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 Announcements pertaining to Writing.Com! |
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| Hello, everyone! We have some new skins for you to try out... and a brand new selector box to make it a little easier to find them! If you click your skins button up at the top left of current header (move your mouse to the left of the graphic up there beside the Writing.Com logo), you will now see a selector box, which will drop down the list of currently available skins. And here are a few new ones today! Yesterday's new skins were: And the currently most popular (BEFORE the release of these new ones) are: Enjoy! I hope this brightens up your workspace and inspires you... I will continue to make a few of these each day until the tools are there that allow you to create your own!  -The StoryMistress  |
| Hello, Members! As many of you know, in September Writing.Com will celebrate its 10-year birthday! We are very excited about how far we have come in those ten years and the many wonderful things that are still to come. In honor of our first decade and the new one to come, Writing.Com has just released some major and quite fantastic updates to the site. We call it v10. Over the years, we have listened to member and visitor feedback about how hard it is to navigate the current version of the Writing.Com website, which we now lovingly call eww. "The links are so scattered." "I can't find anything and have no idea what to do." "Where is the documentation on this?" "I don't understand WritingML." After two years and thousands of hours redesigning, experimenting and finally executing a new version of our website, we are extremely excited to release it to you! *insert dramatic music here* v10 includes some of the most significant changes that Writing.Com has seen since its inception in 2000. We've honestly lost count of all of the new tools and features you'll discover, but here are some of the major ones that we can't wait for you to see: New Layout The website navigation has been given a complete makeover, removing all of the double links and scattered chaos that was in eww and replacing it with much more streamlined, intuitive links and information. The left column now reaches to the top of the screen and all of your pertinent account information placed directly under the logo. Next you'll find the five little icons that used to be further down the screen. They are now much more prominent and easier to find. Below that, you will find the four most relevant links for this writing community: Reading, Writing, Authors and Reviews. Continued underneath are the rest of the links to which you are accustomed. The system's code has been rewritten, as well, creating a much faster page load for members and visitors. The new layout is much more up to date and compatible with current browsers. The titles and key words around the site have been made a bit larger, making them stand out more and easier to find. We've also eliminated all of the harsh black bars around the site. There are just so many little visual adjustments we've made that make the site cleaner, brighter and friendlier for all. Skins & Themes And with this new layout comes SKINS and THEMES! "Skins" are graphics (currently designed by the StoryMistress) that allow you to instantly change the look of your Writing.Com page headers and "Themes" are the navigation colors that coordinate perfectly with them. At the top of your Writing.Com page, you will see a purple gradient (the WdC default Skin). Now, move your mouse to the far left of that purple gradient and you will see a small "SKINS" button pop out. Click this to open a small menu to the left above the Writing.Com logo. As you page through the Skins and Themes you will see your WdC page change instantly before your eyes! Find the perfect Skin & Theme that suits your mood or writing style today. When you've found your favorite, click the little x button on the menu and go about your business of reading, writing and reviewing! We are in LOVE with this new feature and are VERY excited to see where we take it. For v10's initial release, we will only be offering Skins & Themes that we've designed and made available. We have so many ideas on what we can do with these, but simply put... the code is not written yet! In the future, members will be able to design and upload their own skins and themes, making them available to the community for free or Gift Point fee. There will be WritingML tags for your skins, a management area for you and so much more. But for now, you simply get to play with them, sift through them and choose the one you love the most today! Writing.Com 101 Remember how scattered our documentation was? How our how-to items were here and there, some explained too much, some not at all? Of course, you do because members are always asking "where is this??" Not anymore. We have completely rewritten the documentation for everything that is Writing.Com with our brand new handbook:
