Site Updates Pt. 2

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.
2 Likes

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.
2 Likes

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:

2 Likes

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

2020-10-17

  • Logo animation speed reduced to reduce load on browser
  • If “Theme->Disable pusling” is active, logo animation is reduced even further and will stop after a short while
  • The list of stories for authors (available through the author’s profile) will now show series first and also uses the usual filter for categories and blocked tags.
  • Various bug fixes

2020-10-18

  • The number of entries shown on the search result list can now be configured
  • Medals, rated-, favorite- and bookmarks are now also shown on the search results
  • Tried to make the rating panel more eyecatching again.
1 Like

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve primarily worked on internal optimizations and improvements to get the server load down and improve performance.

2020-12-02

  • The “anon access” to the forum has been removed as it kept causing problems. Now you need to have an account and your email has to be validated to be able to write in the forum. It will remain open for reading for everybody of course.
  • Fixed problems with the “edit comment” feature
  • Added “clear all bookmarks” button to the “Your Bookmarks” page
  • Improved the integration of the forum with the main site account system
  • Improved the loading time of the main page
  • Improved internal caching and performance
  • Bugfixes
4 Likes

2021-01-03

  • Some long overdue bugfixes:
    • Editing a comment would sometimes fail and delete the Commenter’s name from the comment
    • Paging in the Author/User profile list wasn’t working properly after a letter had been selected
    • List of an author’s series (as available on the author’s profile page) would display unpublished series for that author himself, which resulted in a confusing, irregular listing. Now unpublished or deleted stories are only shown in the story list, not in the series list.
3 Likes

2021-02-25

  • Safe Mode will no longer hide potential offending stories, they will be listed together with a mark and the offending tags. But the story text itself will not be displayed
  • Added Safe Mode explanation to the story display (so the user gets to know why he can’t read the full story)
  • Commissioning Authors now get a special icon (a diamond)
  • Commissioning flag will be reset correctly if an author does no longer have the adequate sponsoring level.
  • The name of a person commenting on a story will now link to his profile
  • Added monitoring tools to be able to diagnose the intermittent hangups
4 Likes

2021-02-26

  • Fixed a very old issue with the search function. The results were always sorted by the “publishing dates”, which is really stupid, as the engine would normally list the best hits (i.e. stories which matches the best to the search term) first. And forcing a different sort order was plainly stupid. This has been fixed, and the results now list the best matches first.
  • Many IOS devices use typographic quotation marks (the ‘curly’ ones) instead of the regular ones. The search engine only works properly when using the regular quotation marks. So to make it work on IOS devices, the marks are automatically converted now.
  • Updated and extended the help dialog (“Hints for Searching”)
2 Likes