Writing Center IV Forum

Select theme

Special

Special Categories
(collapse when you don't need it)

Su-33a

Yesterday at 05:50:04 PM
Wim, read the pm I send you.

Su-33a

Yesterday at 05:39:46 PM
Kk, Thanks. I was just asking, because I have something big planned

wimvincken

Yesterday at 02:39:15 PM
If you need a back, let me know and do it immediately

wimvincken

Yesterday at 02:38:52 PM
Normally, I make a daily backup of all the servers, but I discovered that this was overkill. I reduced the automatic backup once a week.

wimvincken

Yesterday at 02:30:11 PM
In a special folder, Mohd. I prefer not to save backups of databases in another MySQL engine, because when something goes wrong with the engine, data will be lost. Why?

Su-33a

February 07, 2010, 09:02:28 PM
Yo Wim, where do you save the stories in ficdom? In a folder(FTP) or mySQL?

Su-33a

February 07, 2010, 05:49:52 PM
Watch Life Unexpected the TV show. It's really funny, and is about a girl showing up at her fathers doorstep.

roddan

February 07, 2010, 04:32:45 PM
one grows up real fast when one has has a chilld, but if the child is planned with a long term partner, then one knows what will happend sooner or later when one starts to make it happend, but it is a one night stand child and one get a kid on ones doorstep ine night then it might come as a schock.

wimvincken

February 07, 2010, 02:39:15 PM
Well Juuso. Everything changes when that happens. Suddenly your insticts take it over and you are busted for life

Juuso

February 07, 2010, 01:43:15 PM
The idea of having children yet terrifies me, I can't take care of myself yet!

Su-33a

February 07, 2010, 12:37:21 PM
Who knew blogging was so fun?

Su-33a

February 07, 2010, 12:36:44 PM
Who si Wim.vincken? check out my blog ti find out

www.seosyte.info

Su-33

February 07, 2010, 11:12:44 AM
who is wim.vincken?

Su-33

February 07, 2010, 11:10:02 AM
Yeah. I think some forum like announcement and dontations have post limits on them.

wimvincken

February 05, 2010, 03:21:55 PM
Which forum, vegito786?

vegito786@googlemail.com

February 05, 2010, 01:16:47 PM
yo wimvincken how do I post in the forums, it won't let me

wimvincken

February 05, 2010, 02:25:23 AM
But I'm a hypocrite - my daughter is now 6 years old and she is a real angel. When she is annoyed or in bad mood, I manage to get her out of her funk. So I understand very well. Having a daughter is amazing

wimvincken

February 05, 2010, 02:23:59 AM
As long as you are the parent, it is nothing personal. But when you are the husband or boyfriend, that totally changes (poor sob)

wimvincken

February 05, 2010, 02:22:51 AM
That's exactly how my wife reacts, Roddan. I'm afraid that this will not change

But don't worry, her future husband of boyfriend will take over from you when the time comes

roddan

February 04, 2010, 09:24:06 AM
When she is annoyed then she is demanding and not easy going, but when she is in good mood she is the perfect, depends on what mood she has.

Su-33a

February 04, 2010, 06:11:57 AM
Lol, she's 5 months hold. How bad can she be?

wimvincken

February 03, 2010, 10:30:55 PM
I told you, I knew it. Roddan's daughter is 18! And her stubbornness comes from the father side, her beauty from the mother

roddan

February 03, 2010, 02:08:15 PM
She is 5 months old, but she seems to have a mind of her own and want things done her way, we all obey our princess lisa when she orders us around , her stubborn ness comes from her moms side of the gene pool.

wimvincken

February 03, 2010, 08:24:37 AM
No Mohd. She is 18, but I think she is his first

Su-33a

February 03, 2010, 07:24:05 AM
It is his first and I think shes like 2 or 3 months old.

hptrump

February 02, 2010, 10:28:24 PM
Roddan how old is your daughter? Is this your first?

Su-33a

January 31, 2010, 08:03:35 PM
Super Bowl XLIV, check it out at: http://www.dukehost.info

roddan

January 31, 2010, 08:58:22 AM
My daoughter is angry at me, as soon as i leave the room she starts to cry and when i rreturn she stops, but if i get to close to her she start to cry so i have to keep a distance so she stops crying. my daoughter is wierd today, that does not come from my part of the genepool i might add.

