Sorry I've gotten behind in looking through the submissions. It should all be taken care of today.
Reminder: If your story a) isn't properly formatted or b) has very short chapters, I'm not going to approve it. Problem "a" makes the story difficult for people to read and problem "b" wastes database space. I've been remiss about adding "b" to the submission rules but it will be there starting today.
If your story doesn't have at least one chapter approved, please don't send chapters in groups. If I don't approve chapter 1, I'm not going to approve the rest of it.
I'm turning off anonymous reviews again. This means that you'll have to be logged in to leave a text review. The problem was a combination of allowing this and being behind in updating the script. The reviews from 2009 & 2008 are mostly legitimate. After a while, I'll probably enable it again.
I apologize in advance if I delete any real reviews by accident.
Here are a few tips to help prevent your submission from being rejected.
- Double-space your paragraphs. Indentations don't show up on the web well (if at all).
- Don't post your story/chapter immediately after you finish it. Wait a few days. Ask someone to look it over then look it over again yourself. And USE SPELL CHECK.
- Your chapters can't be very, very short. Every new chapter submitted forces the script to create a new entry in the database. A chapter that only takes a few minutes to read isn't worth that. Chapters under 600 words will not be accepted. If you write very short chapters, you must merge them into one document. (This does not include entire stories, but they must be added to the "Drabble" category.)
- If I reject your submission, please e-mail me after you've made the necessary corrections. Otherwise, you might be waiting a long time for me to review it again.
- Preview. Preview. Preview. PREVIEW. Don't assume that your submission looks perfectly fine. I would even advise you to look it over again after you click the add button.
It seems to have been fixed with the recent upgrade. Sorry for taking so long to move to the next version.
If you receive an error after adding a new chapter to your story (copy & paste or upload) then you're probably on the auto-validate list (which means that your additions go up on the site immediately). Unfortunately, there isn't a fix for this problem right now, but your chapters will go up on the site just fine. It's the confirmation page that's misbehaving.
The following problems have been resolved:
- Unable to stay logged in to your account.
- Unable to register for a new account because the CAPTCHA verification won't work.
- Unable to read an AO-rated story because you can't get beyond the warning page.
If you're unable to register, send me an e-mail with the user name and e-mail address that you want to use and I'll manually add you.
UPDATE: I now know what's wrong (member/visitor sessions aren't being saved) and am trying to figure out how to fix it. Hopefully it'll happen sometime before Halloween.
Here's a new bug: if you try to read a fanfic that's rated AO you will get a warning about the content within. If you click continue, it will take you back to the table of contents. If you click the chapter link again you will get the warning page again. You see where this is going, right?
Something else to add to the annoyances list.
(By the way, I know short stories shouldn't have "table of contents" pages. It bugs me, too.)
Update: I've completely deactivated the age warning until I can get it to work like it's supposed to.
If you log in you may get an error message that says, "You are not authorized to access this function" when you click on the "Account Info" button. Clicking on the other links will log you out. I'm aware of this issue and I'm trying to fix it. Also, if you change your skin selection, it may revert back to SSJ when you leave the page. You don't have to be logged in for that to happen.
At this point in time, the only advice I can give is to use Internet Explorer 7. As much as I hate this browser, I'm able to stay logged in while using it. Opera might work as well.
The fanfiction itself is not affected.
The server move is done. Yes, I actually upgraded. I also replaced the layout dropdown menu with a page (finally). Since I'm pressed for time (school starts again on the 27th), I'll be able to get a lot done. More belated additions are coming soon.
Okay, so no upgrade. As soon as school stops kicking my butt I'll rectify that. It's gotten to the point where all I think about are derivatives and I absolutely detest math.
Anyway, count on an upgrade toward the end of July. My Calc class runs a little long.
Since the site isn't going to be moved to the new server anytime soon, I've decided to upgrade the archive script sometime this weekend. I'll be sure to do it in the early morning hours when it's unlikely that anyone will be visiting. If you want to preview new versions in advance, I always upgrade my test archive first, followed by the Otaku Institute sites. I have the most to lose with this one.
1) You can now submit yaoi/yuri fanfics of any rating. I originally disallowed fics over T (PG-13) because I was afraid that authors would receive flames. This archive has only general and het fanfics at the moment. Hopefully, the general population has grown up a little since then. I'll re-add the ones I moved to OISA someday soon.
2) I fixed the help page so that it accurately reflects this archive. I tend to copy and paste a lot so that's why it used Otaku Institute terminology.
The entire process is going to take awhile. I asked customer support how long it would take since they have to do it instead of me, and I didn't receive definite answer. So, I'm going to re-open submissions. I make weekly backups of everything so, in the event of a data loss, it won't be too bad.
Yes, everything's still in limbo. I have to make a manual backup of everything (not that I don't usually do it) so PLEASE don't add/change anything after 8pm EST.
For updates, please see the archive of my mailing list. It's a lot easier to post there than to post on three different sites. You don't have to join the ML; the archive is accessible to everyone.
