IMO, tagging is completely optional.

Subject: IMO, tagging is completely optional.
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2021-02-18 06:32:39 UTC

AO3 is probably your best bet for low-hassle, fandom-friendly story hosting. If you're not keen to learn HTML/CSS, you don't want to join me and hS on Neocities, though I think it's great. I can't recommend any of the older site-building platforms I used to know about. Tripod served me well for a long time, but it was never without issues, and I dunno if they've improved their visual site-builder since the last time I had anything to do with it. Maybe someone else can speak to something like Wordpress, which is fairly popular, but I haven't tried it myself.

So, tagging. As far as I've determined, there are two reasons to tag: 1) to help people find content they want to read, and 2) to warn them of things they might wish to avoid. The first is to your benefit if you want more people to find your story. The second is courteous. You don't have to do either of them. The bulk of your audience for PPC writing is here in the PPC community; you don't have to work that hard to drum up readers. You also don't have to bear the responsibility of thinking up everything that might hypothetically upset someone. The BIG things (graphic sex, graphic violence, any intersection of the two), sure, and AO3 has a special set of tags for those things that show up in bold text at the top of your tag cloud. Things you already know are sensitive for people around here, sure. Beyond that, though? The reader bears the ultimate responsibility for choosing either to risk seeing something upsetting to them or to stick to things with a G rating. That's life.

(For the record, this isn't anything I don't expect of myself. There are things I may choose to avoid in certain contexts or frames of mind, but one* is a totally normal and non-threatening aspect of life for many people, and the other** is a particular idiosyncrasy of mine. In neither case do I expect special consideration.)

So, while the enormous tag clouds on AO3 may be mind-boggling or intimidating (they put me off at first), I don't think they need to be. I think people just go way overboard with them, and also that they could be formatted better to be less bloody dense. Tag only as much as you want to, and know you can always add more later if you think of something you missed the first time. It's not a big deal.

~Neshomeh

* Alcohol. Especially irresponsible drinking being treated as no big deal. Daughter of an alcoholic here; I must sharply disagree that it's no big deal. That said, I've learned through exposure to deal with people drinking responsibly and to develop some curiosity about types of alcohol, how it's made, mixology, etc. I'll even taste things! It sure makes writing about it easier. Hence, no need for anyone to tiptoe around the subject generally.

** Bad things happening to cats. And, I mean, cruelty to animals and children and anything that can't contextualize its existence in general—but cats in particular. I've just always had a thing about cats. Like, there's this song from the perspective of a witch's familiar, and the witch is killed, and I cried the first time I heard it because the cat is left all alone. >.> It's weird. And it doesn't come up all that often, so I don't expect anyone to devote precious brain-space to remembering my weirdness.

Anyway, I take pride in being able to manage my stuff, even when confronted unexpectedly. That's not a boast or me looking down on anyone with a brain that doesn't work that way; just a thing that makes me feel good about myself.

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What would be the best way of hosting PPC stories? by Mirage Fontane on 2021-02-17 17:27:04 UTC Reply

I know everyone has different answers to this question, but that's exactly why I'm asking for your opinions. I've been hosting my missions on Dreamwidth until now because I don't like using Docs for anything but private writing, but frankly, the lack of customization options in my journal is beginning to bother me. For example, I've no place to put a permanent disclaimer about what does and doesn't belong to me in my writings (unless there is a way to do it that I don't know about). I'd like to use a more accessible or fandom-friendly site, but I don't know much about HTML, and given the sort of... material I used to work with, tagging and content warnings on AO3 would be a nightmare. Does anyone know any other options?

Live Journal, maybe? by Midnight on 2021-02-18 16:15:21 UTC Reply

Some people seem to post missions there, and it’s what I plan to use.

