Love the look of the new platform. Things I've run into that are either missing or wont work.

Tried to add cover art to my book from a picture in my own gallery. Continue to get an enternal server error and unable to complete task.

No longer know where the books and discussions I was following or started are now located and how to keep up to date with them.

When I try to look at my reviews on my book they will not load.

The site used to feel like a community and now it feels a little isolated. I have to go to so many more locations on the site to find things that use to appear conveniently on my home page. My profile, book info, connections, books and discussions I was following. I am hoping I will get use to this new platform. I hope you will post fixes or how to get to places soon.

Thanks for you time.

Hi Joani, it will get some time to get acclimated, I know, but don't worry--we're working on a big feature that will allow you to keep track of books and discussions. 

Our developers are working on a fix, and the reviews that you've given to other people's books will once again appear on your profile tomorrow. 

Nevena from BC

--edited by Nevena Georgieva on 6/25/2013, 10:55 PM--

--edited by Ian Nathaniel Cohen on 6/26/2013, 1:42 PM--

Yeah, that hadn't been clear to me (not all communities I've been on require this).  Thanks!

I have another one, though.  When I try and save updates to my profile, I get a 500 Server error.  Anyone else get these?  (UPDATE: It's happening when I try and read books on the site.)

--edited by Ian Nathaniel Cohen on 6/27/2013, 1:57 PM--

What browser are you in?

Nevena, I have the same problem with sending PMs! I know you and I are connected, yet as I described to you elsewhere, I'm unable to send PMs to you or anyone else right now.

Also, I had no idea this thread was here, or I'd have been posting here all along.

--edited by MariAdkins on 7/2/2013, 11:24 PM--

I just PM-ed you, but wanted to post here as well so everyone else having that bug could see it. 

The tech team was able to figure out the error you were getting when trying to save your profile information. 

You were getting the 500 error because your short bio is too long. You have 1,037 characters in the bio, but the site only allows 1,000. It shouldn't have allowed you to enter a bio longer than 1,000 characters, so the tech team is working on fixing that. 

If you shorten your bio a bit, you should have no problem saving it!

Nevena

Board still moving painfully slow and not keeping me logged in.

Mozilla FireFox 22.0 latest release

20mbs cable internet

I don't have these issues anywhere else online.

I went over to my profile page, once I figured out how to find it, and edited it just out of curiosity. Nowhere on that page does it say bios are limited to so many characters. That's probably something that should be added to that page - right above the block where the bio goes.

I just got 8 e-mail notifications about private messages. When I logged into the site (because the text of the message doesn't appear in the e-mail notification, which is quite annoying), I saw that there were 8 identical messages - all with the same date and time stamp.

Unless the person sent it to me hit send 8 times (which I doubt since all the messages have the same time stamp), then I'm calling this some sort of bug/glitch.

You're not the only one. Same thing has been happening to me to, when I bother to look at the emails.

Also, the board is still moving painfully slow and not keeping me logged in.

I'm sorry for you trouble. After the site logged you out and you got a message your username/password is wrong, how were you able to log back in? After a few attempts, it let you back in? (Just trying to retrace your steps so we can replicate the bug.)

Is that behavior that occurs all the time--are you being logged out constantly?

Angela & Mari, 

When did you encounter the multiple email notifications issue? Does it happen all the time or just this one time?

Site is moving somewhat faster but it's still not keeping me logged in - this is the only site where I have this issue.

Hi Mari,

We're reading the thread, and, as I mentioned in our private messages, the development team is working on the problems.

We've been talking in so many different forums -- I've sent you a note from support at book country dot com. Let's continue the conversation there.

Cheers,

Nevena

A couple of bugs.