This is pretty much a plea for you NOT to add or change anything on the site until February 16th. I have to change over to a new server and it might take awhile for the URLs to switch over to it. This means that whatever you add/change might be lost after my domain is pointing to the new server. Actually, it's probably better for everyone to wait until I give the "all clear."
At least I was able to actually get to the end of the upgrade script, but things aren't working correctly so I have to figure out how to change that. You can read fanfics (submissions are still closed for now), but there may be periodic outages.
Oh, before I forget, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.
12/26/07: I think I've fixed everything so submissions are open again. If you get any errors, or if any pages fail to load, then contact me.
I thought I had posted a note about this, but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared...
The upgrade was a complete disaster and forced me to restore from backup three times before I gave up. What little help I could find on the eFiction forums resulted in try #4. Now, since no one will answer my post, I have to figure out how to fix things on my own. No, I really don't know what I'm doing, but there aren't many other options.
Submissions will be closed as I try a manual upgrade sometime ths week. I figure that there will be very little site traffic (if there were any to begin with) so it's the perfect time.
I'm going to upgrade this archive to version 3. The benefits outweigh the potential difficulties of upgrading at this point. But before I can do this, I need to create a new skin that's compatible with the new version (I did this for the DBFLSA (now OISA) so it's only fair). Hopefully this will be done by the end of the month. Once I upgrade I'm going to integrate the off-site fanfiction into the archive and also add the rest of the fanfics from the old, non-automated DBFL (about 150) and some fanfics from the 2004 Sennenki fanfiction contest that never happpened.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, etc., leave a comment or e-mail me.
Recently I've had a few submissions not show up on the site like they were supposed to. The listing was there, but the actual story was not. Please check after uploading/copy&pasting your story to make sure it's really up on the site. If you get errors at the top of the page stating that the file doesn't exit, try adding the text again by editing your story. If the problem persists, e-mail me by using the "contact us" link in the navigation.
Update (11/14/07): I think I've fixed the upload problem. The permissions somehow changed for the directory that all the stories are saved in so that no one except me could write to it. If you try to submit your fanfic to the archive again it will (hopefully) work. If you have any problems please contact me.
The submission rules aren't there to look pretty, people. I'm not going to approve your submission if you don't follow them, especially the ones about content. I thought I'd made a news post about the importance of the rules when I posted it on the other archives, but apparently not.
I want everyone to know that the submission rules for this site are not identical to the ones found on The Otaku Institute and The Otaku Institute Same-Sex Archive even though the three sites do share some of the same rules. Each site has rules that are specific to that particular archive since they all have different focuses. So you need to read the rules on each site in their entirety so that you won't accidentally break any of them.
Here is a list of the universal archive rules:
- You can add fanfics, songs, lists, etc. to an archive as long as they match the theme of the archive. You can't add incomplete chapters, author's notes as separate entries, advertisements, etc. Also, your authors notes must be less than 5% of the total text of your submission.
- You can submit fanfics that don't match the theme of the archive but they have to be e-mailed to me with via attachment (HTML or plain text) with all of the submission's information.
- It is recommended that you have your work edited by someone else as you may miss mistakes. Spellcheck is also recommended.
- Plagiarism is very serious and is not allowed. Those who are found to be plagiarists will be deleted and banned from the site.
- Fanfics that contain sexual content must be marked with an M (R) or AO (NC-17) rating depending on the level of detail.
- Story titles and summaries must be no higher than PT (PG) level.
- You are not allowed to submit part of your fanfic and then link to the rest on another site.
I combined the vidfic category with the songfic category since there weren't many fanfics in either and they're so similar. I also created a new category, drabbles, for those who write fanfics with small wordcounts (under 1000 words or a series of chapters each under 1000 words). Previously I didn't allow these fanfics, but I've seen this type in other archives so it's obviously something people are interested in. I'll update the submission rules and/or the help page to add the requirements for submission to the new category.
Also, I fixed the fanart page so that there aren't any broken images. The problem cropped up after I got a subdomain for the DBFL. Eventually this page will be moved to the Otaku Institute, but I don't know when that will be.
Okay, so the archive is now 43 fanfics lighter. I removed all of the stories that were written about other fandoms, but the original stories are still up.
I also decided not to upgrade this archive to eFiction 3.0 since I don't really need to. Not much was added to that version beyond a lot of customization options. I also don't want to screw up this archive if the upgrade goes wrong the way it almost did for the slash archive. If you see a big difference between the functionality of this archive and OI (or OISA ) and it bugs you, you can contact me about it.
Starting today I'm letting people add their fanfics to the new site. I'm also in the process moving all non-Dragon Ball fanfics from this one to that one. Until I get all of them (and their reviews) they'll still be up. I should be finished by the end of the week.
The Otaku Institute has rules that are different from the ones found here, so read the submission rules, the terms of service (regulations), and the help page (psychiatry) carefully.
Until I get around to changing the splash page, you won't find the URL by going to http://www.gokugirl.com.