This book contains everything from information about each item type and how to make one and manage it to every single item and writing tool that is available on this site. Not sure how to set up your offsite email address? Look in 101. Want to know the requirements for being promoted to Preferred? Look in 101. Need to know what community recognition entails? Look in 101. 101 is the most comprehensive and organized set of documentation that Writing.Com has ever had. Our handbook is a continuing project and will be added to as new tools, features and items are released.This should make it much easier for new members to understand the site and existing members to learn about tools they never knew were here! And if someone asks for help, it's a snap for other members to show them where to go to find what they need! WritingML for 101: To make things even easier, we have set entry aliases for each entry in 101. Now, instead of hunting down that entry ID number, you can type its alias instead. You will find the entry's alias at the bottom of any one of the entries. You will also find the full list of all of them linked from the Appendix in "Writing.Com 101"  . With over 170 entries in the book (so far), these aliases should make it easy to reference the info. For example:{entry:101_create_static} = "Create/Edit a Static Item" {entry:101_group_access} = "Access Levels Within Groups" {entry:101_free_paid} = "Free and Paid Membership Benefits" {entry:101_fs_edit} = "Full Screen Edit"  There is also a new tag: f-entry, which will show any entry AND its book's title!{f-entry:101_create_static} = Create/Edit a Static Item from Writing.Com 101 {f-entry:101_group_access} = Access Levels Within Groups from Writing.Com 101 {f-entry:101_free_paid} = Free and Paid Membership Benefits from Writing.Com 101 {f-entry:101_fs_edit} = Full Screen Edit from Writing.Com 101 Though there have been several contributors of content, we feel we absolutely must mention three individuals that have been just insanely helpful in pulling 101 altogether: JACE  , Jeff  and Diane  . We sincerely appreciate your writing and time spent!Paid Membership Changes We are no longer offering the Enterprise Membership on Writing.Com. Along the same lines, we are renaming our Professional Membership to Premium Plus. We feel that Premium Plus is a friendlier, much less intimidating title for that level than Professional. Premium Plus is just that... it's Premium plus some additional features and tools! Paid Membership and Gift Point Images Throughout the entries of "Writing.Com 101" , you will see brand new images that notify members that a level of paid membership is necessary or Gift Points are required to use that particular WdC tool, item or feature. The images are all clickable to another item or the store that gives them the opportunity to upgrade their account or purchase Gift Points, if necessary. This should help make our members more aware of the paid memberships and also how they can use Gift Points throughout the community. For examples, please see: "Free and Paid Membership Benefits" , "Transfer an Item To Another Member" , "BidClick System: Sponsored Items, Links & Genres" , and "Book" .Free Membership Limited, trial-like level that provides the basic tools and features, allowing anyone to join in and benefit.  Basic Membership ($19.95 per year)Entry level membership, adding more storage space; perfect for getting started!  Upgraded Membership ($49.95 per year) Well-rounded level, adds even more storage space and the ability to create many different item types including books, images, groups and surveys; the usual choice for casual members.  Premium Membership ($139.95 per year)Feature-rich level with all the bells and whistles allowing members to get the most out of Writing.Com.  Premium Plus Membership ($419.95 per year)Premium membership plus web hosting and community features! Full Screen (FS) Edit Premium Members and above have the Full Screen Edit tool, which has been given a redesign with new features, easy hotkeys and WritingML icons! When in the FS Edit, now you can hit Control+S and your edits will automatically be saved to the item. No longer will you have to stop writing, click the button and have it reload. Hit Control+S and keep going! More new hotkeys that will work are Bold (Control+B), Italic (Control+I), Underline (Control+U). Just select the word(s) that you want to put in these WritingML tags and hit your hotkeys. The WritingML will be automatically placed around your text!StoryMistress Quick Tip: When you have your FS Edit screen open, keep the item open in another window. This makes it very easy to Control+S in your FS Edit window, then Alt+Tab back to that item and Control+R to reload it. Once you get the hang of these keystrokes, you will be flying through your new items and edits! Full Screen (FS) Edit for Entries Full Screen Edit now also works for book entries! No longer do you have to edit in the small space allotted in the center of a page, you can click the FS Edit link and open up a full screen workspace with WritingML icons and all! Keep your entry open so you can view it, make your changes in FS Edit, click Control+S and then reload your entry. This will save members so much time and make editing that much easier (and fun!).WritingML Icons and Hotkeys With the addition of the hotkeys, we've also added in one of our best new features: WritingML Icons! At the top of any text entry screen on Writing.Com, you will now see more than 20 icons representing our Basic Writing Tools of WritingML. From bold to size and colors to dropnotes, now adding WritingML has become a million times easier! Just select the text that you would like affected and click your desired WritingML icon. The system will automatically place the tags around your text! Change your mind? Then select the text and click again; the tags will disappear. New hotkeys that will work in any of the Writing.Com text areas are Bold (Control+B), Italic (Control+I), Underline (Control+U). Just select the word(s) that you want to put in these WritingML tags and hit your hotkeys. The WritingML will be automatically placed around your text! Mouse over the WritingML icons to find other hotkey options. 