*HEM HEM!*

Lately, signatures on the forum have been getting out of control, and we're having to crack down on that abuse before the signatures start overrunning the discussion threads and stampeding all over the place.

So, here's the new rule:

All signatures must be no taller than 300px total - including images and text. In addition to that, all images must be smaller than 500x200 total. This means that all signatures, blinkies and advertisement buttons may only add up to 200 pixels high.

And speaking of signatures, please don't forget the regular forum rules regarding signatures.

(1) Images and text may be rated no higher than 12+ (FFW).
(2) Any linking must be rated according to the FanFictionWorld.net scale - available in the Terms of Service.

Yes, we WILL be enforcing these rule. Please do yourselves a favor and make sure your signatures don't violate these rules. We'd hate to have to send Professor Moody after you . . . or increase your warning level.

Yes, you heard me correctly – Add A New Story is back online. It has been long time in coming and, be warned, it is still in beta status – post and edit at your own risk – but it is back online. As usual, if you find any strange behavior in the forms or the posting, please report the bug at the forums.

Please note, stories are no longer designed to function the way they once did. There have been many changes – the most obvious of which is that you no longer submit your first chapter in the Add A Story area as you did before. Please enter Edit/Delete Stories and Add A Chapter to your story. Periodically, stories with no listed chapters will be removed by the maintenance script. Also note, stories without chapters will not appear on your author page.

This was mentioned yesterday in the Edit Stories post, but it carries repeating – you will notice significant changes to the form and functionality. Please note that incorrect rating/warning combinations will no longer be permitted by the software. To learn more about these combinations, please check the general repository of all HPFF knowledge – the site rules documentation. Also note, the genres, ships, eras, and all sorts of other fun classifications have been added in as well. If you have any questions on what they mean, please consult the FAQ’s

Edit Stories is back online, allowing each and every one of you - trusted author or not - to reclassify your stories, change your banners and edit your story summaries. Please be aware, however, that some changes have been made to the system as you know it.

First, allow me to remind you that story banners must now be changed under Edit Story rather than by editing your first chapter summary. Second, please note that several changes have been made to the system that will enforce appropriate ratings and warnings combinations. Many of you may find, in attempting to update your stories, that the archive form will not allow you to submit your story edits until you have corrected a false combination (like 15+ with No Warnings) More information on Ratings and Warnings can always be found in the Site Rules documentation. Third, also note that this is not a permission to add a new story. We are working dilligently at that fucntion but, currently, we are only able to bring the ability to edit back online.

Finally, if you have any questions regarding the classifications listed, please consult the FAQ's regarding how to use the search function. It contains definitions for all of the varying aspects of our classification systems - including what story format your story should be sorted into, etc...

Edit chapters is now functional. Remember, if you are not a trusted author, your edits will return to the queue for validation.

Also, be advised that the previous quota for submissions has now been lifted.

We should have the 'submit story' section of the site up and running within a week. Certain other areas will still be updated, but at least you will be able to submit that story you`ve been working on for the last few weeks. ;)

How tragic, that my first post on here isn't a fun or whimsical one! *stamping foot*

Today, I have the honor of sharing with you a few updates and changes to the site rules, plus a few friendly reminders. Not very entertaining, but still quite valuable information to know.


(1) Resubmitting ToS Violations. No doubt you've noticed that we've refined and changed the validation system. Should you be unlucky enough to have a chapter rejected, rather than receiving an email, you can access your original chapter and a note from the validating staff explaining why your story was rejected.

Please know, that if you continue to resubmit a ToS violating chapter repeatedly, without fixing the offense, you are risking story deletion and/or account suspension. This might sound harsh, but we're not trying to be mean. With the new validation system, there's absolutely no chance of an author not receiving an email explaining the reason for the rejection. When an author continues to resubmit a ToS violation, without fixing it or asking for clarification, we can only assume that they are blatantly disregarding the site rules and abusing the staff. We're very busy and trying our best to make this site run smoothly for all of us. So please, take those validator notes seriously, and if you're confused, ask for help.