First: when I copy any part of a post from a forum to Word I get appended crap. Everything after the word Backgrounds was appended:

I am writing a book that spans a large area and diverse cultural backgrounds - See more at: http://www.bookcountry.com/Community/Discussion/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=8589934873#sthash.j4ICNOWb.dpuf

Second, and this has been mentioned. This site has always had an auto-logout, based on time. It's always been an annoyance because the time frame should be at least twelve hours, but seemed to be about four or less. But now, at times it's less than an hour. Walk away for dinner and it's necessary to log in again. This is the only writers site I've found that doesn't base their session cookie on browser shutdown rather than time.  This isn't after all, a bank.

Third, a minor one. You're responding to an italic keyboard command, "control i" as a request for site information. Programmers might want that info, but not users. On sites like Scribophile Control i works just like a word processor and toggles italics.

Fourth: in a post like this one, if I hit return and begin to type, you've inserted a leading space on every like after the return is inserted.

Fifth: I can't tell how this post looks to others, but to my eyes the first line and the point above this are large, while the lines between them are smaller than this one. That can't be changed...except sometimes. Having the choice of font side and real font size, as you do, is unneeded complexity, even were it to work.

 In this case, my "point one" said it was 16 px (which should be pt) and it could have its size changed, but that stopped and now it's locked at 21, which isn't an option per the pulldown, and can't be changed, But I never asked for that size. My second point was the same size but the example I pasted in looked to be about ten point. When I tried to change the entire document to be the same, those lines shrunk to what you see, but insist they're 13 point, another size that can't be selected per the size pulldown.

The paragraph above began in the size you see, but abruptly dropped to 13 point while typing. I tried to bring it to 16 to match the opening. That worked but the opening shrunk to 13. I tried to set them both and it ignored me. But as I typed it reverted to what you see. And this paragraph, too, auto changed the text size while typing.

And for unknown reasons, an odd bullseye appears at the left of some paragraphs as a result of trying to fix the size. if I mouse over it, it vanishes till the mouse is moved away. An interesting effect, but not one your users might want.

And: the windows for font size and real font size are far too small to display the heading within them. Did no one ever check this? The whole text control area seems more of an alpha effort not a beta test level, with seriously inadequate acceptance testing.

And: When critiquing, the add a quote feature is clunky and seems not intuitive at all.

Edit: When it posted, most of the text points I mentioned vanished and the text seemed to change to what you see, but it was all over the place while trying to type.
 

--edited by Jay Greenstein on 7/16/2013, 10:37 PM--

Thanks, Jay, for providing such a good description of the issues that you're encountering. I have forwarded it to the team. 

A note about the log-out issues: 

The log-in time is currently set to 120 minutes. Based on your feedback, we are working on what is called a "persistent" log-in; this feature is scheduled for the next phase of development. Thank you in advance for bearing with us as we work on bringing this back.  

However, if you are being logged out more often than every 2 hours, send us a note to support @ bookcountry dot com. In the email, include info about your browser. Go to the below address and copy and paste the info gathered into a Word document or .txt file. This site will collect information about your browser and operating system to better help our tech team analyze the issue.

http://www.browserhawk.com/showbrow.aspx?bhcp=1 

Mari has reported a log-out problem that we have not been able to recreate (which is the way the team fights bugs!), so we welcome additional information in order to resolve this for you.

Cheers,

Nevena

--edited by Nevena Georgieva on 7/17/2013, 11:08 AM--

I tried to upload my manuscript for The Brotherhood of the Black Flag, but I'm getting all these weird spacing issues - not just with line spacing, but with separate paragraphs being combined.  When I try to separate them, the indent is different.  It doesn't seem to matter if I'm uploading a .doc or .docx version of the file, and I'm using Firefox. 

 These are similar to issues I was having with the previous version of Book Country, although I'm trying to determine if the problem is with the file or the site.

Anyone else have similar issues?

--edited by Ian Nathaniel Cohen on 7/18/2013, 7:53 AM--

Ian, it sounds like the problem is with the chapters themselves. Can you please send me a note to support at bookcountry dot com and send the chapters as attachments?

