Migration Complete!

Story migration is complete (!!): Over the weekend I finished moving over the last of the 996 stories in the archive onto the new, mobile-friendly platform. Huzzah!! In token of this momentous occasion, I devised a low-key but friendly new logo, which you'll now see at on the home page and in the header of each site page. I basically wanted to let everyone know that this site, while newly streamlined and designed to be efficiently cross-platform compatible, is not all about the Helvetica.

I've done a deep check for broken links and leftover wiki code in the stories, but please, if you find anything weird or funky, take a quick moment to contact me or note it in the comments.

Now that the story migration is done, it's all about making the site better by adding features that I and the visitors want. (Suggestions welcome!) I have quite a to-do list, but I've already crossed a bunch of items off it, particularly....

Tag router strips: No, Tag Router is not a hot new German movie star. This is my favorite innovation on the new site. One thing I've wanted to do for a long time is for the visitor to be able to choose Next or Previous story not just for the overall archive but for each story's tags and for the story's author too. Now that I have the code for the site completely under my control, I figured out a simple and elegant way to do it.

Now each story page has a set of strips at the top and bottom of the story that allow the reader to navigate to the previous or next story in the overall story list, in each tag, in the story series if any, and for the story author. I borrowed the appearance and general concept from the index links at the bottoms of most TV Tropes trope pages, but the execution is specific to the way I've set things up here.

The list of stories that the next/previous router looks at is taken from the list page for that item. So, for example, the list of stories comes from the overall Stories page, the list of Muscle stories comes from the Muscle tag page, and so on. That means that the order follows those list pages, which will be alphabetical for stories, tags, and authors, and series order for series—useful for things like the sprawling Transform Universe stories from AKA, where order matters.

It was fun to devise (my head got nicely twisted around switching back and forth between html, css, javascript, and php, but that's good schooling for keeping your code head straight, like swapping foreign languages around as you write). I hope people find it useful, and that between that and the Random Story link people will have a good time finding new stories to enjoy. I know I am!

Top stories page: I've set up a page where I'll be showing top stories and authors by rating, page count, prolixity, etc. I need to get the page count and rating system live again, which is my next priority, to do most of it, but I've got the first list up on the page—Top 50 Longest Stories. There were a few surprises, not least just how many epic stories we have on the site. Anyway, there's a lot more of that kind of thing to come, as well as similar lists like top stories on each author's page, and latest and top stories for each tag page. The Top Stories page is here and is also linked on the navigation bar on the top and bottom of every page (abbreviated as "Top").

Story suggestions and requests: I've recreated the Suggestions and Requests page for you to give input on future stories I write. What do you want me to write about most? Let me know! And if you have a favorite BRK story that you really want continued, be sure to let me know by posting on the suggestion page, or in the comments for the story in question.

Contributions: So I admit I was a little passive-aggressive about mentioning this last time without actually mentioning it, which I regret and apologize for, not that anything came of it. The truth is that this migration has incurred some unexpected expenses in things like bandwidth overages, and there are more to come. In particular, after several outages and periods of variable site accessibility during which I was able to get exactly zero tech support, I'm convinced I'm going to need to switch hosting, and to get a good hosting provider that actually has people working for it I'm going to have to pay more than what I'm doing now. (Adult hosting is usually more expensive, presumably because they assume you're making scads of money off advertising and memberships.) I am going to have to replace my dying laptop.

None of that is on you guys, obviously! This is a hobby for me, and I'm honestly glad to put time, energy, and money into a project that's been a very important part of my life since I was a mere stripling almost 20 years ago. But if you're flush right now and it feels right to share some love with me and the site, I will be eternally appreciative and grateful and send you lots of warm, strong, four-armed hugs. Frankly, it's enough just to have lots of people that enjoy the site and take the time to tell me so, and even people who read this far into a news posting on an obscure erotica website. (grin)

Next update: Wednesday! And it's going to be moderately decent sized, as I've had a few submissions in the last few weeks. (Contributions welcome!) Whether it will include a contribution from me—I'm not sure yet, but my fingers and toes are all crossed. We're going to be crossing 1,000 stories no matter what, which is just fucking amazing. Party at my house! Bring the growth serum and rock on till the morning light.