Aphelion

Posted: **November 09, 2009, 08:55:23 PM**

It's finally happened.

The Flash Fiction Index, the thread in the Fun and Games Folder holding a compendium of all the flash stories submitted for the month flash challenges has now been viewed over 50,000 times!

I took a screen shot of it for posterity.

That's pretty amazing for a single thread which features 200 posts from a single user, me. (Even though I only wrote a small portion of the stories in the index, I'm the one who posted them.)

If you've never looked, you should. There's an awful lot of good fiction there, by many of the people you know here at a Aphelion.

Nate
Flash Fiction Editor

Posted: **November 10, 2009, 10:33:18 AM**

davidsonhero wrote:The number of views would probably be even higher if those of us using Internet Explorer could view the thread.
Hero

I wish I could be of more help about it. Every PC I've tried in IE 7 or 8 worked, so I don't know what it is. A long, long time ago, Rob Wynne confirmed he had it hang on a machine, but that's as far as things got.

I fixed or changed everything I know how, so without some hard evidence, I can't do any more.

Posted: **November 10, 2009, 11:40:37 AM**

I find that a lot of the time, Forum pages never quite finish loading (the animated activity icon keeps going, and "Done" never appears in the status bar at the bottom). This happens in IE when I use it (it isn't my browser of choice) and in Firefox and Google Chrome. It does NOT seem to prevent scrolling or using the in-page links.

Sometimes it helps to use the "Reload" or "Refresh" button (or hit CTRL-R)...

RM

Posted: **November 10, 2009, 04:48:44 PM**

davidsonhero wrote:I realize Nate that you've done everything you can. And I'm not complaining just to be a pest. I have as many stories in your index as the next flash challenger and I want the index to be working so I can send out links to my friends and family. I also want as many new readers going to the index as possible and reading my stories and the stories of the others. But I'm still having the same problems I've always had with the index and I'm curious what the other forum users' experiences have been.

For the record, I'm using Internet Explorer 7 and I only have problems with the index thread. I've never had any problems loading any other forum threads or any of the regular webpages in the zine. At least not any problems that were chronic or not probably caused by my connection.

When using IE 7, pages 1 and 2 of the index will just give me a black screen and continue to try to load without ever ending. I just tried and let page 2 try for 8 minutes. After I clicked the browser stop button part of the pages does show up as loaded, but it is not complete, only part of the post is loaded.

Pages 3 and 5 of the index load nearly instantly without any problems and always have.

Pages 4, 6, and 7 load the page with none of Nate's forum post included. The navigation appears on the top, left, and bottom. The browser says it is "done," but there is no content. This is different from the way pages 1 and 2 seem to hang part way through and partially load.

That's interesting. There are some inline color changes & quotes used in 1&2, but pgs 3 & 4 have a lot of other formatting like bold, ital, area, size, etc., too.

On your browser, does pg 3 start with McCamy's story, "Class Struggle" and pg 4 with your story, "Death & Taxes"?

I've tried looking on the phpBB support board, but all their stuff seems to be for version 3 of this board, and we use 2, if I read it right. I'd love to know the cause, if nothing else, because it's either an IE7/phpBB incompatibility or something I'm doing wrong.

This is a backwards way to go, but have you tried upgrading to IE8? I'm curious if it really is something limited to 7 or not. I use Firefox on a Mac, so there's not much I can do from here. If there were patches that fixed this issue, we're in Rob Wynne's territory.

Posted: **November 10, 2009, 06:24:31 PM**

Sounds about right.

I found a reference online in a completely different forum, and their solution was to change your board style (under profile) from "Spacevision" to "SubSilver" and then see if it still happens. If it doesn't, it's IE7 not resetting the display style.

Hope that helps.

Posted: **November 11, 2009, 05:54:00 PM**

davidsonhero wrote:If the SubSilver setting continues to work, then we know the root of the problem, and it helps me. It does not help the casual Internet surfer who finds Aphelion by search engine or even the family member or friend who wants to stop by for a quick read, since the SubSilver setting is only in effect when you select it and are logged in as a user. So guests still get the default that doesn't work right. Which means this would have to be addressed (or not) by the Webmaven, who has control over the default settings. Thanks for the effort Nate. If you'd like me to try anything else, let me know.

Hero

I put changing to subSilver in the notice at the top of the index. Maybe that will help more people. Although, I see in subSilver it's hard to read any of the yellow text. I may need to pick a new color for those items, if I can find one that looks good both ways.

Posted: **November 16, 2009, 04:19:40 PM**

Since I posted this, the Index has averaged about 250 hits a day.

Where are they all coming from?? Don't you just wonder??

Posted: **November 16, 2009, 06:36:53 PM**

davidsonhero wrote:It would be great to think those were all readers. That's probably not the case. I wonder how many are from search engine referrals. Rob Wynne might have access to some statistics that would give you more specifics. For instance, is each hit from a unique IP? My guess is no. Every time I go to a thread, leave it, and return, it increases the hit count of that thread. So it could be from fewer people than you think. All I can say is that I haven't been on the index since November 10th, so none of the hits are from me. Maybe your announcement and the subsequent discussion here drummed up some interest in the older stories.

Hero

Oh, I'm sure many of them are not readers, but since the counts for that thread are consistently higher than all the other threads, I don't think search engines can be the root cause. I also know that a lot of people flip back and forth to the index page, further bolstering the hit counts.

I was more curious of where they were coming from. I mean, are we a hit in China (relatively speaking) and don't know it? Can Rob see the stats for a single thread apart from the rest of a site?

If there's concrete data about who's looking, then that would give target demographics. We'd have a chance to give them what they want, whomever and wherever they are, and help build a bigger audience.

We could eventually be *gasp* well read.

Posted: **November 16, 2009, 06:53:16 PM**

kailhofer wrote:...
We could eventually be *gasp* well read.

I thought "well-read" meant "having read a broad range of literature of high quality" (as opposed to, say, having read every Harlequin Romance ever published)...

(from TheFreeDictionary.com:

Knowledgeable through having read extensively.

having read widely and intelligently; erudite

and Thesaurus definitions from the same page:

well informed or deeply versed through reading; "respect for a well-read man"; "well-read in medieval history"

highly educated; having extensive information or understanding)

I'm not sure what the term for "read by a lot of people" would be ("King-like"? "Grishamish"?)

RM

Posted: **December 29, 2009, 11:48:33 AM**

60,000 page views!

In not even 2 months, another 10K. How cool is that?

That's the Flash Fiction Index, the repository of all entries to the monthly writing challenges since we started them back in '07. If you haven't seen it, you can check it out here.

Posted: **March 24, 2010, 01:57:30 PM**

This is just a brag, sorry. I see the Flash Fiction Index passed the 70,000 hit mark today.

Posted: **March 25, 2010, 09:29:36 AM**

It's just some people who have that problem. The best fix we have is to change your board style to subSilver. You do that by picking 'profile' above, next to Search and your messages notice. One inside, pick 'subSilver' as the board style instead of 'spacevision.'

It changes the colors of everything, but then all the pages show. Nobody really knows why.

Aphelion

50,000 page views !!

50,000 page views !!

Internet Explorer

Not just IE, and not just the Flash Index

Re: IE Problems

Don't you just wonder...

"Well read"

60K