Heliopolis: News

Time to reveal what I've been working on for the last few months. Don't be alarmed, but there are going to be a lot of changes around here in the near future. My current computer situation not withstanding, I have managed to impliment the first stage of changes, due to a temporarily borrowed desktop and my very lovely and much appreciated, new, external harddrive, to which I have the website and lot of super secret files.

Heliopolis is moving from AutoArchive to eFiction, because it is more customizable, higher functioning and has several great benefits. The old and new versions of the Helio gen archive with once again be combined and completely searchable. The gen archive, adult archive and atlantis archive will remain separate structures, but with a shared log-in system. Each person will have one account that will allow them to access to all of their stories, in any of the archives to add, delete, or edit at your leisure. No more waiting on monthly updates (or longer for the old archive). There is even the ability to link previously published stories together in a series, and to access them in that manner.

Next, provided that I can find a couple of volunteers, Helio will be moving to a moderated submissions archive, at least for the time being, while everyone gets used to the new system. The largest number of complaints that I receive are about inappropriate submissions or because people feel there is to much het in their gen archive. If you think that's a problem, here's where you can help out. I will also be drafting up some clearer submission guidelines to help people place and rate their stories appropriately.

Unfortunately because of the way the database is formatted and the way all of the different tables intersect to make searching and using the archive easier for you, it is a bit of a hassle to set up. Each of the 10,000 or so stories/chapters in the archive has to be inserted by hand. I'd love some volunteers to help out with this task, even a few dozen entries would help, or hey, just want to do your own stories, I'm flexible... I've been asking for a familiarity with eFiction, but I don't guess it's necessary. I've done all of the programming already, and if I can't explain how the script works, we have bigger problems...

As soon as I have a good start on the archive, I will open it up alongside the existing archives. All of the current authors in all of the archives have an admin-created account at this point, but you won't be able to use it until I validate your information and release it to you, so I'll be setting up a contact form for this purpose. You fill out the form, I'll release the account, and you should get an e-mail with all of the relevant information, and you'll be able to edit or add to your stories.

I'm sure editing will be necessary, as I am just entering the minimum info (basically what I can get out of the quicksearch listings) so some information may be missing or incorrect, and some formatting may be lost in the process. I know that sounds horrible, but we only have to do this once, and I am sure the results with be worth it.

Keep an eye out here for updates.

You should never, ever make jokes about or speak ill of your computers. To make that lesson abundantly clear, my laptop died this morning. I was running a CHKDSK and it just turned itself off. When I try to turn it on, there is power, it just doesn't do anything. I think the mother-board is fried. I'll try to get the submissions back up as soon as possible - beyond that, I'm not sure. I backed up my e-mail a little while ago, but I'm not sure when. Recent stuff will have been lost.

My livejournal

This really hasn't been my month for elecronics. If I didn't laugh about the various issues that I've had around here, I'd seriously cry. [The most recent diaster involved vomit (not mine) and a keyboard - you really don't want to know.] To that affect, Helio submissions are still down, but are expected to resume sometime on Saturday. I'll head into town, to the college to make use of their internet connection to upload all of the changes and corrections. Hopefully, my laptop will cooperate on that issue.

For those that are curious, I use a five year old laptop computer that's missing the 1 key and doesn't have hi-speed USB ports (and can't use cards to fix that, because the slot doesn't work), a scavenged keyboard, a wireless USB mouse, my lovely new external hard drive (thank you!) and my old external hard drive (in a shiny new case), in conjuction with my prehistoric 26-28.8 Kbps dial-up internet connection to make all of this possible.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday and is enjoying their new year. I am looking forward to all of the submissions that I hope will come in this weekend.

There are changes in the works for the structure of the archive, and I will keep you guys up to date as I impliment them. I am still looking for users familiar with eFiction who would like to volunteer to help out. In the last two months, there have been zero volunteers.