[Lingster]

I’m thinking about reworking Brawna.org.

Brawna.org grew into a really high overhead site as hundreds and hundreds of stories were added, but I moved it to a new webhost about a month ago and it’s running a lot more smoothly. Before the move the site was serving up 8,000 pageviews daily and choking on it, but now it’s doing 10,000 a day without a sweat.

So here are some change proposals:

• In addition to showing them at the bottom of stories, aggregate all the story comment threads in one place, like a forum, so that readers could get a better sense of what’s got “buzz”.
• Appoint editors who would have abilities to select “featured stories” on a regular basis, and spawn profile pages for popular authors.
• Add a bookmarking ability so readers would be able to select their favorite stories and easily find them again, as well as share their favorites with other readers.
• Add PDF downloading.
• Change the blog-form front page to a more category-based, grid-like display.

What do you think?

[FlakBait]

Lingster wrote:

What do you think?

If you wore a snuggie AND HD sunglasses at one time would the universe implode or would you have an orgasm?

I don’t drop by brawna too much but I have noticed that for some reason new stories don’t always appear on the front page when posted despite being in the “new stories” list on the right hand side. I do think there needs to be an improved direct search function though. An alphabetical search index link on the front page with options to search by title or author name if you want to get fancy. So far unless I’ve missed something when you click an authors name it just gives a brief profile outline, no list of their work or anything. Perhaps an ability to comment on authors as well?

[TC2]

I like the features you have in mind, though with this community I don’t think the editors thing will go over as swimmingly. Lot’s of lazy bums around here.

I’m pleased to see that Brawna is doing so well and will be submitting a story myself, BUT!

I feel that the search engine needs some improving. Like Flakbait said the new stories don’t sometimes appear on the front page. When Cowprobe had posted his latest story it was almost impossible for me to find it.

What would be really useful is a better working search feature that can allow me to search something by author rather than categories. Brawna at the moment seems more geared towards a person who is bored, clicking on a category, browsing the library, and then sitting down with a random story.

Where as for someone who wants something specific, it’s a little bit trickier to find something especially if you don’t know the author. For instance, if I wanted to look up the Wonder Woman muscle growth story, I get a whole bunch of hits for different mentions of Wonder Woman, where as I’m looking for something specific.

All the other changes you suggested sound great, but again I’m not too keen on user editors because it would not be unsurprising for the editors to not be doing what they were appointed to do. Also some editors might favor more stories due to who wrote them rather than the quality of the story, the community is very clique’ish.

[FlakBait]

the_collector_2 wrote:

I like the features you have in mind, though with this community I don’t think the editors thing will go over as swimmingly. Lot’s of lazy bums around here.

All the other changes you suggested sound great, but again I’m not too keen on user editors because it would not be unsurprising for the editors to not be doing what they were appointed to do. Also some editors might favor more stories due to who wrote them rather than the quality of the story, the community is very clique’ish.

Yeah I kinda had the same feeling about that. Unless Lingster can find someone to do it who is outside the story writing community and at least semi-objective. If not it will turn out to be one of those things that is done for a couple weeks and then whomever it is stops doing it out of laziness or becomes a joke when their friends get all the spotlight.

[Lingster]

Stories don’t automatically post to the front page automatically for several reasons, and I consider them to be good reasons. I have to manually move them to the front page. I don’t intend to change that.

The search function is problematic because it requires huge resources to index the whole site. (Imagine the effort involved in indexing every word of a story with 10,000 words, times 1,000.) So I use Bing to do that, and instead use categories and tags to let people find what they’re looking for.

Currently the site regards all 3000 registered users as authors, so creating an author page for each one of those people would not make it easier to find stories. I need a human being to manage a “featured author” category and elevate authors who are likely to be searched for. However, as it stands now you can click the “Track” tab at the top of any given user page and see all of the stories and comments the person has written.

[AlexG]

Don’t know if he’s still visiting us, but Fritzcat was the leading contributor to the story review thread @ giantess.com – might be someone to approach as an Brawna editor.

“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)

[TC2]

Ah, I thought it was automated. Well that’s a bummer, I should probably consider taking a web design class.

[Lingster]

the_collector_2 wrote:

Ah, I thought it was automated. Well that’s a bummer, I should probably consider taking a web design class.

It could very easily be automated, but then we’d wind up with a lot of spam and other crap on the front page. I’m willing to allow anyone who can complete a CAPTCHA and confirm an email address to add a story, but not post to the front. We’d be overwhelmed.

Web “design” has nothing to do with it; this is about implementation. I pick an application that I think will be suitable for the task and I make it work. Brawna.org runs on Drupal, which is kind of a pain in the ass in its own special way but does pretty much anything you’re likely to want it to do with only a little bit of tweaking.

Amaz0ns runs on Joomla. Growth Comics on WordPress. I’d love to run everything on WordPress, but only recently has WordPress gotten serious about managing large membership sites.

[CDR]

As for me, the PDF downloading sounds outstanding.
Perhaps we could include pics with the stories?
As allways, thanks for your marvelous webmastery 😀

[Lingster]

CDR wrote:

As for me, the PDF downloading sounds outstanding.
Perhaps we could include pics with the stories?
As allways, thanks for your marvelous webmastery 😀

I’ve been weighing the issue of embedding images in stories. What I’m concerned about is that people won’t be able to do it right and I’ll get a lot of help requests.

And I really don’t want a lot of help requests.

[Author]

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