Here's something I had noticed before, but it only happened like twice when I was having page-load issues, so I'd never mentioned it before. But it's continuing to happen, so I don't know if it's just me or a browser issue or a board issue. 

When I'm in the "Add Reply" pane, sometimes it goes all squirrelly and gives me an endless, non-wrapping window. I'm not sure how to describe it. Like - you're typing in the comment pane, but instead of dropping to the next line like it should, the text just keeps scrolling to the side, and there's a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom.

What made me think of it is that I'm working on a post for the YA group now and am having that particular issue. I'll see if I can get a screen cap and email it in.  

I've got two bugs I've been seeing for a while. I'm using Safari on Mac OS.

1) Almost since the start of the new site, the furthest right of the images on a genre page (i.e. the military SF thumbnail on the SF page) hasn't appeared. It's not just invisible, mousing over it doesn't seem to do anything.

2) For the last few days, I've gotten a '500 server error' whenever I've tried to sort the discussions by post date. It doesn't seem to crop up with any other ways of searching, though I've not tried them all.

Thanks for the help.

@Tim We haven't seen your first bug before. Thanks for reporting it -- we'll take a look. We noticed the 500 error over the weekend and it's at the top of our bug squashing list.

@Mari Thanks for reporting. We'll take a look.

@Tim: We've fixed the 500 error with the search and sort by most recent date. You shouldn't see that problem any longer.

@Mari: We're adding in persistent login with the next release and that will solve your issue.

@Wayne: We're sorry to hear you're frustrated. Could you please email us directly at support at bookcountry dot com so that we can better diagnose your problem? (That's the fastest way for us to help you when you're having an issue that's specific to your account.)

Pretty sure this is a bug:

If I click on the link embedded in an e-mail alert for a discussion thread I'm following, the initial page I'm brought to does show me the discussion in question. However, in order to post a reply I need to be logged in. So, I logged in and was taken to pretty much a blank page. The system won't let me paste it here, so I'll send it along in an e-mail. Ideally, if I follow a link in a thread and then have to log in, I should return to the page I had clicked through to in the first place. Not scroll through all the discussions to find the one I was interested in.

Also, while trying to paste, I right-clicked and got a menu that had a list of Paste options. When I selected one, I got the following error message: "The page at www.bookcountry.com says: Use Ctrl + V to paste." It seems to me that the system isn't optimized to handle both keyboard and mouse shortcuts.

It's getting hard to find things that do work right:

On my site home page my blog address at Wordpress isn't recognized as a link, probably because there's no www leading. But Wordpress doesn't use them. And if someone copies and pastes the URL it comes out as:

http://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/#sthash.Hv9ZDmsi.dpuf

Nothing after the slash appeared on the page, and it's certainly unrelated to my URL. What in the hell is going on? As someone who worked in the computing field for 40 years, I have to say that whoever wrote your acceptance test protocol has probably never written one before. It seems almost like the programmers handed you the package and you simply took it live, trusting their assurance that it was ready.

Hi @Mari--Thanks for reporting the bug! Please go ahead and email us at support AT bookcountry DOT com.

@Jay--thanks for bringing this issue to our attention as well. This is something we haven't seen yet with other members. Do you mind emailing us at the same email address above so that we can look at it one-on-one?

Thanks to you both for getting in touch!

Lucy Silag

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

What does this persistent log-in consist of? I still have to log-in continually. I'm not keeping track of the time periods away, but I go on Bookkus and Scribophile and I am kept logged-in for weeks.

.

And I still have a big blank area under News Feed on my home page where, I believe, my connections (or something that you've mentioned) should be. Can we get a picture of what the functional home page should look like?

.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 8/14/2013, 11:16 AM--

 So after spending over and hour on a critique your system went into an endless loop, cycling the "wait" progress bar over and over. And hours worth of work tossed away. There are just too many gotchas in the code.

Edit: I went back and looked. The critique actually posted, but all the paragraphing was ripped out so there's just big ugly unreadable blocks of  text. This is really frustrating.

--edited by Jay Greenstein on 8/15/2013, 12:48 AM--

Hi @Mari--

It depends on what you report--if it's a problem that is specific to a member but we aren't hearing it from the whole group, and we can't replicate it in our office, we encourage emailing support so that we can get more information about your browser, operating system, internet connection, etc. That helps us diagnose.

If you find a bug that you think is a great concern to the community (a broken link, or something of that nature), this thread is the place for it.

