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 |  Announcements pertaining to Writing.Com! |
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| Hello Members, Back in August, I had posted "Some advance warning..."  where I introduced that we'd be updating the review system to allow members to review individual entries/chapters within Book Items. I'm pleased to say that this update is now in place for official testing by the membership!  Members can now review the book item as a whole along with each individual chapter. Each review given to a different part of the book (or the book as a whole) is eligible to receive any Gift Point auto-reward set for the item. The number of ratings on a book item will be the total of all ratings given to it and the average rating will be the same cumulation. If you come upon a book item that you've previously rated/reviewed, you should now be able to go back and review the individual chapters. (Note: All members with Book Items that offer auto-rewards have been sent an email notifying them about this change to the review system. Anyone wishing to alter their Gift Point auto-rewards based on the update should do so as soon as possible.)  A reminder this is a BETA posting announcement, which means this is still in testing and development. We appreciate all bug reports, feature enhancements, general opinions, etc. It is helpful if you post them there and provide links to any examples you'd like to share.Thanks! ~~SM |
| Greetings, It was noted recently that there used to be a means for an author to delete a review of their work, but in our recent update to include the {review} ML, the delete review link got lost. Given this, it seems the appropriate time to re-name and re-introduce that links as Hide Review. Acknowledging that reviews are the writing of one author to another, quite some time ago Writing.Com stopped deleting reviews from the system when an author clicked to delete the review. Instead, the reviews are hidden from author's feedback list and, if the review is public, it is removed from the public review listings. The review itself, however, remains in the sender's "Sent" feedback and still counts towards their overall review numbers. Thus, "Hide Review" now takes the place of the out-dated "Delete Review" link. Please note that public reviews that have been hidden can still be access via a direct WritingML link using the new {review} ML tag. Review On, ~~SM |
| Thanks for your patience today throughout our many, many changes to the Writing.Com header. We hope that the current layout that we now have will help our newer members find their way around a little easier. This might even make some new areas pop out to our elder members who never knew they were there! If you find something missing from there that you may have used before, please refer to the "Things To Do & Read" button within the left-side navigation. Every activity is listed there and you will find every single item type available on Writing.Com in one easy place. We've also returned the "My Favorites" button into the top navigation. We're done for today, but don't be surprised if we do a bit more tweaking to this area.Thanks for all your feedback today. We appreciate it! -SMs |
| Greets, You'll note we've made some changes to the header layout. They include: - Moving the search (with a bigger text box) to the top right - The sponsored item to the top left - Moving the 4 top button down and rewording them Please feel free to provide feedback by commenting on this post. Best wishes, ~~SM |
| Greetings Members, I'm interested in getting together some people who would be both interested in and capable of creating video tutorials on how to use Writing.Com. I'm hoping we have some people who have some experience in using those screen-video-capture software packages that record your screen and your mouse movements, allowing one to create such tutorials... If you have any interest and experience, please hop over to:
Thanks and write on! ~~SM |
| Hello Everyone, Good luck to everyone participating in this year's NanoWrimo. This post is just a reminder of the activities and tools available to you here on Writing.Com.  NanoGroups "National Novel Writing Month (NanoWrimo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30." ~~ NanoWrimo.Org For those participating in this month-long writing challenge, Writing.Com hopes to provide you with the tools, support and inspiration you need to succeed! If you're interested in joining a NanoWrimo group here on Writing.Com, here's a few:  "Invalid Item" [] by A Guest Visitor "NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon Group" [E] by Jeff  NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon list of Writers, Sponsors and Teams "NaNoWriMo Plus" [13+] by Dawn Embers  A writing group inspired by NaNoWriMo with monthly goals. My NanoCounter You can keep track of your Nano word count in the left hand column of all your WDC pages. Once activated, just click the count to update it at any time! When you're done with Nano, to make it go away, set the count to 0! Everyone can use the NanoCounter. We encourage you to turn it on and get involved! But... You can only activate your NanoCounter using the following link. It will set the word count to 1 word so the counter shows on your pages.  http://Writing.Com/main/my_account/action/update_nano/nanocnt/1 View the Nano'er List Those who've got their NanoCounter turned on will have a link to View the Nano'er List. This is a complete list those members actively involved in the Nano. For each Nano'er, the list shows the word count written so far, words left to write and a percent complete. Anyone can view the nano'er listing here: http://www.writing.com/main/authors/action/nano The WDC NanoLounge We've setup a place to chat about all things Nano. Share your stories, progress, problems, groups, forums, links and more! We've linked the lounge from the top of the Nano Authors list... and it's linked right below this:
NanoWrimo Merit Badges Don't forget about our two Nano Merit Badges. They're in the Badge Shop under the General section: Nano Participant and Nano Winner Merit Badges are great ways to mark occassions and acknowledge accomplishments within Writing.Com. The Merit Badge Shop can be found under the Gift Point Tools navigation menu... or access it directly at: http://Writing.Com/main/badgesBest wishes, ~~SM |
| Hello Members, Introducing the newest WritingML tag: {review:#####} In this tag, the #'s are replaced by a review's ID number. The "Review ID #" can be now found on all of the review listing areas, including the public reviews and a member's own sent and received reviews list. It is also now included in your review notification emails. Here's an example of the tag in use: {review:3188397} yields Review of "Perception"  Note that the new window icon actually launches a lightweight pop-up window of the review. This should help review group leaders that need to more quickly parse reviews. Please note: If the referenced review is not public, viewing is restricted to only the review's author and its recipient. A reminder this is a BETA posting announcement, which means this is still in testing and development. We appreciate all bug reports, feature enhancements, general opinions, etc. It is helpful if you post them there and provide links to any examples you'd like to share. Best wishes, ~~SM |