Su-33a

January 30, 2010, 11:21:15 AM
Magical War Updated.

wimvincken

January 29, 2010, 01:01:13 AM
WC4 has been integrated with Facebook (thanks to Mohd). And testing it,m it works really fine. That means if someone wants to register here, he or she don't need to give user names and passwords, but simply use your facebook name to login

Welcome

Welcome to the Writing Center IV Forum

Looking for the fic indexes? Here they are!

This is the final place for the Writing Center 4 (WC4), where you can find Fan Fiction Indexes (small posts about a fan fiction story with description, some properties and a link to the fic). Those fics are organized in several ways: pairing, genres and the like, but also organized in the so called special categories (harem, multi-pairing, dark, powerful, independent and much more). There is also an extended directory with Harry Potter web sites (Link Directory), Image galleries and the Download Center (to download fics in its whole in different formats).
If you have any question or problem, please contact the Moderators or me.

The WC4 is not a community site, it is a reference site!

**About the User Groups at WC4**
User Groups	Description
Guests	Those are the people who are visiting the WC4 forum without registering. They are of course welcome, but the content they can see is limited. For example, all content about harems and interesting and popular pairings are closed for them. It takes only a registration here to give access to that information, plus to receive notifications (if you chose that) of changes.
Members	When you are registered, you are member of the WC4 Forum and you can access more information than a normal guest. That will not say that you can see everything! Certain sections like the harem section of this board are accessible only for Jr. Members. How to become a member? Simple, just register yourself at the forum and you are a member.
Jr. Members	The Jr. Members are the same as registered members, but with more access to the content of the board. For example, they have access to the Harem and Multi-pairing forums, where they can find hundreds of harem fics and very soon more to come. How to become a Jr. Member? Become first a member and add 20 posts into the forum and you become a Jr. Member Or you go faster, you buy 20 posts for $1. Please use the link on the left sidebar to make the purchase.
Full Members	The Full Members are the same as registered members, but with more access to the content of the board. They have the ability to create their own forums (not sections) and to maintain it as a Moderator (because they are owners of their forums). Plus, this board contains certain forums, which are very NC-17 (SMS, Sadism, rape, incest, etc.) How to become a Full Member? To become a Full Member, it requires 100 posts in the forum Or you could buy 5 sets of 20 posts. Please use the link on the left sidebar to make the purchase.
Gallery Member	A Gallery Member is a normal registered user, except that such user has full access to the galleries. For those of you who want to create their own galleries in the WC4 gallery collections, full control of the content, mass-upload and mass-downloads of any content of the galleries, creating play lists, online video and audio, etc. You can buy the Gallery membership for $1.
VIPs	VIPs are of the first group of paid users (1 dollar group). These users could bypass the requirement for all boards with post limit, as well as being able to access to the restricted area of the gallery.They would also receive a 250Mb of mail space with writingcenter4.info domain. You could buy the VIP membership for $1. Please use the link on the left sidebar to make the purchase.
Restricted Area Group	Restricted Area Group (RAG) members are of the second group of paid users (5 dollar group). These users have all the privilleges VIPs have. In addition, they also have special permissions settings in the gallery system, including being able to mass download, and create their own user gallery. You could buy the RAG membership for $5. Please use the link on the left sidebar to make the purchase.
VIP De Luxe	VIP De Luxe members are of the highest group of paid users ($25 dollar group). These users have all privilleges RAGs have, but they are also provided with a larger email space (500Mb), a subdomain (yourdomain.writingcenter4.info), 20 MySQL databases, and a FTP account. You could buy the VIP De Luxe membership for $25. Please use the link on the left sidebar to make the purchase.
Moderators	Moderators are normal members, who are moderating one or more forums. They are the ones who are responsible for the conduct if the members (finding spammers, maintaining the content, running role-playing games, RPC games, and the whole thing). How do you become a moderator? Ask me. Please consider - when you do become a moderator, you must spend many hours a day at the forum to do a good job..
Administrators	An administrator is responsible for the whole thing, every aspect of it, even when the admin has no knowledge of a problem, it is still his responsibility. I play here administrator, if you have any question or problem, contact me by PM or email.