Dreamwidth is a better version of LJ. by Neshomeh on 2021-02-18 23:14:07 UTC Reply

LiveJournal hasn't really been a go-to service for... I dunno, probably a decade? People who used to like LJ moved to Dreamwidth. It is better because it's owned and run by a small group of non-shady people who are transparent about what they do and how. LJ, last I heard, is owned by a Russian corporation? Something like that. I remember much dissatisfaction with LJ from people who used to use it, anyway.

~Neshomeh, waiting for a train that is late.

Some expansions & suggestions. by Huinesoron on 2021-02-18 09:10:58 UTC Reply

If you haven't run into it yet, it's possible to publish Google Documents, which strips out any identifying information (like this), so in the unlikely event that your only issue with them is that your name is attached, there's that.

If you wanted to create your own website (I will join Nesh in plugging Neocities), you can actually make a very simple one with no in-depth HTML at all. This:

<html><head></head><body>

<a href="a_page.html">Link to a page</a>

This is the text of a mission.

 

And this is some more text after a line break.

</body></html>

Will give you a white page with left-formatted text, and a link to wherever you put in. It also has the advantage of making the techies scream whenever they see it. ^_^

I know a few people have posted missions to Tumblr, but can offer no advice on that. Blogspot allows you to create a permanent sidebar, which would meet your disclaimer requirement.

And of course there's always Fanfiction.net. Rumours of them kicking off PPC missions on sight have been greatly exaggerated; Kaitlyn and Selene have been stable for seven? years. And posting to an actual fanfic site means the possibility of drawing in new readers to the community...

hS

That makes me scream and I'm not a techie. by Kittyauthor on 2021-02-18 20:55:49 UTC Reply
~~It might be because I know basic HTML.~~

But, anyways, hS, that sounds interesting, especially since I know some basic HTML because gestures vaguely at a popular pet site so that sounds like it would work for me as well.

It just depends on two things (which I'll probably find the answers to on my own, but noting them down anyways):
- Cost. If it's free, I'm good. If not, then I'm not (was Neocites the one closing down free webpages or was it something different?)
- And privacy options, like "Can I disable people finding it through Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo/etc.?" and the like.
But, like I said, I can probably find the answers on my own once I'm done with other stuff, so you don't need to absolutely positively answer them :P

~Kittyauthor, who is wondering how they got all this from |interested noises| they originally wanted to put down.

>:D My work here is done. by Huinesoron on 2021-02-18 21:19:33 UTC Reply
But not actually, because:
- Neocities is free! You get something like 1 GB of storage, and a very smooth UI for editing the site. You /can/ give them money, but basically all that gets you is even more storage you'll never need. (My sites, total, are sitting at around 30MB so far.) They also promise they'll never sell, put ads, or penalize free users, which... well, it'll be nice if it's true. (Webs is the one that's cutting us off, and they've been clunky for a long time.)
- I don't know about preventing search engines from catching it, though. Not even sure what I'd be looking for...
hS

Privacy from search engines isn't "make it or break it" for m, but it will make me look a bit closer by Kittyauthor on 2021-02-19 00:03:49 UTC Edited Reply

I'll probably do some digging, make a website using that, fiddle with HTML, make me not scream, and fiddle some more.

All in all, though, privacy from search engines isn't something that'll make me not use a blog or Neocities it's just that I am used to it for blogs at the very least (I had a blog in school... 6th or 8th grade? with that enabled).

That's what my mind thinks of in terms of a separate webpage hosting PPC missions: as blogs, for some reason.

No I shall do some info diving.

Kittyauthor, who just remembered they really, really need to at least post a CPP interlude and fetch the logo to post sometime.

Update: Aaaa! by Kittyauthor on 2021-02-19 01:11:05 UTC Edited Reply

I forgot how many time I'd go to edit a page in Neopets apparently. All this time, working from a white background, is just scream-worthy for me.

I need a background. I'll design one once I get the basics "sketched in," so to speak. Here is what I have right now.

Kittyauthor, AAAAAAA!

Edit update: Got it off of white. Forgot CSS existed hahaha.

It looks a bit better now, with the much softer "linen" colored background. The light blue... clashes horribly, but I can fix it.