| Greetings Members! For a long time, people have asked for a way to make their URLs into nicer links. We've been against that primarily because we felt offsite links should clearly present themselves as URLs, making members However, it is now becoming more known that single underlined links stay within a site, while double underlined links send the visitor to offsite content, whether that be other site or ads. We're going to adopt the double underlined approach and provide new WritingML to support it! {xLink:http://www.Google.Com}Google{/xLink} yields: Google  , right?? (If anyone is curious, I'll note that we're using xLink as the WritingML tag because at the moment, I can't get the old "unclosed" link WritingML tag and new closed "link" working on the same page and I'm pretty sure we won't be able to. If we figure it out, we'll support both close xlink and link tags.You can also xLink to item URLs within Writing.Com. These links too, however, will have the double underline because the link title may be different than the item. The clicker of the link needs some notice that this internal site link is different than one generated by the WdC site for an item or page. ** Please be mindful where you use offsite links. Some forums and activities don't allow them. ... But wait... There's more! We're going a step better. We're adding another new WritingML tag: {location:here} or abbreviate it as {loc:here} In the example "here" can include any letters, numbers, underscore or dash. I do not believe there is a length limit, but use good judgement. maybe 32 characters at most should be plenty. IE: {location:pauls_answer} is OK! {location:paul's_answer} is not. When you place a location in your item, you can then link to it from somewhere else in that item and direct the reader to that "location". For example clicking here will bring you back to the top of this particular entry, clicking here will bring you to the bottom of it. Since these links are within Writing.Com and this very page, they are single underline and offer no "new window" icon. These are great for helping readers navigate a long item or for directing your read in creative ways. For this example, I have a {location:top_entry} just before "Greetings Members!" and the click here link's WritingML looks like this: {xlink:#top_entry}clicking here{/xlink} You can also link to a location directly within an item with an item tag: {item:206127#top_entry} ... Alternatively, use the randomly rotating WritingML to link a reader to different parts of an item: {item:206127#top_entry,2006127#bottom_entry} Who will write the first stories that one can read top to bottom, or by also clicking links from the end of each paragraph that force the reader to read that same story out of order? A reminder this is a BETA posting announcement, which means this is still in testing and development. We appreciate all bug reports, feature enhancements, general opinions, etc. It is helpful if you post them there and provide links to any examples you'd like to share.Enjoy and Link On, ~~SM |
| Hello! This entry is to introduce our new Authorized Accounts system -- however it's overshadowed by the Twitter features supported by the system. Though it opens now only with Twitter features, the Authorized Accounts area will be our central "hub" as we expand to more support more sites. In time, we'll provide the means for your Writing.Com portfolio to interact with many other social services, including Blogger, Facebook and others! The Authorized Accounts system allows you to provide the Writing.Com web site access to read from and write to other web sites and social tools. Wherever possible, we will use a new generation of account authorization systems that allow you to keep control over your accounts. You don't provide us with your account names and passwords, but instead tell each individual site that Writing.Com is allowed to access it. This is access you can later revoke on the external site, like Twitter. Our Twitter implementation is setup this way. With this initial release, you can authorize one or more Twitter accounts for WdC access. Once we're authorized, you can easily tweet about new items in your portfolio, edits to items and new entries to your book items. On the success screen for each action, you're given a pre-filled Tweet form with the Title and URL of your item/entry. If you have more than one twitter account authorized, you can choose the account to tweet to. (You can also use the Authorized Accounts page to easily tweet from many different Twitter accounts.) To get started, you can authorize and manage your "Authorized Accounts" here: http://www.Writing.Com/main/my_account/action/authorized_accounts * Please note: Since this area is new and only open for Beta testing, it is not linked from any navigation menu. You'll need to access it from the above link and, if you'd like quicker access to it, make it a bookmark in your browser for now. We appreciate your feedback on this new feature. All bug reports are appreciated! When using this new feature, please remember it is being opened for testing so we can find and work out any issues.  And... Don't forget about Writing.Com's twitter account, now with over 1,200 followers: http://twitter.com/WritingCom And our creatively inspiring Daily Prompt... with almost 1,000: http://twitter.com/DailyPrompt Best wishes, ~~SM |
| The following chat sessions have been scheduled for the week of October 19th for NaNoWriMo participants. The goal of these sessions is to encourage members in their preparation for NaNoWriMo. Character Development - Wednesday, October 21st 12:30 pm EST. The goal of this chat is to encourage discussion about the process of character development. Templates may be exchanged and other writing exercise tips discussed that help in the process of developing fully rounded characters. In addition, any specific issues related to characters can be discussed. Plot Elements - Friday, October 23rd 12:30 pm EST. The goal of this chat is to encourage discussion about plot development. The main points of plot development, as well as relevant writing exercises, will be discussed. In addition, any specific issues related to plot development can be discussed. Ten slots are available for each session. The formal session is scheduled to last an hour, but participants may remain in the room longer if they choose to do so. A password for the session will be sent to the first ten members that complete the survey. If there is a great deal of interest, further sessions may be scheduled.
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