Announcements

Run a quiz and the best will win prices. Your chance to become Full member

Posted by: wimvincken, January 14, 2010, 11:54:04 PM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

Read more

Run a quiz and the best will win prices. Your chance to become Full member instantly.
Quiz League Leader of the week: 500 Karma (each week a new price)
Quiz Masters (most wins): 250 Karma
Winner for the fanfiction quiz: 100 Karma

(The Quiz League Leader of the week will be announced at the 15th of January 2010. A Quiz League is a set of questions about fan fiction and several Harry Potter fics)

Karma points are the way to increase your standing as Newbie, Jr. Member (20 Karma) and Full Member (100 Karma) at the WC4

To take a look at the quizzes at WC4:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz

To see who the Quiz League Leaders are for this week:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=quizleagues;id=1

Some individual quizzes have their own individual prices.
Like the Quiz for 'Harry Potter and the Witches' Secret UK', where you can win 100 Karma points, which makes you instantly a Full Member at WC4. You can run the quiz here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=categories;id_quiz=18
Prices are awarded weekly!

If you think that you know enough about fan fiction in general, take this quiz:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=categories;id_quiz=14

The quiz about The Heritage is here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=categories;id_quiz=16

Furthermore, there are totally 18 different Quizzes with 232 questions with 45 categories.
To look at the quiz categories, go here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=categories

Global Quiz League
This is the hardest quiz here at WC4. It's the Global Quiz League, where you must answer 50 questions about any subject here. The winner of this League wins a RAG for a year! Once a month, a winner will be calculated and when this quiz is finished, the global winner will win a VIP DeLuxe membership (for life).
You can find this Global Quiz League here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz&sa=quizleagues&id=4

To take a look to the Quiz Leagues, go here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=quizleagues

Tributes to great artists of fanfiction started

Posted by: wimvincken, January 06, 2010, 05:39:35 PM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

I've created the dedicated category/forum for the 'Tributes to great artists of fanfiction'
You can find it here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=forum;#c13

Here you can add your favorite author/artist of fanfiction works (not only Harry Potter!) and people can vote fo the authors.

When the majority votes for inclusion, I create separate categories/forums, which will be dedicated for the author/artist with all his ...

Read more

HP Fandom is a joke!

Posted by: wimvincken, December 23, 2009, 04:44:27 AM

Replies: 3

Board: Announcements

Read more

I've been busy with making importers of fic indexes for all kind of sites.

Until now I have the following:
1. HPFanficarchive
2. fanfiction
3. ficdom
4. fictionalley
5. ficwad
6. harrypotterfanfiction
7. hpfandom
8. HPFanFicArchive

The latest I finished is the hpfandom. That site has 7,063 fics and it looked promising. Well, then I discovered the number of fics, which were slash. And that was not all!
In the section, which they claimed not to contain flash, was full of slash, not reported, but still there! Disgusting.

Even with the hidden slash, I build the importer and spend a lot of time in making the slash filters and I must say that i succeeded reasonable.

The end result is as follows:
Total stories: 7063
Stories not slash: 1178
Stories slash: 5885 (83%)

The pairings they support:
Draco/Ginny: 29
Draco/Hermione: 439
Draco/OC: 153
Harry/Ginny: 77
Harry/Hermione: 68
Harry/OC: 108
Ron/Hermione: 156
Severus/Hermione: 159

(the above numbers are from the not-slash fics).
For the WC4, only the pairings Harry/Ginny and Harry/Hermione, Harry/OC are interesting, the rest can go into the bin. And then we speak about 253 fics!

Special categories? Multipairing and harems? One harem story, and that one is not even with Harry as the main pairing.
Azkaban: 22
Manipulative: 3
Crossover: 22

So, if you don't mind, I focus on the next one. That site (hpfandom) is really disappointing.
61.23% of all 'General' fics were slash! 11% of the slash fics turned out not to be slash at all. That admin must get his ^%&^%& out of his ^&%&^%$^%^ and do some bloody stiffing work, the %$%**$$%#$@#@^*&

New forum Erotic stories and start of fics from eFiction archiving sites

Posted by: wimvincken, December 21, 2009, 05:52:34 AM

Replies: 1

Board: Announcements

For the members of VIP, VIP DeLuxe, RAG and Jr. and Full Members of the WC4, there is a new forum about Erotic fiucs (stories) with hundreds of fics (at the moment).

Next to this new forum, there are also hundreds of fics from the eFiction archiving sites, starting with the ficdom.net site (of course), and expanding (later) with the ...

Read more

Nine new series of avatars installed!

