Young Writers Society

I have a question. Google really knows me well... too well. That is, it keeps on putting delicious food ads in front of me (Dominoes... Mothers cookies... oh god, I need pizza now!) and I have to click. Have to. Because I like torturing myself with food that I should probably not have.

Google probably knows me this well because I gave it permission to look at what ads I was actually interested in, so now they have my soul and animal cookies.

Anyway, if you're part of these programs in which Google targets ads specifically to you, does this effect the revenue?

I don't know fully how Google's algorithms work. My basic rule of thumb is just if you see something you like, click on it like you would any ad. But don't just click for the sake of clicking.

Basically, remove your ad blinders when coming to YWS

*Sniffles* It's starting to look like the old YWS. It's beautiful, man.

The thing I like about my time zone is that when I wake up, I always see new features.

It's really cool.

I love the new icons, Nate! Very cool and stuffs!

So what are the notifications going to be for ?

Before Apollo, we had notifications which told us if someone reviewed your work, asked for a review, commented on something on your profile or blog, posted in a storybook, etc.

Dashboard on the Navigation Tabs...now my life is complete! It's really functional, I say. I miss the Review Counter beside the Search Bar, though. It really helped me when I was reviewing. Well, at least I can still find it in the Profile Icon!

Affddfdfdddsssgh!! I leave for three days, and when I come back there are all these shiny lovely newy things!!!! NOTIFICATIONSSSSS.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

I only just noticed this, but the search box is different.

Well, quite a few updates over the past few days all having to do with the user bar up top.

In the midst of working on the notifications page, I came across a problem: there was no room to link to it in the user bar, which was already very cluttered. So, I started moving stuff around.

The dashboard link was made into a navigation tab, which makes sense although the tab itself may change somewhat once the home page is done. That is, the home page tab will simply be a home icon. What I'd like to do is place a gear icon, which would link to the dashboard, next to that (sort of like app tabs in Firefox & Chrome). But it works well for now.

The review and points information was (reluctantly) moved to the drop down user menu. I would like to have that info displayed more prominently, but it's of secondary importance to new messages & notifications. While there is still a lot of room in the user bar for them, it made the bar very cluttered and looked confusing. So, they were moved.

What stayed was the new messages info and the submit link. I think the former is pretty self-explanatory, but the second may not be. The submit link was kept simply to highlight what YWS is about: sharing your creative work.

Also added was a link to the currently non-functional notifications page. Linking to it after all was the entire point of the revamp!

The search box was also significantly changed in two ways. First, it no longer looks terrible. But second, it actually works. It now uses Google custom search to search the site, which has its plusses and minuses. On the plus side, it gets to use Google's very advanced algorithms. On the minus side, not everything is on Google and there's a lot of stuff that you don't necessarily want in the search results (such as links to the old literary works forum or to the old, old YWS).

Fortunately, those minuses are addressable. I just need to do some htaccess work and to begin submitting sitemaps to Google again. Easy fix.

Last but not least, the drop-down user menu actually looks nice. I modeled it after Twitter's, and I think it came out rather well.

Notifications coming... soon? Only the fates know, but things are moving.

Thank you Boss Nate for the newly added features! The apparent darkening of inactive text boxes are really useful; now I know if the scroll works inside the text box or not. The new profile drop-down is also cool! I love the thematic semi-transparent blue color!

Is it possible to retain the user bar while scrolling and while on the other parts of the page, ala Facebook? I think it would be useful since the search bar can be conveniently used anytime and the user can easily see if s/he had received new notifications and messages. Just a question/suggestion!

Seconding alfred, but with the option to turn the scrolling off.

Oh, yeah! I didn't imply a static screen, huh? I'll edit it, Kyll!

A bunch of changes.

The user bar now scrolls with the page per alfred's and Kyllorac's suggestion. At the moment, you can't turn that off although that may change in the future.

The chat bar has received a cosmetic update to make it more in style with the rest of the site.

Also, notifications are working for the forums, storybooks, wrff, and literary works.