Also, can you go to the below address and copy and paste the info gathered into a Word document or .txt file. This site will collect information about your browser and operating system to better help our tech team analyze the issue.   

http://www.browserhawk.com/showbrow.aspx?bhcp=1  

In the meantime, I will forward this to the team. Sorry for the trouble. 

Nevena

--edited by Nevena Georgieva on 7/18/2013, 6:35 PM--

hey Nevena its Ayuda mei Amoir here just a little problem in updating my upload.

the problem is my dashboard is telling me that my work is still being edited but i've tried several times to post it as complete but all i get is a greyed overscreen and when i click anyway it going away and nothing as happened.

I'm having difficulty with a few things and have been waiting for it to work itself out but it doesn't seem to be happening.

When I attempt to add a connection, I get no response.  I'm aware that this could be because the person I'm asking declines, but it is not giving me the indication that it is pending after I put in the request either, which leads me to believe they're not getting the request at all. 

Also, I get no notification (neither in Book Country messages or by email as I used to) when someone responds to comments I've made or when they respond to posts/discussions I have put up.  I also don't get an email notification when someone posts a new review of my work.  

I'm just wondering if notification messages and emails are no longer provided for these items, or if something is simply not working for me.

Thanks!

Hi @Michelle--

When you go to the profile page of the member to whom you've just attempted to send a connection request, do you see a notice at the righthand corner that says the date that you sent them a request? That should appear if a connection request is pending on their end.  If they've accepted your connection request, they should show up when you click the "connection notifications" icon at the top of the screen above the search bar on the right (that's the button that looks like 2 silhouettes or snowmen). Click on "View all connections" and see if those members to whom you've tried to connect are showing up there. This is also where you can manage your connections in general.

It's not a bug if you aren't getting email notifications when members review or comment on reviews of your work. That's a feature that we are looking into bringing back.

Let's dig deeper over me if the first issue is not working as it should be. Email me at support AT bookcountry DOT com and we'll try and make these features work more smoothly for you.

Thanks for your feedback, Michelle, and everyone else on this thread!

Lucy Silag

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Thanks so much for the reply, I will check out what you mentioned to do with the connections and email if I have any difficulties.

I don't know if this is me going insane or a bug or what. ha ha

I just now noticed there is a right-click menu when writing or editing posts / comments. Thing is, it's hidden by the context menu in my browser.

I just did a review, and spent more than an hour on it. It posted with all the paragraphing lost and the text presented as a solid, and intimidating block. And, there appears to no longer be the ability to edit if we find a mistake after posting. So for all practical purposes the review feature is barely workable and unpleasant to use.

As a suggestion, when the review is posted, any text that has had a quote below it should have any blank lines between the comment and the next quote trimmed.

Another problem is that, instead of the old, “pick three areas to revue” there's now a stack of things that must be evaluated. And they all must not only be rated in stars, you require comments for every one. This too, is a problem. If the point is covered in the body of the critique it's an imposition to demand that there be more words on the subject, placed only because we're playing a game of Simon Says.

Even the requirement to give stars is a problem. The vast majority of new writer postings have a major flaw, in that the writer is still using the nonfiction techniques we're given in our primary education. That means it's all telling. And until that's corrected the only POV is the narrator's, pacing is erratic, voice is flat, etc. In fact, most of the categories listed, if we go by your description of what a given number of stars mean, will rate less than one because the writer is using inappropriate writing techniques. And that means we must give six one star reviews, which discourage the writer needlessly (but giving more stars when it's not deserved to make them feel good is needless praise). The answer is: a) Require printed text only in the primary review box. b) If there is no star or text don't show that category when the review is posted.

Thank you for reporting the bugs you found during our beta period. We've logged what you've said, and you've helped us make the site better.

We've closed this forum because the site now live. We're still listening and will help you if you find new bugs or technical problems. Here's the announcement where I explain everything that's new and what's on the roadmap. Here's where to go to report new bugs.

-Brandi