reading interface. Because online fiction is of such variable quality, I often want to quickly skim parts and ctrl-f for keywords to see whether a story is to my taste before sitting down to actually read it properly. I make extensive use of Ao3's "Entire Work" button for this, which shows all chapters on one page. It'd be cool to have something similar here. For longer stories on Literotica which have 10+ pages, it's much harder to do this sort of pre-assessing, so I'll often give them a miss unless I already have a high opinion of the author.

 

[ByronicBitch]

I really like the look of the redesign!

I do have one big usability complaint though (I haven't read through this thread, so not sure if it's been mentioned yet) - paginating everything (ie the "Show more" button) makes it take me way longer to find favourites and works. I much prefer having everything on one page that I can instantly scroll and scan through to get an overview. Pagination also stops me from being able to use ctrl-f, which is a big disadvantage.

This is particularly painful for users who have a large number of works or favourites. Eg I have 300 favourites (a fair amount, but not totally excessive imo), and it takes 5 iterations of "click show more, wait for page load, scroll all the way to the bottom" before I have them all visible and can search through them. This is a pretty frustrating process. Plenty of users have many more works or favourites.

Somewhat off topic, but I actually have the same issue with the story reading interface. Because online fiction is of such variable quality, I often want to quickly skim parts and ctrl-f for keywords to see whether a story is to my taste before sitting down to actually read it properly. I make extensive use of Ao3's "Entire Work" button for this, which shows all chapters on one page. It'd be cool to have something similar here. For longer stories on Literotica which have 10+ pages, it's much harder to do this sort of pre-assessing, so I'll often give them a miss unless I already have a high opinion of the author.

This.

Now imagine people like me who have over 3600 stories favorited over a decade and have to click "show more" in increments of 50. If they won't allow the users the option to use the older, more efficient UI atleast they should provide some toggle to load the entire list at once. Current implementation is way too frustrating.

 

[Dark_Logan_]

This might have been asked for (but I will admit I haven’t gone through all 9 pages of replies)

Is the function for authors to list story’s customised available or possible? (Much like they can be ordered in the series functions)

Alphabetical and Newest first seems to be the default

I might be unique but there’s a chronology to much of what I’ve written and it would be great to list stories that way

Beyond that it looks great

 

[MillieDynamite]

Short answer is, NO! Long as is, No there isn't.

This might have been asked for (but I will admit I haven’t gone through all 9 pages of replies)

Is the function for authors to list story’s customised available or possible? (Much like they can be ordered in the series functions)

Alphabetical and Newest first seems to be the default

I might be unique but there’s a chronology to much of what I’ve written and it would be great to list stories that way

Beyond that it looks great

 

[FreyaGersemi]

Is the function for authors to list story’s customised available or possible? (Much like they can be ordered in the series functions)

I asked the same thing for the same reason that you did. It looks like the answer is: not now.

Hopefully in the near future, though.

 

[bestkeptsecret678]

I clicked another authors profile, saw the the new format… and thought, “Hey, how can I get one of those too!?”

Oh, Oops. I already have one.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

This might have been asked for (but I will admit I haven’t gone through all 9 pages of replies)

Is the function for authors to list story’s customised available or possible? (Much like they can be ordered in the series functions)

Alphabetical and Newest first seems to be the default

I might be unique but there’s a chronology to much of what I’ve written and it would be great to list stories that way

Beyond that it looks great

As far as I can tell, the Reading Lists contain entries in order of you adding them to the list. The last story you add will be at the top. While the list in your Control Panel has a sorting function, the lists in someone's profile doesn't (for some reason).

 

[Manu]

View attachment 2341677
This is from one user's favorite list. I tried to figure out why is there "Works" "Work" and "Stories" used for these authors.

I realized that "Stories" is used for authors who have only stories published, "Works" is used for those who have both stories and poems/artwork, and the odd one, "Work" is used for authors who can actually have many stories published, but just one poem or artwork among them. Is this working as intended or not?

This was a great catch, thank you.

We were not adding Stories to Works before deciding whether or not to show "Work" or "Works". An Author with 100 published Stories and one published Poem would show "101 Work" instead of "101 Works". This has been fixed in an upcoming release.

Thanks again.

 

[lexlogan8]

Reverse ordering would be great as well. When someone has 300 stories, it's a lot of scrolling to get to the end of the list.

Thank you! I very often want to look at oldest first, probably more often than newest first. Might as well allow reverse alphabetical while you're at it; "A" often gets overloaded from "A Story About..." getting classified as "A".

 

[Oplot-M]

The information when you look at profiles is in reverse order. You might get eight likes or poetry and have to scroll to the bottom just to realize the person hitting on you is a lesbian or a guy…. (Which means I shouldn’t flirt back)

It’s also a process finding information that used to be easy to spot.