19 Brand New Colors We have doubled the amount of colors you can use to embellish your text! From light pastels to deep darks, there is something there for everyone. To see the full line of colors, view WritingML Help for color or choose the color button in your WritingML icon lineup. New WritingML: {split} for FS Edit The new {split:} tag for FS Edit is a must-have for extra long item bodies! The {split:} tag literally splits up your FS Edit screen into as many sections as you would like, making it very easy to navigate through a lot of text. Just add the {split:} tag where you would like the item to be split, give it a title and hit Control+S (or click the button the old school way!). When you reload your FS Edit screen, you will have as many split screens as you entered into your section. The system will automatically add links to navigate you through to each section and links to bounce you right back to the top. Currently, Control+S and the other keystrokes do NOT work when you are using {split:} tags, but we are working on that and hope to have it fixed sometime soon.To see it in action, choose one of your items and click your FS Edit and add the following two tags somewhere in there: {split:1ST_SECTION} and {split:2ND_SECTION}. When your FS Edit screen is reloaded, you should see two new sections added! For even more control over your edit screen, tell the system how many rows high you would like the splits by adding ::## after your title, replacing the ## with your desired height ({split:1ST_SECTION::##}). This tag is wonderful for really long, detailed items with lots of text or even contests that run monthly and only one section needs updated. Now you can zip right to that section and update it without having to search through and find it! "Custom" Book Format You might have noticed that the Table of Contents of "Writing.Com 101" looks quite different from other books on Writing.Com. This is because of the new "custom" format that is now available for books! Instead of letting the system format the look of your book's table of contents, now you can tell it exactly how you want those entries to display. Use normal WritingML tags, text, etc. to input your entry ID numbers however you'd like them to display and in whatever order. When you are finished with your layout, head to the Manage section of your book and click "Reset Order" from the tools. The system will then reorder your entries to match the exact order that you've placed them in the Table of Contents of your book! This ensures that your entries or chapters are in the correct order that you desire and the Previous | Next areas work correctly when reading through. Change your mind and made some adjustments? No problem, just open that FS Edit screen for your book, make your changes to the book's body and click "Reset Order" again from Manage. The book will once again reorder the entries to match your updates. (See: "Manage a Book" )Right Navigation Column Now, everybody will have the right column, not just Premium members! This means that all members on Writing.Com will see their most currently updated Favorites on every single page. In previous version eww, those members had to visit their Favorites management area to see if anything was updated. This new community feature should really spark up the interaction and activity within Writing.Com, making it easier for everyone to see the action as soon as the action happens! For both free and paid members, the title bars are collapsible. Simply click a title bar and it will open and close for you! When you are ready to use a tool, click it to reopen. The system will remember your preference from page to page. The right column is now collapsible for Upgraded Members and above. Look in the "My Favorites" title bar and you will see >>. Click this and your right column will disappear, expanding your reading and writing workspace in the center. "The Hub" Writing.Com has a new community center called The Hub. When logged in to your Writing.Com account, you will find this by clicking on the Writing.Com logo or visiting our home page. This is an ever-changing, interactive area for members to check-in with the happenings within the community, "meet" other members, and explore new areas of the site. The Hub is your starting point to find out what's new and happening on Writing.Com! There is always new content rotated here, so check back often! My Account, My Email, My Feedback and My Gift Points