Posted by: wimvincken, December 03, 2009, 06:54:16 PM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

We've nine new series of avatars installed for your pleasure.
Look in Profile, choose Forum Profile.

angel
animated women
Avatars EQII
Code Avatars
comic book
game avatars
geek
hannah montana
vicecity-avatars

Read more

We've nine new series of avatars installed for your pleasure.
Look in Profile, choose Forum Profile.

angel
animated women
Avatars EQII
Code Avatars
comic book
game avatars
geek
hannah montana
vicecity-avatars

Quizzes, Tributes to great artists of fanfiction, user forums

Posted by: wimvincken, January 08, 2010, 09:00:01 PM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

Read more

Quizzes
As I have promised, I've installed the quiz module in WC4. A quiz module is the ability to answer questions (under time limitation).
There are now many different quizzes available for everyone in several categories, but what is interesting at the moment are the quizzes about fanfiction and stories.
It is a great way to promote your own fics for the authors under us. Each member in WC4 is able to create their own quizzes very easy.

To take a look at the available quizzes, here is the link:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz

To take the quiz about Fanfiction stories in general, click here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=categories;id_quiz=15

To take a quiz about fanfiction in general, click here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=categories;id_quiz=14

There is also a Fan fiction League created, where several players will answer questions about fanfiction in general and questions about certain fics specifically. Weekly there will be a League winner calculated.
Take a look to the current players and maybe you can take a shot at it.
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=SMFQuiz;sa=quizleagues;id=1

Tributes to great artists of fanfiction
The WC4 offers fic indexes to all the visitors in mainly two ways:
Pairings and Special categories

But several people in the past asked me to present fics from good authors in the fanfiction world. I created for that a section, where you can vote proposed candidate authors or submit your own candidate. You can find it here:
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php/board,262.0.html

After the candidate author is chosen, I will create special categories/forums for the author, where you can read about his fics (indexes) about all his or her stories and his or her profile.

This forum is another way of looking for good fics. If you like a certain author and you want to share it with others, add his or her as a candidate, so people can vote for it.

User Forums
Each member can request his or her own forum in the WC4. When you want such forum, please let me know in a PM (Personal Message) or an email and I create one for you. It's a place for your fics, for beta reading, a place for pre-publications or a place for community and/or discussions about any subject, which has to do with fanfiction (can also be art), gaming, movies, books, etc.

Wim Vincken

2,000 new fics and future of WC4 and Ficdom.net

Posted by: wimvincken, December 27, 2009, 09:52:17 AM

Replies: 1

Board: Announcements

Read more

Happy Holidays to all of you

We at WC4 wish you all merry holidays and a happy New Year
About 2,000 new stories (fics) from multiple archive sites
For the holidays, we have inserted almost 2,000 new fics into the WC4 from the following HP-fanfiction archiving sites:

1.   http://www.ficdom.net
2.   http://www.fanfiction.net
3.   http://www.fictionalley.org
4.   http://ficwad.com
5.   http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com
6.   http://www.hpfandom.net
7.   http://www.hpfanficarchive.com
8.   http://www.patronuscharm.net

There are some 3,000 (new) fics waiting to be inserted, which we will do over the holidays and beginning of January 2010.

The fics from hpfandom.net, hpfanficarchive.com, patronuscharm.net and ficdom.net are the ones, which are new. I must say that importing fics from the hpfandom.net was a huge pain in the butt. Not only because there are so many slash-fics (83% if slash), but the rest was not much worth the trouble to import (too small, no special categories, which are so in fashion at the moment) and mainly pairings, which were interesting 2-3 years ago, but not anymore.

The content of hpfanficarchive.com and ficdom.net contain many the same fics, except that the authors published them in both sites. I leave those double fics, because they are from different sources!

The fics from the patronuscharm.net is not as large as the other fanfiction archiving sites, but they contain (in my opinion) good quality fics, even that many of those fics can be found at the ficdom.net site as well. An excellent site it is.

The fate of the Writing Center
The current year comes to the end and the next year, 2010 is peeping around the corner and it is about time that we are going to think seriously about the future of the WC4 (and not to forget ficdom.net).

I’ve run the Writing Center already for 3 years now and started with a simple forum with fic index lists (pages with Harry Potter stories from mainly fanfiction.net, organized in categories. That was expanded with several other engines (like the wiki-experiment) until it was back to the forum, but this time the SMF (from Simple Machines).

