Site Updates Pt. 2

The tags are there, but the changes in the code (and therefore the newsflash) will have to wait a bit longer.

I’ll try to add the correct tags when approving the stories, though.

Most 3rd person don’t have a clear pov, if they do, I’ll add it, otherwise I don’t.

For example: Ng5hvlo4’s Drone World is in 3rd person, but all about controlled drones - so I added pov-controlled.

On other stories, which just tell about how somebody controls somebody else in 3rd person, I wouldn’t add any pov tag.

Adding both tags, as @Hypnothrill suggested, would also be an option, but I’m afraid that would water down those tags. If I’m searching for pov-controlled, I want to find only those stories, that focus on the controlled pov.

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I hope that ultimately, these tags will get authors on the site thinking a bit more about how and why they’re using certain POVs and narrative styles and not others, which can only be a good thing.

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@Corin, the story of mine I referenced, “Chillax, Bro!” is one of those cases where having both the pov-controller and pov-controlled tag is useful. It starts off filtered mostly through the limited perspective of college jocks Alex and Brody, but at the point that they fully fall under mind control, it switches to the perspective of the Master, revealing his thoughts and backstory.

I’m really glad for the new tags as it basically saves me time clicking on stories that sound interesting but in the end are revealed to not be for me. Though I do have to admit that personally I am kind of disappointed in how much pov-controlled seems to be the majority as compared to pov-controller.

It made me realize something that I have long suspected but didn’t put into words - I often read het Male Dominant stories because at least there I know the pov is gonna be the controller. This realization doesn’t make it any less sad that the sexuality I want to read about seems to provide me less to read than we going through EMCSA on update day. (Just today there were four het stories that were posted that I found enjoyable after some mental twisting while I can’t say the same for here.)

And yes, obviously I know nobody owes me anything and such but that fact doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

Just a short info that I’ve uploaded a small update yesterday. The main purpose was to remove Patreon, but I’ve also fixed some issues with the story submission dialog and improved its overall handling.

And a couple of other bugfixes. The complete is list of changes is shown in the first posting of this thread.

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As discussed in this thread I was forced to look for an alternative to fund GaySpiralStories.

So I’ve spent the last couple of days integrating Sponsus into the site. The integration is much tighter than the previous integration with Patreon. You now have to link your accounts manually with Sponsus and, depending on the tier you choose to sponsor for, you get some exclusive features, I’ve newly implemented for this.

I can only hope that you’ll accept Sponsus as an alternative so I can continue to run the site in the future.

List of all changes:

2020-08-05

  • Integrated Sponsus into GSS
  • Added a special funding page to explain the motivation and mechanics of sponsoring
  • Added subscription option for Authors and Series, email notification and a filter option (for “Special Features” sponsors only)
  • Added option to allow authors to promote their service to write stories on commission on their profile page. Also added a list of these commissionees.
  • Added new main menu item “Authors” which now contains all author-related functions.
  • Changed user icons: Author icon changed (pen in a square), added special icon for “Commissionee” (golden pen) and added icon for Special Feature supporters.

A couple of days ago (before the challenge final ratings were calculated):

  • Ratings from logged on users count 5 times as much as those given from anon users. The reason for the change is that I’ve seen obvious attempts to “up-rate” certain stories using anon users.
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For people like me who can get thrown off by new websites, maybe you should mention that when searching for this site on Sponsus, one should not use any spaces: gayspiralstories

Ok, that’s true, thank you for noticing that!

An even easier way, of course, is to click the link on GSS itself:

This leads directly to our page on Sponsus.

If they enforce their own explicit guidelines ( Sponsus ) then gss will get booted. Even if all stories with teens (in violation of prohibited content - underage media) were purged, the site would still be in violation of limited content - non-con media. They cover the case of hypnosis specifically and carve out the very narrow exception that it might be ok if it’s a creation done under commission for a situation for another person’s character. But they don’t even yield that as being solid, they just say they’ll “take it into account when investigating”

It seems to me that the only long term stable framework would be some sort of open-source decentralized platform that adheres to patron/sponsor/etc standards instead of being captive to one server. I’m not sure such a thing exists yet though…

I can only say that I had a chat with the Sponsus creator (and CEO) and told him exactly what GSS is about.

