What could be causing the story series feature to do this?

[Britva415]

I have a story series. The chapter titles all follow an identical and clearly marked naming convention with sequential numeric increments at the end. I used the "+Add Work" feature in the "Series Works" list in the "My Series" page of my author control panel to manually add all four stories to the series.

Looking at the series there, I see that all four stories are listed in the series.

But when I read the stories themselves, only the first two stories have the "Read More Of This Series" box attached to the bottom of the last page. And this box only appears on those two stories. The other two stories don't have the box and aren't listed in the box on the stories where it does appear.

It has been days since I added the other two stories to the series, so I don't believe that it's a matter of needing to wait overnight for the story-reading part of the site to catch up with the series configuration I set in my author control panel.

This is not a matter of adding stories to the "wrong series" as I only have one series in existence, plus you can't add stories to multiple series.

I'm not going to name or link to the series or stories because I recently had a forum post removed for "advertising" (a story I hadn't even written yet, so I guess this is a pretty strict taboo). It's trivially easy if anyone cares to look at my stories list to figure out what I'm talking about and see this for themselves. I guess you'll have to take my word for it that in my author control panel, this series includes the other two stories, because I can't show that. I could post a screenshot of it and I will if asked for it, but for now this seems self-explanatory.

Any help? What could I be doing wrong here to cause this feature to not work the way I hope? What could be different about the first two stories versus the missing two?

Thanks

 

[RejectReality]

You can always post links to stories already published on Lit — especially when it can facilitate explaining a problem.

Someone may have mistaken your mention of the WIP for advertising work published elsewhere which is only allowed in a very few places. Or, if you added any text from the WIP, it may have been removed for exceeding the 2-3 paragraphs that are allowed on the open forum. Moderators can make mistakes.

As to the issue, it does indeed look as if the task that updates story pages has missed the third and fourth installments of your series. A couple of questions that may help Manu with tracking down any issues:

Was this series originally created via the old automated code? If so, were the first two installments the only ones that were part of that automatically generated series before you switched to manual management?

 

[Britva415]

Was this series originally created via the old automated code? If so, were the first two installments the only ones that were part of that automatically generated series before you switched to manual management?

None of it was automatically generated or using older website code, I added all stories to the series in the same manual way within the last 2-3 weeks.

 

[RejectReality]

None of it was automatically generated or using older website code, I added all stories to the series in the same manual way within the last 2-3 weeks.

That should be useful data

If the problem doesn't get resolved, and you don't get a response here, you might consider using the "report this" button on one of the chapters. You can use the reason prompt to explain that the series code isn't properly linking them to the rest of the series. That will provide the powers that be with a direct link to one of the problem chapters on the backend of the site, which could potentially move the matter forward.

I'd give it a couple more days, though. The task that takes care of series could very well fix yours in the next pass. The cache wall the site is behind and what I suspect are logistical necessities with running tasks can cause things to take way longer than you think they should sometimes. Plus, the code is still in Beta and being actively developed. A tweak could have caused this, and a reversion or second tweak could resolve it.

 

[SunflowerThorns]

I'm also having this problem with my series and it has been out for a month. I will try to use the report button if it isn't showing as a series by the publishing of part 3

 

[ElectricBlue]

None of it was automatically generated or using older website code, I added all stories to the series in the same manual way within the last 2-3 weeks.

My suggestion is to let the auto-compile function run first, before you change to the manual compile (to add a Series description or a cover page, or to show the series is complete).

I've got four chapters, all loaded in the last three weeks (the last one three days ago), that have auto-compiled correctly, the back and forth links all in place. I didn't need to use the manual compile, the site did it for me.

 

[SunflowerThorns]

My suggestion is to let the auto-compile function run first, before you change to the manual compile (to add a Series description or a cover page, or to show the series is complete).

I've got four chapters, all loaded in the last three weeks (the last one three days ago), that have auto-compiled correctly, the back and forth links all in place. I didn't need to use the manual compile, the site did it for me.

Electric blue, should I pull the series from the series beta option and see if that works?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Electric blue, should I pull the series from the series beta option and see if that works?

Given that you only have two chapters, yes, I'd undo it all at your end, then wait a day or two to see if the auto-compilation works.

I had two series with auto-compile errors from three years ago - with the new Series capability, I was able to fix both by disassembling both series and starting again. It took a couple of goes to figure it out, but in the end I got them both fixed.

In your case, I'd just let the system do its stuff.

I see the Series functionality useful if you want to (eventually) add a cover page and some blurb, and to signify a series is complete. Other than that, I tend to forget it's there. Being new, it's not part of the furniture yet, and I have no idea how readers might be using the feature.

 

[SunflowerThorns]

Given that you only have two chapters, yes, I'd undo it all at your end, then wait a day or two to see if the auto-compilation works.

I had two series with auto-compile errors from three years ago - with the new Series capability, I was able to fix both by disassembling both series and starting again. It took a couple of goes to figure it out, but in the end I got them both fixed.

In your case, I'd just let the system do its stuff.

I see the Series functionality useful if you want to (eventually) add a cover page and some blurb, and to signify a series is complete. Other than that, I tend to forget it's there. Being new, it's not part of the furniture yet, and I have no idea how readers might be using the feature.

Awesome! Thank you so much!