Lazeez's Corner

Scoring System Changes

Since implementing the scoring system on the site in 1999, it has been the only controversial part of the whole site. Many users found it useful, some didn’t trust it and some ignored it. To authors it’s even more troublesome. Many authors expect the score to tell them how they did in their writing, they…

December 1, 2006
Recent Site Changes

I made few changes to the site in the past few days. I thought I’d talk about them a bit. The first two changes are in the way the voting mechanism and the feedback mechanism work at the end of stories. I’ve added some JavaScripts to make the forms submit to the site and return…

November 7, 2006
New Submission Wizard Features

Announcing new features of storiesonline’s story submission wizard

August 19, 2006
Email Feedback System: A minor, but important change

I’ve made a small change to the email feedback system that all authors should be aware of. From now on, all non-anonymous email messages coming from the site’s feedback system will be coming from ‘feedback’at’storiesonline.net’ with their ‘Reply to:’ field set to the real email address submitted by the feedback sender. The net result of…

February 17, 2006
Library Usage Examples and Tips

Lately, I’ve been getting many requests for certain features for the library system, even though those features already exist in the Library, like update dates and a way to track serial stories. So in order to address those requests, I’ve created a page that shows a sample uses of the Library system on the site.…

January 4, 2006
Story Classification

I have a problem. Or should I say, I’m dissatisfied with something. Story classification. Currently, the site uses codes to classify stories, but this method has significant shortcomings in my view. It does not distinguish between main themes or story types from minor activities. I want to create an additional classification system that focuses only…

November 3, 2005
New story reviewing system

Well, the new reviewing system is mostly finished. I revamped the review display page completely and made it accessible to everybody. The old reviewing system has been integrated with the site. No more need for a separate log in page and different ID. Reviewing is easier than ever for those with reviewer accounts. A new…

October 14, 2005
More beta stuff and site accessibility

This was a frustrating weekend. Inexplicably, still, some people are unable to access the site. The servers are online as usual. The DNS entries for the site are configured correctly. So why some Comcast, then Earthlink and now MSN users are unable to access the site? I don’t know, and can’t figure it out yet.…

April 25, 2005
The site’s new layout

I’ve been receiving quite a bit of comments and reports about the site’s new layout currently available in the beta area of the site. Some favourable, some not. The most common negative common so far is that there is nothing wrong with the current layout, so no need to change, and don’t fix what isn’t…

April 21, 2005
Biting more than you can chew, without realizing it!

As many of you who’ve read the previous entries in this blog know, I’m working on a new reviewing system for the site. I have the feature set ready and have already started with the implementation. However, I’ve hit few snags. Let me tell you a bit about my way of developing features. I don’t…

January 11, 2005