YWS Apollo FAQ

Rosendorn · 2011-12-24T17:20:20Z

To be updated as the site changes and more questions are posed. Therefore, feel free to post another question in the thread! One thing to keep in mind, though, is that every feature will come back in its own time. :) Nate is the only one coding the site, and he can only do so much at once. Where is/are... My portfolio? Currently, they aren't coded yet! However, you can access all your work by clicking Browse and pressing the "view mine" button on the righthand side. The literary forums? They are now under the "Browse" tab at the top. Scroll down to "how do I..." for navigation of this shiny new system. Likes Likes are now at the top of every post! You can't see who has liked anything yet, but the system is back. Blogs? You can now find blogs among the tabs at the top of the page. Clicking it will get you the latest blog entries in a list style, with options to the side. You can find details about them under "How do I..." These blogs are only temporary, with new blogs coming some time in the future. They are just a placeholder until Nate can get the literary works finished, then move on to new profiles (which will include blogs). Chat? Don’t worry — the YWS chat is still there, and available via the big blue button on the right-hand-side of any major forum clusters (Forums, Read/Write, Storybooks). A recent update means you can now see who's chatting before you log in thanks to the list above the button. Also, there is now a PM chatbar across the whole site! To disable it, just click the two downward facing arrows at the far right. To change your status message or availability, click the gear next to those arrows. My PM Inbox? In the black bar that stays at the top of the page when you scroll, you'll see an envalope. This is a direct link to your inbox. Also, inbox capacity has been halved, so it’s best to keep an eye on how many messages you have! My YWS? It has been renamed as Dashboard and is one of the tabs at the top of the page. The organization has stayed the same, so poking around should be familiar! One thing to note, though, is avatars are not automatically resized. Make sure any picture you want to upload is 100x100 pixels or less. If you want to use an image bigger than that, post here and somebody will resize the image for you. Notifications? The exclamation point in the black bar. Points and Review Count? Click on the human-shaped icon in the far left of the black bar, with the arrow next to it. That gives you a direct link to your profile, lists your reviews and points, gives a link to your blog and works, along with giving you the option to log out. Newsfeed? Click the "people" tab. What about the rest? At the moment we don’t have any of the features below, but the time-frames beside them should give you a good guide to when they’ll turn up again. This list will be updated and descriptions added as the site gets back to itself. Everything will come back, even though it's not listed here. :) We can only get so many timelines! Advanced profiles, including profile comments and portfolios (Late-January to February) Clubs (Undetermined) Gifts (Undetermined) Contests (Undetermined) Whilst a lot of this festive update is still “under wraps”, we do know that blogs will be returning as part of the Advanced Profiles mentioned before. These are intended to be more customisable than previous profiles — keep your eyes open for these. Do know that all the data is there. It's simply not being displayed yet. Once a site feature is back, all the data will be back where it belongs, not lost. Also, the above list is incomplete; it mostly includes things we have some sort of timeline for. Nate has said YWS will have all its old functions return, but he hasn't given a timeline for them. They could mysteriously show up one day, so keep checking! :) One thing that might not come back is nominations. According to Nate, it was a very broken system. But, that is still up in the air. How do I... Follow somebody? Go to Dashboard and click "Friends and Foes." There, you'll see an option titled "Add new friends" with a box next to it. Enter in the username of the person you want to follow exactly as it is spelled, then click "Submit." Repeat for as many people you want to follow. Navigate? You navigate using the green tabs at the top of the page. The only tabs we have at present are: Browse, Dashboard, Forums, People, Storybooks and Blogs. Click between them to get most forums from the old boards visible. Link Directly to a Post? Click the date above the post to get a direct link to that post. Use the Literary Forums? The literary forums are much different now, but is a bit more intuitive to use. When you click the "Browse" tab, you'll find a long list of recently posted works, in all genres. On the righthand side, you'll see a long list of genres, including essays, novels/chapters, short stories and poetry. Clicking on one of those genres gets a long list of sub-genres, like dramatic, realistic, romantic, fantasy, and other genres you know and love. You've also sorted the works into all items in that category (Ie- clicking "short stories" shows you a mix of all short stories posted on the site, while clicking "fantasy" after clicking "Short stories" gets you only fantasy short stories). Submitting a work is now only at one button: Submit, in the black bar up top (it's got a dog-eared page next to it). When you click this button, you are brought to a screen that shows a title window, description window, ratings, and finally a window to paste your work. Above this window, you have new options. You can copy/paste the work into the text window as per normal, or you can paste as plain text or from Word (the various clipboard buttons.) One thing you no longer have to worry about is adding in italics to your work once you've pasted it. The work will show up with similar formatting as it did in Word. However, adding in extra spaces between paragraphs is recommended, as indenting does not transfer over from Word. Check out this article for a quick way to space paragraphs. Once you've hit "submit" you have to categorize your work. This means selecting what is the primary categorization (novels/chapters, short stories, ect) and up to two more secondary categories (the genres mentioned above). You can also add it right to your portfolio from the "categorize" option. If