These four areas of the site have been given a new look using tabs and are now available from every page under the Writing.Com logo. Simply click your username, Email, Reviews, or GPs link in the left column. Coordinating perfectly with our previously-new portfolio tabs, these sections of Writing.Com look cleaner and are more user-friendly, making it easier for new (and existing!) members to find things. Shop Navigation Redone The navigation for Shops has been redesigned to include the standard WdC links along with the shop links. It is a much more user-friendly way to shop, as members will still feel like they are in the community, but within a specific shop. Another special thanks to all the Preferred Authors, Moderators, Senior Moderators, and Staff for testing and working out the bugs over the last two months. You've been a huge help! Please post comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc in this forum:
And if you love it (or hate it), please let us know that, too! We have put a lot of time into the creation of v10 and we are happy we are finally able to share that with everyone. We look forward to hearing from you! Thanks and enjoy! ~The StoryMaster  and The StoryMistress |
The following winners for the June 2010 running of "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" were chosen from the 31 entries submitted. Each entry was judged based on the criteria provided in "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" . Congratulations to the following three winners: First: "Noah's Ark" by Shannon   Second: "Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor Third: "Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor Thanks to the judges for making a difficult decision. There were a lot of wonderful entries to choose from this round! ~Diane Official Site Contests for July 2010 Character is important and creating a memorable one takes work. Enter "What a Character! : Official WDC Contest" to build your writing skills and win great prizes! Like to review? Enter "Good Deeds Get CASH!" for a chance to be rewarded with gift points and an exclusive merit badge. |
Starting with the current round of "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" , in addition to the generous gift point prizes, First, Second and Third Place winners of the Writing.Com Official Contests will also be awarded an exclusive merit badge designed by The StoryMistress . You can only get these merit badges by winning the contests so be sure to enter!  In addition to the monthly writing contest, we are adding a monthly Reviewing contest, which will be open to all members (except Staff  ). The reviewing contest will open in July and offer gift point prizes as well as an exclusive merit badge to the First Place winner! ~Diane |
| [ UPDATE: 2:25pm - Upgrade completed and the site is coming back to normal (there's a big burst of requests that come in to the servers after they've been offline and it takes them a few minutes to answer the flood and get back up to speed). All in all, started about 5 minutes late, ended about 5 minutes late. Success! ] Scheduled Downtime: 1:55pm thru 2:15pm Eastern, Today - June 17th Greetings, We've scheduled a RAM upgrade for our primary database server to take place at 2pm Eastern today, June 17th. The upgrade will take the server from 8 gigs of RAM up to 16 gigs. Since it is the primary database server, we'll be taking the site down a few minutes before 2pm. The network staff @ our host, INetU, will take the machine offline, add the RAM, and then bring the machine back online... and then we'll bring the site back up. We expect (and hope for) less than 20 minutes of downtime. (Since this upgrade affects the primary database server there's "quite a few moving parts", as they say. We scheduled it during the day because it's easier to take care of all those, with the best INetU staff on hand.) Best wishes, ~~SM |
The following winners for the May 2010 running of "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" were chosen from the 10 entries submitted. Each entry was judged based on the criteria provided in "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" . Congratulations to the following three winners: First Place - "BLAVATSKY'S BUS" by DRSmith  Second Place - "Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor Third Place - "I Met Mr. C." by ruwth  Thanks for entering and thanks to the judges for reviewing and determining the winners! As a reminder, entrants should not edit entries until after the winners are announced. Several entries were disqualified this round due to editing after the deadline.  ~Diane |