If your chapter is rejected and you don't understand the reason why, please fill out a Trouble Ticket and ask for clarification. Be sure to include your pen name, and the title of your story and chapter. The next available member of staff will be along as soon as possible to help clarify the violation and, if necessary, offer guidance or suggestions on how it might be fixed.

(2) The dreaded "Brick Fic". You might have heard the term "brick fic" and be wondering what on earth it means. Bricks are stories that are improperly formatted, without paragraphs and line breaks, where the text is all smooshed together . . . like a brick or sometimes a column.

Trying to read and validate brick fics is guaranteed to give the validating staff a migraine headache, blurred vision, and possibly an infestation of nargles. Trying to decipher a brick really slows us down when we're validating (in addition to the aforementioned headaches and eye strain), so we no longer accept improperly formatted, brick-fics. Cookies and doughnuts, however, we accept gladly.

(3) The preview button is your friend. Please, please, please, save us all some time and hassle, and use the "Preview" button when adding or editing a chapter. As the name suggests, this will let you preview your text, and you can verify that you have formatted your story properly, that your banner is displaying properly, and that you have closed all your formatting tags. We have to reject a lot of chapters for being improperly formatted or having open formatting tags, and we shouldn't have to - it's so quick and easy to check for open tags with the preview button!

(4) Image violations. This is a friendly reminder, as we've had a lot of image violations lately. Banners may not be placed in the Chapter Summary. Banners may only be placed in the Story Summary. Additionally, banners may not be links. And, as always, banners may not exceed 700 x 110 pixels. You can doublecheck your banner size by right-clicking on it and selecting "properties".

I cannot begin to tell you how much it makes our jobs easier, if y'all follow the Terms of Service and remember that the Preview Button is your best friend. (We don't want another infestation of nargles or doxies, poor Star Bucky just finished cleaning the staff room and it took days to get rid of the doxycide odor.)

Happy Writing!

Three month ago we hosted a very special Duel at HPFF. Due to the down time and upgrades on our site the Anniversary Story hasn’t been too heavily promoted, but now that things are rolling again I feel it’s time that it got the respect and attention it deserves.

The Anniversary story is titled, Looking Beyond the Beginning, because that is exactly what we were doing. Hitting the five-year milestone was a major event in our site’s history and now we’ve moved into a new bigger and better era.

The Anniversary story begins with a single step. It is an opportunity to tread backwards in time and embark on an adventure like no other. Within each page is an adventure unlike any you have ever attempted. This is where the inventors create and the founders reminisce. I would like to give a special thanks to all our authors who entered our Anniversary Writer's Duel, you all did a fantastic job. You can read our Duel story by clicking on the banner below. Don't forget to leave a review.



Also, don’t forget to check our new recommended story, author and top 5 for April 2006!

Thanks to the wonderful greengecko - the manage favorites function is back online. This means that you will be able to view your favorite stories and authors as well as add new ones while you are browsing.

At this point in the coding process, you won't see many changes here. It was taken offline after the major coding changes to the story and author structure caused it to....well, not work anymore. Marie has cleaned up the code and brought it back into working order but, those of you who are asutute will notice very few minor changes.

When browsing the archive, you will notice that stories already on your favorites list will, instead of having an "Add to Favorites" link, will read "Already one of your favorite stories." There are still a few bugs to be worked out and additions to be made but it works, so that's a thumbs up from this corner.

Hello, fellow fanfiction lovers! The staff of HPFF.com is happy to announce that we have entered the home stretch of coding and thus, new features are available for you to beta test!

Add Chapter
While Add A New Chapter has been available to Trusted Authors for several days now, we are happy to reopen submissions to all authors. Don’t get too excited though – this is still in the process of beta testing and, thus, there are limitations. Only one chapter may be submitted per author at a time and the queue will only be accepting 25 chapters at a time. This is to ensure that, if there is a bug, there are only a small number of chapters affected rather than a several hundred. Restrictions will be lifted as soon as we are certain that the software can support it. For those of you that plan on entering new submissions, please make sure to read the entire article as there is more information that will be of use to you.