you don't have the right folder for this piece, you can simply add it in right from the start. From here, you can do one of two things. "Submit" or "Select Privacy Settings." By hitting Submit, the work shows up under 'Browse'. If you click Select Privacy Settings, you can select up to five levels. Each level is explained on the screen. Do note that guests are now allowed to comment on works with this new system. This can be useful if you want to share your work with non-registered members, but if you'd rather guests not comment, then select the privacy level best suited for the piece. A bunch of little things are missing in the literary forums and will be coming within the next 24-48 hours. Navigate/Modify Blogs? On the right side of the screen, you'll see five options: My Blog Blog Control Panel Recent Blog Entries Random Blog Entries Popular Blog Entries What each option does is described below. My Blog : Click on it to reach the blog you knew and loved from YWS. Despite the fairly bare look of the recent entries, the look of any customized blogs is the same as the old YWS. However, if you did not customize your blog, then it looks rather plain now. Which leads me to... Blog Control Panel : Here is where you can customize your blog. Snoink has been so kind as to write an article on how to do so that still applies to YWS: Apollo. If you look at the left side of the window, you can also see where to set the blog title and description, along with permission settings. Recent Blog Entries : Shows all the entries in chronological order of when they were posted. Random Blog Entries : Shows any number of entries that have been made since blogs were first introduced to the site, ignoring popularity and chronology. Popular Blog Entries : Organizes blogs by number of comments, from greatest to smallest. Search the Site? At the very top of the site (in the black bar), on the right hand side, there is a white textbox labeled "search". Clicking that now results in being able to search the whole site, and if you click on "go back to advanced search" once you've searched, you can enter in more exact search terms and narrow your results down by author. :) It's also very fast now — no need to make a cup of tea while you wait for your search results to load! PM? Click the envelope in the black bar. Once you're in your inbox, click "New PM" at the top of it. Once there, you'll have to manually add the person you wish to PM by typing in their username to the white box and clicking "Add". If you're following this person, you can find their name in your friends list to the left and click "Add" next to their name. Edit and quote? Remember how the “edit” and “quote” buttons used to be nice friendly lozenges at the top of your posts? Now they’re rather tiny links in square brackets at the bottom of each post. If you’ve made the most recent post on a particular topic you also have the option to “delete” it, but you can’t if there are replies after it. The “report” link is for those rare occasions when you spot a breach of rules and need to notify a moderator. Reply? You can reply multiple ways: “Post Reply” at the side of the thread (at the top), “Quick Reply” (at the bottom) or “Full Reply” (Next to Quick Reply). Full Reply is exactly the same as Post Reply in its functions: it takes you to the post reply we’re used to. Quick Reply is just a way of answering the post without being taken to another window. Pressing it opens a text reply box (without any of the coding or smilies available around it) right under the thread, letting you answer posts in a snap! Why... Was the site updated? Do you know the number of times YWS crashed in the last two months? No — we don’t either. In short, YWS was in desperate need of help and the only way to save it was a complete overhaul of the site’s internal structure. This sort of project would normally take a long time to complete, but Nate has managed to rush development in time for Christmas, and continues working on it over time. Nate also wanted to make the site better for touch screens, such as tablets (iPads and others) and smartphones. Drop-down menus were very difficult to work with a touch screen, hence the lack of them in YWS: Apollo. He had wanted to do this much later, but with the database crashes, he decided to bring the update in early. Is my profile the way it is? Here’s another thing — the new vision is that YWS: Apollo will have advanced profiles that are customisable and incorporate your blog and favourite literary works. These will take a while to code, and are set to come out in February. Until then, these profiles provide a midway point. Do none of the links to threads work? Nate has totally redone the basic structure of the forums, which has resulted in the URLs changing! An old URL looked like this: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/post722000.html#p722000 New URLs look like this: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=402&t=91882 If you linked something and it looks like the “viewtopic” link above, it’ll still work! However, if you linked anything from the old url style, you need to update your link in order for it to work again. The data is still there, but the method of reaching it has changed. If you had any links to clubs or blogs posted, these will not work. This is not because the data is lost. It is simply because the data is not displayed yet in YWS: Apollo. Is the site updating in stages? Because of the aforementioned database crashes, YWS needed to be updated now instead of later, which is what Nate had hoped to do. Since the renovation had been slated to begin in January, Nate had to fast-track designing basic forum functions in about two weeks. Since the luxury of “time” was lost, Nate couldn’t do everything at once. He had wanted to give us the site completely done, but he couldn’t. If you look back to the timeline above, the last update is coming two months from now. That would’ve meant going through two more months of crashes, which Nate didn’t want to put us through. The crashes would've also taken time away from him working, which would've drawn the timeline out more. So he made the forums fully-functioning so we could still use the site, and plans to add in the bells and whistles on the timeline listed above. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask and it'll get answered and added in here!