 

[fallensaviour]

there needs to be an option to display all stories instead of constantly having to scroll down and hit display more.

 

[dead113]

I wish things were a bit more compact no one wants to be scrolling and clicking show more for 5 minutes

 

[Dark_Logan_]

I asked the same thing for the same reason that you did. It looks like the answer is: not now.

Hopefully in the near future, though.

I can be patient, having put up with the issue for this long.

Appreciate it might be very niche to the vast majority of authors

The only alternative being to redo all my titles so that in alphabetical order they match my chronology and that’s too much like hard work

 

[MillieDynamite]

But you can sort by Newest.

I can be patient, having put up with the issue for this long.

Appreciate it might be very niche to the vast majority of authors

The only alternative being to redo all my titles so that in alphabetical order they match my chronology and that’s too much like hard work

 

[Dark_Logan_]

But you can sort by Newest.

Which has no bearing on chronology

If I tap newest then…

The last series in the list is the first series I wrote and the start of the chronology but it’s at the bottom of the list when it should be at the top

Let’s not get into the final part being in the middle of the pile

 

[MillieDynamite]

If you put stories in an actual series (The function), you can order them however you want. But you have to create the series in order to do that.

 

[FreyaGersemi]

If you put stories in an actual series (The function), you can order them however you want. But you have to create the series in order to do that.

My issue is that my first series is now lower on the list than the second (related) series. And will be even further when I start the third...

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah, I get that, but I don't know how you avoid such things when publishing on someone else's website. Even on pay sites, keeping separate but related series right isn't easy. I guess that's a reason to have your own website, but then you don't get nearly as many readers. Don't look at mine; no one has touched it for years.

My issue is that my first series is now lower on the list than the second (related) series. And will be even further when I start the third...

 

[Britva415]

New Author Profiles BETA Feedback Request

Seems like it's not beta anymore, it has apparently been rolled out to all profiles, replacing the old design.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

Yeah, I get that, but I don't know how you avoid such things when publishing on someone else's website. Even on pay sites, keeping separate but related series right isn't easy. I guess that's a reason to have your own website, but then you don't get nearly as many readers. Don't look at mine; no one has touched it for years.

I hate to say this... but it's super easy on other sites. All Lit has to do is amend the submission form to ask authors, as they submit a story, whether or not it should be part of an existing series.

Right now, the only way to even HOPE this goes well, is to not touch the series description and leave it as auto-managed. Then, and only then, will future updates hopefully be automatically added to the series. But the moment you want to edit the series' description, add a cover, or do anything else, you have to switch it to being managed manually... and then new chapters will be listed separately until you not only add them to the series but also have to wait for the servers to actually do perform that task.

 

[MillieDynamite]

SOL allows you to publish novels one chapter at a time, and they are together as a novel. That's the only other site I've published for free that has such a thing. Amazon allows for series, and you set the order, as does Smashwords. Bookapy, a sales site, has collections, but I don't think they can be ordered in the listing, and they purchase all the stories at one time (you give a discount so it's cheaper than one at a time). I don't know about other free sites as here, and the aforementioned one are the only ones I submit to.

I hate to say this... but it's super easy on other sites. All Lit has to do is amend the submission form to ask authors, as they submit a story, whether or not it should be part of an existing series.

Right now, the only way to even HOPE this goes well, is to not touch the series description and leave it as auto-managed. Then, and only then, will future updates hopefully be automatically added to the series. But the moment you want to edit the series' description, add a cover, or do anything else, you have to switch it to being managed manually... and then new chapters will be listed separately until you not only add them to the series but also have to wait for the servers to actually do perform that task.

 

[Manu]

All Lit has to do is amend the submission form to ask authors, as they submit a story, whether or not it should be part of an existing series.

When you submit a new story, it should allow you to add it to any of your existing Series before submitting for publication. If it doesn't, that may be a bug.

Here's what it looks like:



You may need to click "Save Draft" for the "Add To Series" button to appear. This functionality has been there since the rollout of the Series Pages, if not before.

If it doesn't work on your account, please let me know.

 

[AlinaX]

I have noticed that the series option isn't there at first, but after previewing and going back to make changes, I see it.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, slap my ass, and call me silly goose, I didn't know that, @Manu. I should write that down in my "Shit, I'll forget if I don't write it down" journal. If I can only remember where I put that damn lil book now.

When you submit a new story, it should allow you to add it to any of your existing Series before submitting for publication. If it doesn't, that may be a bug.

Here's what it looks like:

View attachment 2342700

You may need to click "Save Draft" for the "Add To Series" button to appear. This functionality has been there since the rollout of the Series Pages, if not before.

If it doesn't work on your account, please let me know.