Eventually.

I'm just glad I got sub-pages to work, dang it!

Welcome to Neocities! by Neshomeh on 2021-02-19 14:52:02 UTC Reply

I'd follow you, but... Did you disable your site profile?

~Neshomeh

Think I did by accident. by Kittyauthor on 2021-02-19 15:22:57 UTC Reply

I was trying to stop search engines from listing my site.

That clearly didn't work :P

So, let me re-enable the site profile.

Kittyauthor, about to be in a meeting.

Yay. ^_^ (nm) by Neshomeh on 2021-02-19 15:52:26 UTC Reply

Yeah, about Tumblr... by Mirage Fontane on 2021-02-18 10:30:40 UTC Reply

The attitude over there seems to be pretty heavily on the "do whatever you want in fanfic-land and to heck with anyone who says otherwise" side. So from what I've seen, the community isn't too kindly disposed to fanfic criticism, especially the snarky kind. As I said to Neshomeh, I might end up trying to learn HTML after all so I can have a more... private space is probably the wrong word if I want my missions to stay visible, but definitely something I can tailor more to my needs. And posting my PPC fics to fanfic sites is kind of a double-edged sword in my opinion, especially because most of the content I've sporked is from there. I think my best choices are either staying with Dreamwidth, Blogspot or HTML, and out of these I'm leaning mostly towards HTML. We'll see if I can hold my own in the scary world of code. ^_^

In that case... by Neshomeh on 2021-02-18 15:08:38 UTC Edited Reply

Start learning here! W3Schools has been my friend for many, many years, and they will help you avoid making the techies scream. Heck, even I cringed at the lack of paragraph tags in hS's example. ^_~

To answer your question to me below, I'd say HTML is pretty simple. Each tag tells a browser what sort of thing it's about to read. "This is a paragraph," for instance; "this is a link"; "this is a header"; "this is an image"; and so forth. And the closing tags tell the browser when the thing stops being that thing.

CSS is a little trickier, but it goes hand in glove with HTML. That's how you tell the browser how a certain type of thing should look. At the very least, you'll want to know how to do inline styling like the style of the text inside this tag is Comic Sans MS, bold, and dark green which you can add to most HTML tags. CSS is also how to position blocks of text on the screen if you want to do anything more complex than a single column of text with links and top and bottom.

But, start with HTML. {= )

If you have any questions that W3Schools can't answer, ~~you're out of luck~~ I can try to help, as long as it's not much more in-depth than "how did you do X thing?" Oh, and know that the "View page source" option when you right-click on a webpage is your friend. That will let you take a look at how other people (like me and hS) have done things on our sites. If you see a bit of code you like, steal it! It's a fine old Internet tradition. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Edit: I noticed that the Board doesn't seem to support font-weight or font-style. Dunno why. Tomash?

Thank you for the help! by Mirage Fontane on 2021-02-18 16:01:38 UTC Reply

I've been a little busy with work and life lately, so it might be a while before I manage to get more in-depth into this, but learning HTML is something I've thought about in the past, and now is as good a time as any to start. I've always had a ton of fun fiddling with themes and templates when I set up a new Tumblr or something similar, and being able to build something of my own is definitely a nice thought. I remember being... not terrible at HTML back when we learned it in school, it was just a long time ago. I'm sort of eager to get back into it now. : D

IMO, tagging is completely optional. by Neshomeh on 2021-02-18 06:32:39 UTC Reply

AO3 is probably your best bet for low-hassle, fandom-friendly story hosting. If you're not keen to learn HTML/CSS, you don't want to join me and hS on Neocities, though I think it's great. I can't recommend any of the older site-building platforms I used to know about. Tripod served me well for a long time, but it was never without issues, and I dunno if they've improved their visual site-builder since the last time I had anything to do with it. Maybe someone else can speak to something like Wordpress, which is fairly popular, but I haven't tried it myself.