The Writing Center is now a reference site about fics (Harry Potter stories), which is not slash! And I am doing everything to expand the content of the site (only this month almost 2,000 new fics inserted from many sources. In the beginning of 2010, I also insert the fics from Schnoogle, AstronomyTower, TheDarkArts into the WC4, as long as they are slash-free. And it will also not only be limited by those sites, but any HP-site I can find.
If there is someone out there with a HP-fanfic archiving site and you want to have your fics included in the categories of WC4, please let me know (reply here for example or contact me in the WC4).

In the walk of 2009, I discovered that it might be time to give the management of the WC4 and Ficdom.net to others. I had that envisioned in the form of elections. But I have no idea if this idea has merit and if there are people who are capable to manage a site like the WC4 and Ficdom.net. For this I created polls, you can find here: http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php/board,41.0.html

At least you can tell or vote about several things and when you are dissatisfied with the WC4 and its management and how it is run, vote to kill!

People, don’t forget the problems about the lostfanfiction at ficdom.net! In my opinion, the lostfanfiction must be expanded to even to fics, which are removed publically and will be added as lost in Ficdom.net. In my opinion, fics, which are abandoned, must be made available for adoption, even when the author can’t be reached anymore! Well, that is not WC4 exactly (more Ficdom.net), but still that is my opinio0n. If I am still admin in 2010 (when nobody reacts or they choose me for the next year too), then that will be implemented (only better organized).

When you don’t like it, please, remove me and put someone else as admin for the WC4 and ficdom.net. Su is a very responsible admin/Global Moderator and he will be able to do an excellent job, at least better than me. I will stay on as data entry person and technical consultant if that would be alright with the then new admin.

New content
And in the WC4 there is now content. New categories, much more fics in the existing ones, more harem and multi-pairing fics, more dark!harry, powerful!Harry, Erotic stories, new galleries, new themes, blogs and more. There is for the month December 2009 almost 2,000 new fics inserted and 150Mb of Gallery content added.

We need your input
The WC4 is a reference site for Harry Potter none-slash fan fiction. It is an index site. The content is collected by automated software, but is manually inserted (security and all of that). That means many hundreds of hours a month of inserting new fic indexes into the WC4.

And because of the too much work, we might forget the simple overview and forgetting certain categories (for example for those who want, only one-shots, or a better example, there are categories about Harry/Female. But I had totally forgotten the Harry-no pairing category! (that is now fixed)).
When one of you sees or misses something important, let us know? If you do, we respond by supplying it.

Some people have asked me to include (again) the special boards about well known and popular Harry Potter fanfiction authors. I think I will setup several boards for that, but then we need to have candidates. Those will be added in the coming days for everyone to supply their preferences. The boards for those authors will then contain their autobiography, their history, and of course their fic indexes).

Finances for the WC4 and Ficdom.net
The WC4 and ficdom.net are running on a dedicated server, which cost $45/month. The server is paid till March 2010 with the money from the subscriptions and donations (http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php/board,211.0.html ).

In the year 2010, I will (when I am still at the WC4 as an Admin) search for more donators and for other form of advertisement then the Google adsense engines (this is mainly good for attracting website traffic and to promote fics to the general public in the Internet).

Also to increase the finance, I might be forced to restrict the WC4 for guests and normal members!! This depends on the financial situation in January 2010!
I will submit my plans at the end of this year till the first week of January 2010. Everyone can vote for it (including the guests).

Thank you, (new and) amazing Harry Potter Authors and websites
I like to thank the amazing (some of them are relatively new) authors of Harry Potter fanfiction (especially the none-slash ones), like Mohd (find his site at his Social Site http://dukeblog.xadro.net ), Shezza, CrimsonRogue, NoOneInteresting, Easysurfing, Juuso, 77dmk77, nuhuh, joe_6991, Silens Cursor, ulu42 and the others (I did not mention). Thanks to them, WC4 is still running and we still have HP-fanfiction, otherwise the site closes or is doing something else.

Also thanks to all the volunteers of all the Harry Potter fanfiction archiving sites out there. Most of the people are doing an excellent volunteers job.

Wim
Writing Center IV

New galleries uploaded

Posted by: wimvincken, December 22, 2009, 12:12:31 AM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

More details...

The Potter's manor

Read more

More details...

The Potter's manor

I've uploaded an amazing gallery (Breathtaking Landscapes), which is one of my most beautiful collection of landscapes, cityscapes, forests, mountains, science fiction-scapes, space-scapes, waterfalls, ruins and much more.

