FF.net Updates its Front Page

[marzydotes2011.livejournal.com]

I read on both Fan Fiction.net and Fiction Press that there's been an update on "improvements" with the site. If this is true, then it's great news of course. But it's never been true has it?

I frequent both sites because I'm a voracious writer, have been since a pen was first put in my hand and I scribbled on any nearby wall (including the inside of an airplane) But writing is a very important part of my life. I write fiction based on my favorite movies and shows to use established characters to focus on plots and use fiction press to work more on character development which then goes back to FF.net. It's a really good mixture for me. Sometimes when one site has trouble, I focus on the other but most of the time both are down since they share server space (and gateways which I discovered when someone "live" at Fiction Press gave me steps how to deal with a corrupted chapter and I wound up swapping the gateways for the log in functions on both sites---SCARY)

The added bonus of Fiction Press is believe it or not I've had two smaller publishing houses reading my stories there and getting in touch with me to send them other unpublished works. Which I thought was a crank but actually turned out to be them. Both sites help relieve stress and I really value the support and feedback from readers when I post at them. I'm glad they exist but they're so frustrating to use because it seems there's at least one thing broken nearly every week now. It's been the discussion in a lot of venues.


I wrote my email for Fiction Press first. I don't understand why some areas that Fanfiction. net works, Fiction Press hasn't in over eight months. I don't expect an answer of course. It's bizarre how they pretend there's no problems and then post about "improvements".  But that's true for both sites.


What puzzles me about the problems at Fiction Press is they're not difficult to fix especially if they're working on FF.net.

Dear (whoever's flipping the switches at the controls):

News:

April 18th, 2012 -- We have improved several areas of the site in both performance and stability.

• Emails: We have doubled the capacity of our email delivery system and have resolved sporadic issues of delays.
• Performance: Page load times have been improved and especially for those accessing the site from Asia/Europe.
• Doc Manager: We have more than doubled the performance of the Document Manager resulting in a smoother uploading/editing process.
• Stats servers have been upgraded to more powerful machines and we have resolved sporadic issues during this migration process.
• Lots of misc. minor improvements.

This is all great news but alas, I and other users of Fiction Press can't take full advantage of these additions and improvements because the drop down menus for Document Manager and the stats charts pages have been broken since last September. How can I enjoy the more powerful stats when I can't see the charts because the drop down menu for stat charts for stories and profile hasn't worked since last September?  How can one enjoy the doubling the performance of document manager when the editing screen has been more than halved in size and reduced to only HTML editing because again, the drop down menu for document manager won't load properly.

Thanks for your time. But fix the issues I raised and then those at Fiction Press will be to more fully appreciate these improvements. Or at least don't pretend you don't know about these problems. Any updates on the front page on when these issues will be fixed?

Regards,

I'm working on my FF.net letter which will be different. I'm working on a big update for several stories at that site because in my spare time, that's what my muse wants to do. So if it breaks down again, I will be most vexed. Wouldn't surprise me as often these announcements themselves have been the kiss of doom for the site.