So, tagging. As far as I've determined, there are two reasons to tag: 1) to help people find content they want to read, and 2) to warn them of things they might wish to avoid. The first is to your benefit if you want more people to find your story. The second is courteous. You don't have to do either of them. The bulk of your audience for PPC writing is here in the PPC community; you don't have to work that hard to drum up readers. You also don't have to bear the responsibility of thinking up everything that might hypothetically upset someone. The BIG things (graphic sex, graphic violence, any intersection of the two), sure, and AO3 has a special set of tags for those things that show up in bold text at the top of your tag cloud. Things you already know are sensitive for people around here, sure. Beyond that, though? The reader bears the ultimate responsibility for choosing either to risk seeing something upsetting to them or to stick to things with a G rating. That's life.

(For the record, this isn't anything I don't expect of myself. There are things I may choose to avoid in certain contexts or frames of mind, but one* is a totally normal and non-threatening aspect of life for many people, and the other** is a particular idiosyncrasy of mine. In neither case do I expect special consideration.)

So, while the enormous tag clouds on AO3 may be mind-boggling or intimidating (they put me off at first), I don't think they need to be. I think people just go way overboard with them, and also that they could be formatted better to be less bloody dense. Tag only as much as you want to, and know you can always add more later if you think of something you missed the first time. It's not a big deal.

~Neshomeh

* Alcohol. Especially irresponsible drinking being treated as no big deal. Daughter of an alcoholic here; I must sharply disagree that it's no big deal. That said, I've learned through exposure to deal with people drinking responsibly and to develop some curiosity about types of alcohol, how it's made, mixology, etc. I'll even taste things! It sure makes writing about it easier. Hence, no need for anyone to tiptoe around the subject generally.

** Bad things happening to cats. And, I mean, cruelty to animals and children and anything that can't contextualize its existence in general—but cats in particular. I've just always had a thing about cats. Like, there's this song from the perspective of a witch's familiar, and the witch is killed, and I cried the first time I heard it because the cat is left all alone. >.> It's weird. And it doesn't come up all that often, so I don't expect anyone to devote precious brain-space to remembering my weirdness.

Anyway, I take pride in being able to manage my stuff, even when confronted unexpectedly. That's not a boast or me looking down on anyone with a brain that doesn't work that way; just a thing that makes me feel good about myself.

Tag clouds don't necessarily bother me. by Mirage Fontane on 2021-02-18 10:24:04 UTC Reply

But given the fact that the tone of my writings varies pretty wildly between fluff, and... er... some rather more interesting things means that I'd have to do some serious organizing if I want to migrate to AO3. Not that that's necessarily a problem. It might be the best option I have if I don't want to stay at Dreamwidth, after all. It's just that the idea of hosting PPC stories at a fanfiction site kind of gives me a weird feeling? I don't think AO3 has policies against it, per se, but non-PPCers finding my stories there isn't necessarily something I want to happen. Darn me being so picky with my hosting options... I might take a stab at learning HTML in my free time after all so I can create a more personal space for this kind of stuff. Would you say it's difficult?

Seconding this. by Kittyauthor on 2021-02-17 18:51:28 UTC Reply

I was honestly thinking about dreamwidth but I feel that it would be a nightmare for me to set up and possibly not be the best for me. And I'm not super sure that AO3 is the best for me, either. I feel like I keep not tagging something important.

Kittyauthor

Honestly... by Mirage Fontane on 2021-02-18 10:07:23 UTC Reply

Setting up a Dreamwidth account isn't that difficult, or at least not compared to some other sites (I still have nightmares about the time I tried to set up a Wordpress account), and I'll admit that it's a tried-and-true option for PPC-ing... but the user interface isn't very customization-friendly, and editing entries is particularly a hassle. And what bothers me the most: it only allows you to have one post draft at a time as far as I'm aware. I'd advise you to give it a try and see if you like it better than me (it really isn't that hard to use once you get a little used to it), but if I had to start over again with the missions, it wouldn't necessarily be my first choice.