Edit/Delete Stories & Chapter Rejections
The ability to edit your existing submissions is fully open at this point. Please be aware, however, that there have been changes. First, Chapter 1 is no longer the “story default.” (i.e., editing the summary in Chapter 1 will no longer change the summary that appears on your author’s page.) In future, this will be handled by a page called “Add A Story.” Currently, this page has not been written but we are looking to complete it as soon as possible.

Those of you who have submitted chapters may also notice a link that reads “Not Accepted.” Following that link will take you to a page containing a note from the staff letting you know why your chapter was rejected. Please heed our advice, make the changes and resubmit your chapter. If you do not understand your rejection reason, please contact the staff via the Trouble Tickets.

Finally, authors who have not yet reached Trusted status will find that their chapter edits do not appear immediately. This is because all edits made to validated chapters will return to the validation queue for approval. The procedure for having these edits approved is the same as regular validation.

Future Changes
As we’ve mentioned, we are still firmly in “beta” stages and not all features have been added. Some of the many changes that still need to be made are listed below and may cause a loss of functionality. Please do not report issues listed below as our coder is already aware of them. [All other reports can be done via the forums as usual.]

• Favorite Stories & Authors Re-Enabled
• Add New Story/Edit Story Enabled
• Review Counts on Author Pages Corrected
• Author Search Added
• Add Story Counts Next to Ship/Genre/etc... on Find A Story
• Recompute Incorrect Word Counts Throughout Archive
• All Skins Updated w/New Links

Well as you may know, we are still not accepting stories and there are a few areas of the site that are being worked on that you still may be unable to access. I am still getting mail asking me 'why can`t I post my story' and 'how much longer will this take`.

Well my answer to the first question is usually edited to remove the rude words before I send it off!! We make a conscious effort to post news in as many places as possible and some of you don`t even bother to read it, which can be a little soul destroying.

As for how much longer, to be honest I don`t know. But we are looking at the tail end of the work at the moment. Greengecko (the coder) is doing a wonderful job and uprooting whole areas of the site to re-code them and improve things for you guys, as well as us. The submit stories section is currently being worked on as well as a few admin things. For instance, we will hopefully not have to rely on sending an email to tell you if your story has not been validated. Quite a large number of people never seem to get these mails, so using your account to contact you or placing a message in your story before you re-submit will be a huge leap forward.

Please try and be a little patient, we have made a huge effort to actually keep the site online and minimise disruption as much as possible. The fact that 'Gecko is coding 'live' and not having to take the site offline is a huge bonus. You may only see a few alterations on your end, but there are infact vast improvements across the whole of the archive, from the search engine, to reviews to streamlining the code to allow it to run faster and smoother. As I`ve said before, we are doing this to make the site easier and more enjoyable for YOU. Please bear with us and as soon as `Gecko can open submissions and it has been tested, you will know. I will post here as well as the forum, so make sure you keep checking back.

Thanks for your understanding.

Star Bucky's fingers, they have healed enough from the April Foolishness ironings, that he is typing again, my little witches and wizards! Woo-Hooo!

Much excitement and newness is coming to HPFF, and Star Bucky has been behind the veil to see it all. The GreenGecko is working most wonderful magic, so amazing that Star Bucky wonders if it is being the Dark Arts, so truly amazing it is being! We are hoping that the Ministry of Magic busy-bodies are not noticing her efforts, yes yes yes!

The GreenGecko and other members of Star Bucky's Staff-Family, they are being so busy . . . and messy. They drop the donut crumbs and stale pastries on the floor for Star Bucky to be sweeping up. They are drinking coffees by the gallon and it is all I am doing to be keeping the coffeepot filled with hot drinkies.

Star Bucky, he is very busy, dusting and polishing the new changes, to make them pretty and sparkling clean, for you. Is the life of the house elf, to always be cleaning.

He is also keeping the Logical Mistress, Mistress Snape, and the Raven Mistress happy with the latte-coffees while they be working on something so top secret they are not letting even Star Bucky have a peek! They are not trusting Star Bucky! But if Star Bucky can be sneaking in to see what wonders they be working on, he promises, he will be telling you!!!

