There was a column listing how many views a chapter received. If it's been removed, I would like it back in. It was a good gauge of the traffic. Typically I found that only 10% of the views became reviews.
On your portfolio page there is a tab called stats. This gives you visits, reviews, etc for all of your content. Note that we didn't import view stats from the old site.
When I left a review just now and went to publish it, a warning message popped up telling me the "value" line had to be filled in. Having no idea what that meant, I inserted a "5" in the space. That worked, but is that what "value" means?
This sounds like a bug. I'm going to have it checked out.
Thanks for the info, at least I know I wasn't missing something. But one advantage of the republish is if you made revisions, you could call people's attention to it. Now I suppose you have to post it as if it were a new work. Hmm, any chance of bringing back the republish option?
We could possibly consider bringing it back. Nothing is off the table. Something else you'll be able to do soon if mass message your connections. So, if you have published a change and want some eyes to look at it, you can private message your group and get them to take a look.
Sol
I can't figure out how to re-publish content that has already been published. It was fairly easy to do on the old site. Can anyone help me here?
We removed the republish feature. Instead, we allow reviewers to leave as many comments as they want on a piece of content. They will only earn points for the first comment, but they can continue the dialogue and add any additional thoughts they have.
Sol
I fully agree with Linda and Dags. Also, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it would be nice if I went to my profile page and immediately saw any new reviews I had (as on the old site).
Your homepage alerts you whenever you have new reviews. You can click through and it will show you the new ones. It's a change but you do receive info when you have a new review, a new Quickee, a new private message, etc. We'll also be sending email alerts shortly when you have received a new review.
Thanks for all of the comments and suggestions. We'll look them over carefully. There are a few comments I have for a few of them.
3. We should be able to utilize the messaging system for connections AND non-connections. There are people I would like to communicate with privately who may not be someone I would have a reciprocal "connection" with. And by the way, I learned that we cannot message non connections the hard way when I opened it up and typed in the name of a recipient--but because I didn't have a connection with them, it defaulted that message and sent it to the last connected person I messaged with because they had a check mark next to their name. Awkward!
You can always send someone a Quickee on their profile page. You can do that with anyone regardless if you are connected or not.
4. Why are recommended Shelving of books only pertaining to books for sale? I'd like to display my recommendations for books I LOVE reading on this site that may or may not yet be for sale.
You can do this. Just click the Shelfit button on any content on the site and it will be added to your first shelf.
5. Email notifications need to have Reviews added as an option. As the number one priority around here, it SHOULD be one of the notification options. I was lucky enough to receive 3 reviews today and wasn't notified via personal email for any of them.
This is coming shortly.
6. Speaking of email, our public profile should have a 'contact author' option. Quickees are one thing, but if they aren't connected to me they can't do as instructed and send me a private message.
So, just so I understand this properly, you want anyone to be able to come onto the site and message you?
Sol, I agree with Linda about scaling down the size of the covers and making a read and review list like the one we had on the old site. I used that list a lot in finding the newest works of the authors that reviewed me.
dags:)
Have you gone to the Read tab on the top menu? This shows lists of content available to read. Is that what you are looking for?
I deleted a lot of old work.
I added book covers to a lot of material.None of this saved.
Will it save in the future?
It's a lot of work removing and editing content in my portfolio and I really am not looking forward to starting over.
Looking into it.
I was wondering how this would work for our works in progress, that are currently in the "Classic" group. I take it that if we also want to post in another group, say "mystery" or "science fiction" we would have to use points to do so. I agree this is not ideal to get those of us from the old site to actually populate these new groups with content. I know I wouldn't do it until I have something completely new to add.
I think some sort of "grandfathering" is appropriate, but it may have to be longer than a week. Will all groups be formed in the next week?
This brings up another question: for new content, if we want to add to two groups we are a member of, I assume that will take double the points? If so, I may just stick with the "classic" group and use the other groups for the forums.
This is something we are debating. The idea behind the groups is that you need credits to post so that you contribute to the group. Otherwise, someone could earn credits in one group and dump content in another. We want to keep the groups vibrant and not just make them another place to place content. But I understand what everyone is saying. Let me think about it a bit more.
Sol
I don't see this mentioned, so I will throw it out. I just published a chapter. My credit bank on my home page does not reflect the cost of that publication. And when I post reviews and earn credits, I do not see a new tally, unless I log out and log back in. Will this be addressed? I'd like to see my total credits at a glance there on the home page.
This is a cache issue. We'll take a look and adjust.
Sol
For those that want to access the old site, it can be accessed at old.thenextbigwriter.com.
Every time I change pages on the new site I get this security warning asking me if I want to click on only the page that is deemed secure. Not only is this annoying, but if I click "yes," the covers of my published books don't appear on my profile, but do appear if I click "no." Who knows what other changes are wrought by this choice?