He was very upfront to me that he personally has no problem whatsoever. If there’s a problem, then it’s always the payment processors, in this case Stripe, and the credit card companies. He’s also sure that Patreon didn’t start to kick people on their own volition, but were forced to do so by these companies.

So it doesn’t really matter where we go, there’s always a risk that we can get booted. If you’re publishing on the platform itself, the risk is higher than if you publish externally, but our case with Patreon shows, that you’re never save.

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Small update today:

2020-08-16

  • If someone chooses to sponsor a custom amount on Sponsus instead one of the predefined tiers, he’ll now get the appropriate exclusive functions enabled depending, too
  • New link “Rating categories explained” added to the rating panel. The text shown there is based on Mr. Sandmans recent posting.
  • Bugfixes

Since the redesign of the main page is now complete and fully functional (now the “Top Rated” list is created an all new algorithm and also adheres to the category selection and blocked tags setting), here the overdue complete update entry for the changes that have been uploaded during the last week:

2020-09-20

  • Redesign of the main page
    • The paging has been replaced with endless scrolling
    • The “Top Rated” tab now displays the usual 5 featured top stories (which are replaced every other Saturday) but after that, an endless list of the top rated stories is now shown. This list is now adhering to the category selection and blocked tags setting.
    • The “Random” tab now shows an endless list of random stories taken from the whole archive. The previous “random selection” that changed once a week is no longer available.
    • More discussion about the changes on the main page: Main page redesigned and changed to "Endless scrolling" - Site Feedback - Community for Gay Kinky Stories
  • Also redesigned the old “All stories” page into a new “All series & stories” page:
    • As the new page name implies, the page now lists series, but it can still be switched to the old list of individual stories.
    • The list adheres to all filters and selections
    • The table can be sorted by Author, series name and publishing date (the default).
    • It’s basically offering the same functionality as the old main page (and more) for everyone preferring to use paging instead of endless scrolling.
  • Many new and improved caching mechanisms to speed up the site and bring down the server load (which increased a lot due to the increased number of people visiting GSS).
  • Loads of internal refactoring, cleanups, bugfixings and optimizations.
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Finally the new design is live!

I’m so happy to see the great work by JoahTheo going live for everyone to see! He put so much work into this and I think the result is truly amazing!

And I also had quite some fun applying that properly to the desktop and mobile version of the site. You might want to check out both versions!

Also check out JoahTheos’ twitter account:

https://twitter.com/joahtheo

Another requested new feature is the ability to reports comments which might not be appropriate or simply spam.

2020-09-26

  • Replaced the logo and lettering with a completely new design made by JoahTheo! Check out his twitter account here: https://twitter.com/joahtheo
  • Comments can now be reported and admins can take care of reported comments
  • List of “top rated” list will now properly reshuffle when the page is reloaded. The algorithm for the list has been tuned, too.
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I really like the update, and the art is really good. The neon reminds me of Cyberpunk 2077 :slight_smile:

This one is especially useful for spams.

I just wish the disable pulsing feature also works for those inside the stories. They only seemed to work on the main pages. But still, great work Martin and to the artist as well. :slight_smile:

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The disable pulsing is supposed to work everywhere. It should reduce every pulse to just one cycle.

Is that not working for the medals when looking at a story?

Yeah, it’s not working there. I’m on a mobile android if that helps.

2020-09-27

  • Disabled the logo animation (spiral) for all browsers except Chrome >= 80 and FireFox >= 80 (as I could confirm it’s working there)
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Thanks, I’ve fixed that, but the fix will only go live with the next update which will come in a couple of days.

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I also like the design! Bravo to Martin and thank you Joah.

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2020-10-03

  • Added tab for latest comments to the main page (endless scrolling)
  • Added tag with the list of authors who offer commissions to the main page
  • Respective tabs on the main page are highlighted if there are new stories, comments, or commissioning authors
  • New story or comments indicators (star or tab flashing) now also works with disabled cookies, if the user is logged in
  • Finetuned bookmark settings on touch displays
  • Finetuned pop up display to remind to rate a story
  • Added a “Deny Approval” button to the admin dialog including a message to the author why his story has been denied.
  • Various fixes and improvements