Over at the forum, someone asked me “Doesn’t it drive you crazy when people keeping posting the same question over and over?” Unless I have forgotten my happy pill for the day, the truthful answer is no. I really don’t mind. It would be nice it I didn’t have to keep re-directing people, of course, but no biggie. It does drive some staffers crazy (consider yourself forewarned!) but I’m not one of them. I really only have two pet peeves. So I’m going to try and save my sanity and let you know what they are (and so you’ll know I’m gonna get you if I catch you doing it!).

Under 500 fics. I admit it; nothing drives me crazier than seeing these sitting in the queue. It’s not a new rule, it’s been around for ages and it escapes me why people continue to submit them. If you happen to understand why this happens, please drop me a note and let me know. My marbles will thank you.

Challenges. I spend a lot of time in the challenge area, as many of you know. I come across dozens of “this is a good challenge but I can’t do it.” Again, I have to admit my head turns sideways and I take on the look of a confused dog that is truly perplexed at why his owner is holding a chewed slipper in one hand and a rolled up newspaper in the other. I just don’t get it. The only conclusion I have ever come to is the poster is trying to up their post count. That I understand…that irritates me…that makes me up a warn level.

That’s it. Nothing too big, nothing too ornery, just simple little things that make the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Oh, and I have heard from a little birdie that under 500’s may be a thing of the past…that coding may knock all of those out. Should that be the case, I promise, I’ll find something else to add to my pet peeves list. Because, to be honest, pet peeve just doesn’t have the same Harry Potter ring to it. Happy writing!

Twas the night before a contest and all through the site, every staffer is stirring burning midnight oil at twilight. LogicalRaven is anxious, cappuccino in hand, while dreams of new riddles are put into plans. MadameSnape with her puzzles and Raven with her eye, will cause ever member to sputter and sigh, and Jay with his doughnuts and Cor with her laughs, have just settled down to watch the fun start to unwrap...

Oh, how I wish I could share with you all the plans for the upcoming seasons. There are some very exciting things taking shape behind the scene at HPFF. It seems while everybody is relaxing and enjoying the down time, our team is hard at work on our latest competition(s). The 2005 will always be remembered as the 'year of the riddle' but what will 2006 be remembered for?

I can reveal to you that a new Duel will be released soon. I'm not going to give a precise date yet, and that dang little Snitch better not reveal it yet either. I hear that Rita's Quick Quotes Quill is trying to get the scoop on this precious information so if you're interested in some early information I'd keep my ears and eyes open.

For those of you who aren't Duelers, the staff is currently working on two competitions, one for the summer and one for the fall. We are drawing inspiration from some very interesting sources, and lets just say you might be questioning your loyalties by the time it's all done. In conclusion, I can promise it’s going to be an exciting year. Hope you guys are studied up on your Harry Potter trivia!

As many of you curse under your breath at the upgrading (you will love us for it in the end, I promise!) we’ve been given a little down time. Time to wreck havoc on April Fool’s; time to clean up the archive a bit; time to organize the forums a bit and, of course, some free time to work on our own stories that tend to get neglected during busy submissions time. So late last night I found myself cuddled up with a Writer’s Chai (although I think it has a new name now) from Starbucks and just for kicks opened the HPFF queue.

It was odd, I must admit. I stared at the blankness for a moment reveling in the empty page and then wondered what everyone else was doing during the shut down. Are you, like me, writing and re-writing chapters to make them perfect for when it is re-opened? Are you twiddling your thumbs because everything is already as good as its going to get? Or are you spending more time at the forum upping that all important post count?

Then, I realized, it didn’t matter. The point was we were all going through it together. HPFF users were stressed but happy knowing the upgrades are coming…staff are stressed wanting everything to be just perfect for you when it does get up and running. We are all in it together and (blame it on the chai tea) no matter where we live or that we know each other only online, we are all part of the HPFF family. It made me happy to know I wasn’t going through it alone and even happier to know that soon enough that empty queue will be full again with wonderful stories everyone has worked so hard on during the break. It made me warm and fuzzy all over and, happily, Jay’s given us a new spot to spill our guts to you at. Enjoy our ramblings, musings and funny anecdotes…your chance at a behind the scenes look at HPFF. Welcome to the staff blog.