| UPDATE: 12:00pm 6/16 - Upgrade still progressing. Once your email account has been moved to the new server, the system will allow you back into your email account. As of this update, members who were active on or after February 1st have been moved to the new email server and are able to access their email. At this point, we are considering the email upgrade for all active accounts COMPLETE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Greetings Members! Beginning at approximately 10:00pm tonight (Monday 6/14), Writing.Com will be upgrading to a brand new email server. It is time for our site to move up to a bigger, better machine and this upgrade will allow us to retire our current email server, which is a bit over four (4) years old. We've been testing the new server for about a month now and it's working great. We're using the same upgrade systems and process as the last time we did this 4 years ago. They've been tested and retested and are still working perfectly. ("[NOTICE] Scheduled Email Server Upgrade - June 15th" )Due to the enomorous size of our email service, the move will mean some time of inaccessibility to your email services on Writing.Com. While we transfer approximately 200+ Gigabytes of email data from the old email server to our new one, you will not be able to access your Writing.Com email account or its contents until it has been moved to the new server. As soon as your account moves, you'll have access to it again. Access to your Writing.Com email account may be unavailable approximately 10:00pm through 8:00am Eastern Time*. We will do our best to minimize the amount of time that your email is inaccessible and your email account will become accessible as soon as it is moved to the new email server. * Accounts that have not been active on Writing.Com within the past few days will take longer to upgrade as we are moving accounts in order of most recent use of the site. All email in your account will be transferred exactly as is from the old server to our new one. This includes your inbox and all email folders, including your sent mail and trash folders. No loss of email is expected from this move. During the time that you are unable to access your email, the email server will still receive new emails for your account and hold them until we re-open access to member email accounts. The upgrade will affect access to email services only and during the upgrade, all other Writing.Com services will be unaffected and fully available. After the upgrade is completed, you should find no differences in your email account, (though accessing it may be faster). No changes to the interface are planned for this upgrade. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this the email upgrade. Thank you for your support! Best wishes, ~~SM |
| A big congratulations to Airdale (Alex Lidell) for her novel "Service of the Crown" being named one of three finalists in Amazon.Com's Breakthrough Novel Award in the Young Adult Fiction category! ... But she needs your help to win the category and take home the prize! Please vote and support a fellow Writing.Com'er. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_353000882_2?ie=UTF8&docId=100... You can download and read a free excerpt from her entry on Amazon.Com's site through this link .... You can submit a review of her entry on Amazon -- please consider doing that!  We'd also encourage you to spread the word... Ask your friends to show their support, as well! Thanks! ~~SM |
| The Dropnote Tag Introducing the new WritingML Dropnote tag. Dropnotes create links that, when clicked, drop down whatever is between the dropnote tags. Here are a few examples, with links to show the raw WritingML: When you click this link... ▼ View the raw WritingML ▼ Using the {quote}{/quote} within a dropnote creates a great presentation effect... For example: Something Interesting Quote'd: ▼ View the raw WritingML ▼ Something Interesting Quote'd Justified: ▼ View the Raw WritingML ▼ What's in the box?  ▼ View the Raw WritingML ▼ (Note that, at this time, you can not put a dropnote inside another dropnote. This may change... )For complete syntax and usage, please visit our WritingML directory: WritingML Help for dropnote New "id" Sub-Tags Keeping track of on-site "things" in your notes just got a little easier with four new id sub-tags: id-Item, id-Entry, id-Post and id-NL. The tags display the id # in a "copy and paste" friendly layout. Double click the id and press Ctrl-C (on Windows, Command-C on Mac) and the id is quickly copied to your clipboard. Here's an example {id-item:100931} yields: [#100931] "Writing.Com General Discussion" Each tag has been added to the WritingML directory: WritingML Help for id-item WritingML Help for id-entry WritingML Help for id-post WritingML Help for id-nl Enjoy! ~~SM |
| Our first attempt to offer document conversion using RTF files ("RTF File Conversion [BETA]" ) worked ok, but had some rather large bugs. Prompted by some discussion of document conversion in "Beta Tests: Comments" , here is our first Word .DOC converter. Just upload a Word .DOC file and the system will give it back to you with the formating in WritingML. http://www.writing.com/main/tools.php?action=docconvert It's a very "empty" page and this is still a very early test. I would like to hear about the results members get with the converter and hope some of you will give it a test run. We'd like to see how accurate it is and how the WritingML output compares to the "real thing" in Word. If you'd like to give feedback on how well the converter does, please post in "Beta Tests: Comments" or reply to this blog posting.  If there's something in particular you'd like me to take a look at, remember to include the File ID# that the converter gives you.Thanks! ~~SM |
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