I know what the problem is. This isn't causing any other problems. The problem is arising because the site is secured and the images coming from Amazon for your published books are not. So, the browser pops this warning. We're looking at several ways of fixing this.
Sol
That's what you look like, Sol! This conversion wasn't a small project. I'd imagine it took well over a year to accomplish. Try not to bite those nails and if you still have the jitters, I suggest a beer :-)
Nice to see you also!
It took a long time 
. A beer or two is in order. There's still a lot to do but the first part has been accomplished.
Sol
Any way to subscribe to a forum thread? Also, I edited my name back to "corra," and now my pen name (mabel) linked above leads only to this thread, rather than my profile. Might be a glitch, or the system might need to catch up, but so you know... smile
I'll take a look and see why it isn't changing.
Sol
This name left me an inline review....there wasn't one there, so I looked them up. It's spam.
bluetoothwirele
Okay, thanks. I banned him. It may take a day or two to get the spammers under control.
Linda Lee wrote:
Mrs. Piddles --you can click on the forum name of any writer and get the option to connect that way. OR you can type their name into the little magnifying glass search bar up on the top of the screen and type the name of the writer you want to connect with. Once their page comes up, hit the connection button.
I get no button, only a menu of that person's profile page. If I click on connections it just tells me that this person has no connections and I should send them a connect request, but I can't find that button. I'm using internet explorer.
Are you able to watch the Connections video on this page? It shows you how to make a connection.
https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/member … help-guide
I'm still not able to leave an inline review. This is a function I was able to do just fine on two other critique sites, which I stopped using long ago, but when I highlight text, nothing happens. There is no way I can leave an inline review and I haven't seen any inlines on anything I've read yet. Of course this is just the first few hours. And when I'm typing something in a forum, the site keeps freezing. Is it that busy today?
I may know your problem. I'll reach out to you to troubleshoot further.
You might consider grandfathering existing posts to list in points groups for a brief duration just while everyone gets settled in. OR give us the ability to post only specific chapters to new groups. That way, we can pay for only new content to appear.
We can grandfather some content in. Maybe for the next week. If you want that, let me know which group you want that for.
You can also do the other alternative. The best way to publish select chapters to a different points group is to create another version of the manuscript and only publish those chapters to the points group you want. That way, you only have to pay for those chapters.
Believe it or not spammers have already attacked the Groups section and created some Spam Groups. We're aware of the situation and will delete them as soon as we see them. We're also working on a solution to prevent it from happening in the first place. I just wanted to alert everyone that we are aware of the problem in case you see the spam.
My latest book, developed in the TNBW workshop, was published three months ago. When I uploaded its front cover page, its image was distorted by extra text that was not on the cover. When I tried to remove the picture so I can try it again, I found that there was no way to remove it.
I'll look into it. You may have had the title generation on when you uploaded your image. There should be a way to delete images. If not, we'll add one pronto.
Sol
I believe he said the old site would be accessed by www.oldthenextbigwriter.com
eventually.....
That is correct. It will be back up tomorrow at old.thenextbigwriter.com.
Did anyone save the link to the old forums? All my links are redirected here now.
The old site and forum will be back up tomorrow.
Major problem - In the old site, you could click on any of the posted chapters of a novel. Now you have to start at Chapter 1 and keep advancing until you get to the chapter you want.
The chapter header is a drop-down that will take you to any chapter. Also, on the Read listings you can pop the chapters open and navigate to any chapter. Does this solve your problem?
Edited to add: found some controls, however when I went to publish one of my books into my group....it wanted over 300 of my 600 points to do it. WOWZA. So I went to change it to a non point thing and couldn't. Why would you not give the founder/mod the ability to change their mind? Do I need to start the group over?
Once you start a group and decide points/no points, it can't be changed. You can delete the group and start over. To delete, go to the group and then Members and delete yourself. Then you can recreate it.
Sol
Hello,
Welcome to TheNextBigWriter Free Group Forum. This is the place for members of the Group to meet, discuss writing, share writing tips, share success, and more.
For those that came over from the old site, welcome. I put together a conversion document which you might want to read over. It provides an overview of how this site differs from the old one.
https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/member/conversion-help
For those that are entirely new to the site, welcome also.
For both groups feel free to post questions in this forum. You can also visit the Help tab to get answers to many of your questions.
https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/member/help-guide
Lastly, start a thread and post hello. Others on the site are looking forward to meeting you.
Sol
It's been a long two days and the site is launched. Whenever you bring a site live though, new bugs show up so I won't pretend there aren't any on the site. We tested, re-tested, and tested it again but I can already see a couple of bugs. As you use the site, it's most likely you will experience a few over the next few days. Please report them below. We will resolve them quickly. Thanks for your patience. By this weekend, the site will be running smoothly.
Sol