Also I inserted fantasy art gallery, my favorite female character in the HP-universe, Daphne Greengrass and the Greengrass gallery. Here you can see her in blond, brown and black hair.

I also created an additional erotic gallery, which is filled with women who are posing for the artist. This gallery is only available for the RAG, VIP, VIP DeLuxe user groups!

Another gallery is the Tattoos gallery. In this gallery you can see various tattoos on the bodies of young women (I personally think it is stupid to have any tattoo on your body, because they become ugly in a couple of years and you can't remove it then anymore), but here you have it, the Tattoo Gallery. This gallery is only for members of WC4. It is not exactly erotic, even when some images displays naked models.

New themes, your own blogs, images in Gallery and major updates

Posted by: wimvincken, December 12, 2009, 05:02:29 AM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

Read more

This is the December 2009, some weeks before the years end.

According the schedule, I was suppose to make changes in the themes, some additional functionality and major updates in the WC4 (read here fic indexes).

Well, I almost finished with that, but there are some small issues left. Here follows what is new.

Blogs
We build a new professional Blog engine into the WC4, where registered members are able to create their own blogs and everyone else (the public) can read them. Thewre are no rules and no restrictions creating and managing your blogs. You can do with it aa you please. There is also no moderation. You are the chief, the boss and you can write what ever you want, except when the content you are writing is against the law (terrorism, warez, etc.). The rest goes as you please.
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=pmxblog

New images in the Gallery
The Gallery is updated. The areas of the updates are mainly in the Erotic Art Gallery, which saw almost 100 new images inserted. I have a collection of Mystical Art ready on disk, which must be uploaded as well, but that will only happen at the end of the coming week.

Bug- and issue base
We have a bugbase at the WC4 (and you can insert issues (idea's, suggestions, idea's) in the same engine as well). When you, or anyone else, inserts a bug or an issue, you can monitor the bug (or issue) automatically. Each change will be result in an email notification.
http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=projects

The bugbase covers WC4 and Ficdom.net.

New fic indexes and Fic Index Lists
I've been inserting fic indexes mainly in the area of pairings Harry/Hermione and Harry/Ginny. The reason for those two are because there are so many fics for those pairings, and those pairings were lacking. Another reason for inserting so many fics in those two areas was to test the speed of the WC4. The site became very slow and after a while when someone created a topic or replied on a post, and clicks the save button, it took sometimes more then a minute before the entry was saved! That is now resolved. Insertions of topics and posts are quick (about 3 seconds) after I have removed the faulty modules from WC4.

Fic Indexes are nothing else then topics about a Harry Potter fanfiction story, whuch gives a small description, some additional info like words, chapters, author, last update and created, etc. It also contains a direct window - embedded in WC4 - to the author page. That last ensures that you see the actual state of the fic (if it is changed that is).

A Fic Index List is a collection of 15 fic indexes (minus the embedded author pages) in one topic. The purpose for this is to give another way of presenting the fics in a forum.

The purpose is that we will have both options available in WC4.

Future fic indexes
At this moment of writing this announcement, we have fics from 4 sources:
1. Fanfiction.net
2. Ficdom.net
3. harrypotterfanfiction.com
4. Fictionalley.com

For me, that means that I programmed a program (spider), which is visiting those sites regularly and imports fics into databases. The purpose of this spider is to generate reports, which can be used to be inserted in WC4.
Because of all four sites are using different fanfiction archiving software, I was forced to program parts separately for each site. After that was done, there was no problem in importing fics.

Because I don't want to abuse the ability to import the sites, the spiders are only active once a month for 3 hours.

So far, so good.

The problem is that inserting the fics (everything else is done automatically) must be performed manually. Well, that is life and that means for everyoneof us that it might take a while before we finished with inserting 800,000 fics (at this moment we have about 9,000 fics inserted).

Now there is a need of a change. Many people read many fics already and they have more and more problems in finding the new ones, even when they use WC4 or they asking me for some queries of WC4 private database.

There are many fanfiction archiving sites out there like ficdom.net and HPFanFicArchive.com. In the link section of WC4 there are many of those sites (http://forum.writingcenter4.info/index.php?action=links).

Many of those sites are dedicated or specialized in certain areas, like Only Slash, only Ginny Weasley or Hermione Granger or Ron and Hermione, or Snape only or Ginny and Draco or what ever. There are simply too many of them to call. And there are also specialized HP-sites with fanfiction, which are fairly unknown to anyone I speak to.

