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(warning: The following introduction may contain sarcasm. ;-)
Trek Writer's Guild is proud to present a revolution in how you will promote, encourage and manage your library of Star Trek fan fiction. After nearly 3 years of development, a couple massive revisions and bumps on the head, we bring you the most advanced fan fiction archiving system that we know about.
Let's cover the basic features that you'll have available to you once you've registered and established your account.
- User Profile: Your user profile represents you when you post to the forums or leave a cheeky caption. You want it to leave a distinguishing mark that people will notice. With this in mind we've integrated a new User Icon, along with your already familiar User Signature. Your User Icon will show up when you post, and in the nearish future will even allow custom icons to be uploaded!
Change your profile information as often as you want. Every time you change your information or preference, your posts and captions will change to reflect the new changes! Change your name, email, or write a silly signature, you have complete freedom to express just who you are!
Anytime someone wants to learn more about you than the anonymous aol handle on their screen they can click on your UserName and pull up your detailed profile!
- Author Profile: Some people who frequent TWG actually post fan fiction as well as witty snippets of dialogue from arcane movies! Amazing, but true! What better way to impress your friends with your ability to spell your own name then to have a completely filled out Author Profile. Whenever your name appears in the archive as an author it is a link back to your Author Profile, and an up-to-date list of everything you've contributed to our fabulous fan fiction archive.
- Full Archive Access: Add, Edit, Turn Off or Turn On any fan fiction entry that you post to the TWG Archive whenever you want! Yep, its true, we've gone crazy with power, and we're opening up all the old archive entries that you've already posted, giving you complete control over how your work is presented in the directory. While it's true we'll still have the final say on whether your Trekkie/Porn/Buffy crossover will make it past the the patent pending "Mustard Test", we'll give you every opportunity to polish and correct any mistakes you make, or made a reaaaally long time ago!
Note!!! If you're an author who has published with TWGuild.com before TWG4.0 you will not have access to all of your old archive entries immediately. TWG Staff will have to get your new UserID after you register with the new system and assign them to you before you can have access and make changes. However, you will be able to add new entries.
Each story gets its own Story Icon, and will naturally carry your AuthorID along with it so people can look up all the other stories you've poured your heart into. But wait, there's more! You also have the option of not having your archive entries be active in the directory! What? What's that you say? You mean you can put entries in the archive without other people being able to see them? What good is that worth, you might ask! A whole lot! You can leave entries floating in the archive waiting to be turned on. Spend a couple minutes filling in your recent stories, but turn them on over the course of a month or two. You'll get much more attention that way, and stand a better chance of being noticed!
Once you do turn your entry on, our dedicated Update Manager will flip the Big Switch and your story will go live on the Index 'Now Showing' after the next site update, and site wide in the new 'Latest 'sidebar!
(This feature will make a lot more sense when we add the "Private Screening" function which will allow you to share your Works In Progress or Nearly Finished works with only a select people you allow to beta read or edit.)
- Series Profiles: That's correct, you read right! We're letting you set up your own Series Profile, so that all of your original crew fiction can be chained together and referenced properly! We are taking the Series concept pretty seriously, so only original crew fan fiction with 3 or more active entries in the TWG Archive qualify for Series status. In time, being a true Series will have great rewards as we build onto the system. One item that is slated for the next update is Series Resources! Your fans will be able to scour through exhaustive encyclopedia entries about your series, its charecters and major events. And thats just a small taste of the fun stuff we have planned. Series also have their own Series Icon, as well as a Series Write Up, and a place to keep track of the other authors who've worked on your series, better know as Series Authors.
Note!!! You will not actually create the Series account, instead TWG Staff will do that and assign the SeriesID to your User Account. It is at the discretion of TWG Staff to decide what qualifies as a Series and when to create a new one.
- Multiple Authors for Any Story: We've gone to great lengths to make it quick and easy to add an UNLIMITED number of authors to any story! Not only that, but each Author will get their own link back to their Author Profile, with equal billing!
- Multiple Users for Any Series: What's worse then having 50 people working on the same fan ficiton project? I know how much fun a collaborative project can be, and how annoying it can get when that one guy is in charge of posting the updates. Each Series has its own SeriesID and Password. TWG staff can assign a SeriesID to your User Account, and Bingo! you can post stories to that Series. You'll also need to know the password to make changes to the Series Profile. You didn't think we'd make it tooo easy, did you?
- Multiple Series for Any User: Is it possible? Is is true? Could just one User have control and access to more then one Series at the same time, with needing to create different accounts?! YES! In fact any user can have an UNLIMITED umber of SeriesID's assigned to them. Granted, we still have rules about the Magic 3 and such, but I'm sure someone will eventually have a couple different active series.
A few notes about how the system works:
There is one guy working on it in his spare time with it being tested by less then 2 people at a time. TWG gets a tremendous amount of traffic, and I fully expect that pieces of it will be broken from time to time as I work on them, add new stuff, or fix old bugs.
If/When you run into problems, send me an email detailing what happened and I'll look into it. I need all the feedback possible to make everything work right. I expect it will be weeks before eveything is nailed down with any degree of adequency. Please do not send spam or other nausetaing requests to this email. I will ignore them and place you on my hate list.
Send bug reports to:
buggy (at) twguild dot com
Other then that, enjoy the ride, and don't take anything too literally, or personally, you disgusting vomitous mass!
Well, that was fun, but the real fun has only just begun... |