Nate

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 12:26 am

Nate says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 12:26 am

Rosey, thanks for writing this up! It's fantastic

I've gone ahead and made a prominent link to it in the sidebar. That should help people with the disorientation.

Regarding portfolios, those will definitely be coming back. At least by the ides of January (the 15th), if not before then.

Founder

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Rosendorn

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 12:28 am

Rosendorn says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 12:28 am

Aloha- Edited to make it a bit clearer! The mid-January date is for "advanced portfolios", which includes a whole bunch of stuff.

And Nate- Not a problem at all! I can't take all the credit, though. Charlie helped me a lot.

A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.

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hudz96

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:24 am

hudz96 says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:24 am

wow thank you, i was bothered about it all, i still miss the old set up

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Rosendorn

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:33 am

Rosendorn says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:33 am

Hudz- I know it's very different, but chances are, you'll get used to it.

And, it's pretty fun being able to say "on the old YWS, it was like this!" once you get enough people who don't remember the old layout.

A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.

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eldEr

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:38 am

eldEr says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:38 am

Ahh, the old layout. Now I can officially say that I've seen something similar. xD

Good job, Rosey (and Charlie-who-helped-Rosey-a-lot)! I'm all excited now. :3

Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurl.

got trans?

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Tigersprite

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:55 am

Tigersprite says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:55 am

That sounds good. I was worried about the portfolios, because lately I'd had to hunt down my old work, but mid January isn't far ahead. I'm looking forward to the old stuff coming back and maybe in the future, a new WFP.

One question though. Did old PMs get deleted, if there were too many? I've got all the PMs I've been sent sat safely in my inbox, but all the PMs I sent myself before May 2011 have completely disappeared. They're even gone from the message history of my Inbox PMs. I most definitely did not have up to 500 messages in the Sent folder, let alone 5000.

"A superman ... is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do."
Nathan Leopold

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LadyFreeWill

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:40 pm

LadyFreeWill says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:40 pm

Wow! The site looks fantastic!

Formerly TheScratchMan.

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ehte92

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Tue Dec 27, 2011 5:49 pm

ehte92 says... · Tue Dec 27, 2011 5:49 pm

Loving the colors.

Are you living for the things you are praying for?

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noninjaes

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Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:42 am

noninjaes says... · Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:42 am

I'm loving quick reply. No points = post as many works as you want. Still review though. Lot's of reviewing!

Noni Naps Through Nano
NaPoWriMo 2016
Stories Not Otherwise My Own

Annie•Jae•Payne
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Being awesome since Jan 2012.

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Redfang18

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Thu Dec 29, 2011 6:26 pm

Redfang18 says... · Thu Dec 29, 2011 6:26 pm

What about putting literary works on a reading list? I've been putting every storybook I'm in on my reading list so I wouldn't forget about them.

Look down and show some mercy if you can.
Look down, look down, upon your fellow man.

~~~Les Miserables

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ShadowKnight155

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Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:18 am

ShadowKnight155 says... · Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:18 am

WE NEED POINTS BACK! That's what's kept the site secure and NOT messed up and unproductive like all the other sites! PLEASE bring them back! For the good of YWS! I fear for our stability...

PS: Please tell me its back....

By nature, all language is flawed.

"Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding," - Albert Einstein

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Rosendorn

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Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:37 am

Rosendorn says... · Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:37 am

Fang- You should be able to see your current reading list in Dashboard, but we're not sure when the ability to add things to the reading list will return.

Shadow- Nate's working as fast as he can! They will return, but we don't know when. ^^

A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.

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ShadowKnight155

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Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:45 am

ShadowKnight155 says... · Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:45 am

Yeah, I know. It's just I think that points should have a higher precedence...it's just my opinion in the end, but I think it's just important to the productivity of the site...

Anyways, Nate, thanks for keeping everything going, and good luck on the rest of everything!

By nature, all language is flawed.

"Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding," - Albert Einstein

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craz33me

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Fri Dec 30, 2011 7:40 am

craz33me says... · Fri Dec 30, 2011 7:40 am

Thanks for the help..
I'm not sure how well I like this though.

"Love is a lot like playing the piano, at first you play by the rules, but eventually you begin to play by the heart."

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http://www.twitter.com/craz33me
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787ellen

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Fri Dec 30, 2011 3:04 pm

787ellen says... · Fri Dec 30, 2011 3:04 pm

what about chapter work and novels?

787ellen

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