Most of those sites have something in common. They are using all the same fanfiction archiving software, and that is eFiction. And this makes it interesting for me, because when I change the spider software to include eFiction software, this helps enormously the time that I can import fics into the big databases.

And that is what I am busy with. At this moment an early beta version if already working and I have already imported (multiple times) about 9,000 fics! And you will be amazed how many harem fics are out there, and multi-pairing and other interesting categories.

When I have tested the spider and it works fine, I will start to add thousands of fics into the special categories, which will interest everyone else of course.
I also will make another change is that within the fic index, you will see the embedded first chapter of the fic as preview.

New themes
There are 17 new themes installed in the WC4. Many of those themes are really nice and attractive. They are divided into several groups:
1. Light themes
2. Dark themes
3. Colored themes (like red, green and blue)

The next wave of new themes will be themed themes (like holidays, sports, Harry Potter, x-men, etc.) and Art themes (beautiful themes, but heavy in graphics, so slower then normal themes). But that will be next year.

WC4 upgraded with different layout (themes) and new features

Posted by: wimvincken, November 28, 2009, 03:51:26 PM

Replies: 0

Board: Announcements

Read more

The Writing Center IV has been upgraded!
The WC4 ran on the forum engine SMF 2.0 RC1.2.
That meant that it was hard to make changes to the forum, and for that reason I decided to upgrade the forum engine to SMF 2.0 RC2.0.

Because of the changes, some functionality is not included anymore in the WC4. Here is a small list of functionality not supported in WC4.
1. Games - removed
2. Shop - removed
3. Chatting - removed
4. Tags - rewritten in another engine
But the upgrade did improve the forum software itself and it removed many old bugs.

New Features
Running the Writing Center for several years now and listened to the users, the following functionality is included with the new upgrade:

1. Favorite Forums
This is a list of your Favorite Forums, which is displayed at the top of the forum index. In this way you don't need to browse down the forum index and go into all kind of child forums to reach your favorite forum.

To add a Favorite Forum to your list, you click on one of those little green icons with a plus in it and you have your forum bookmarked or made favorite.

This functionality is added because many users asked to reorganize the forum index in a way, that they can reach their favorite forum. The problem with that is that many users prefer different forums. With the Favorite Forums feature, everyone can make a list of their own preferred forum.

2. Sub-accounts
A sub-account is a real user account in WC4, but linked with your own account. Your own account is the parent, and the sub-account is a child from it.

What can you do with a sub-account?
1. You can use your sub-account to login if you want.
2. When you create a post or topic, you can select (one of your) sub-accounts to post it if you want

The reason for the sub-accounts is to give users the ability to login under an other identity if they want or need. Some users were asking that and what they did was registering to the WC4 multiple times under using other emails. Now it is allowed, but under a sub-account.

This feature is only available for Global Moderator, Moderators, members of the Moderator Group, VIP, RAS and VIP De Luxe!

3. Issues and bugbase
The WC4 introduces the Issues and bugbase.

This is the place, where bugs and issues (suggestions, propositions) are administered. Each member is able and allowed to add bugs or issues to the Issues and bugbase. They have also the ability to subscribe, so that they get automatically updates if a status is changed.

The Issues and bugbase works as follows:
1. Someone adds a bug or issue
2. I or one of the moderators will respond with Confirmation (they confirm that it is a problem and someone will do something about it)
3. When there is a question or need more information, we respond with Feedback
4. If we fix a bug, then the status get changed into Resolved.
5. If we include or exclude an issue, we change the status to Closed.

In all cases, you get to monitor your bug or issue and someone will respond to it.

4. Tooltips
Before the upgrade, WC4 had a topic summary, which was displayed as a separate column. That meant that the title of the topic had less space then before.
This is replaced by the advanced tooltip. When you move your mouse over the title of a topic and wait for a second, the tooltip will display the content of that topic in the form of a tooltip (floating window under the mouse).

5. Themes
We included themes (Ficdom calls them skins) in the WC4.
One word of caution: not all the themes do support all features in the WC4. Only the default theme and Disinct themes do support all features.

If you find our favorite theme and a certain feature is not supported in the theme, add a bug in the Bug and Issues (Projects) and we take care that the functionality is included if possible.

Over the coming weeks, we will do a lot of work on the themes and we will introduce more themes, which will include seasonable themes.