I did get the email you sent last night to support AT bookcountry DOT com so I will get back to you for more information right now.

 
Thanks and talk soon!

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Hi @Jay,

This definitely sounds like something we need to check out very closely, and I am hoping I can get some more information from you. Will you email me at support AT bookcountry DOT com today so that we can try to work out (and fix) what happened?

Thanks for keeping us in the loop--it is very helpful to know what's happening for our members on the site.

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Hi @Mimi--I want to send you a screenshot of a logged in homepage so we can compare notes. Will you email me at support AT bookcountry DOT com so I can reply with the attachment?

When we chat over email we can diagnose if the persistent login is still a problem.

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon!

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Maybe we have different understandings of what "persistent login" means. Each time I come to the site, I have to login. Period. Even with the "Keep me logged in" box checked.

With the old version of the site, once I clicked the "keep me logged in" option, whenever I went to the site (even if after several days - with my laptop turned off in between), I did not have to log in.

So, at least with respect to the persistent login, Mimi isn't the only one affected.

@Mimi--glad to hear things are working better for you! Keep me posted!

@Alexandria--I got your email. Thanks for sending it to me at the support inbox. Let me do some digging and get back to you today.

Thanks, everybody!

Lucy

@Angela--I'm wondering if the login is working better for you now. Yesterday afternoon we released a fix that should make this work much better for every member. Please email us at support AT bookcountry DOT com if that is not the case for you.

Thank you all for your feedback and happy Book Country-ing today! Looking forward to reading a lot of manuscripts this weekend.

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

I just finished trying to quote in the forum.

First, if your cursor is anywhere but in the right place, whatever you quoted vanishes with your first keystroke. Since the completion of the quote action doesn't place your cursor in position to type (it should), and there are two blank lines under the text (with odd little circles that vanish when you mouse over them) it's not unexpected for a user to click the first blank line under the quoted test and hit a few returns to space down. But doing that erases the quoted text.

And: I just went back to verify that clicking on the bottom blank doesn't toss the quote, and discovered that you can highlight, but not highlight and quote that, you're stuck with quotting the entire post, even if you only want to comment on a single point remark—which is what quoting is for. That limitation makes the quote feature pretty well useless.

Copy and paste would be a lot easier. Locking it out in the forums and during reviews accomplishes nothing useful, but it is really annoying.

These two items might not be bugs, but either on my end or problems with the operator (me)!

- when I try to read my own story or that of others, I get an error message that there was an error loading the manuscript. I use google chrome, so I'm not sure what happened there. 

- also, where can I get a working link of my story to share? I tried to do it via my dashboard, but it doesn't grant "outsiders" access to my story.

Thanks so much!

Hi Laura!

Thanks for posting about these 2 issues.

The first definitely sounds like a bug. Can you email support at bookcountry dot com so that we can take a closer look?

The second thing you asked about sounds like you are wondering if there is a way to share your writing with non-Book Country members. You can share your book's page with non-members or folks who are not logged in, but the manuscripts themselves are private and can only be viewed by BC members. We think that's an important part of our privacy policy.

We will look out for an email from you in our support in box!

Thank you, Laura!

Lucy Silag

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Not sure if this is a bug or if it's part of the updates, but I used to get email notifications if someone reviewed my MS or sent me a private message, but I haven't gotten anything in a couple of months. I just logged in and found four messages, one private message, and a couple of discussion board postings for threads I'm following. 

Was there an opt-in switch when the updates went live? Is there a way to turn the email notifications back on?

x♥x

Noelle

Hi Noelle, 

Thanks for your note. 

There are private messages settings you can change: You would do that by going to your member profile page and then clicking on the "Edit" button that appears in the upper right corner. I checked your settings and it appears that you have private messages "on."

You can subscribe/unsubscribe to a discussion by going over to that discussion and clicking on the little envelope icon and selecting subscribe or unsubscribe. 

There have been a few changes in how the notifications work, so let me explain that: 

• Members don't currently get notifications when they get a new review or someone comments on a review they've written. This feature is on our list, and we're working our way through it. 
• Members should get email notifications when they get a private message or there is a new comment in a discussion they are following. We did a few tests to see if we can duplicate this issue, but it's working for us. Can you email me at support@bookcountry.com and we'll work on testing this together: I will send you private messages, add discussion comments, etc.

Nevena

BC coordinator

--edited by Nevena Georgieva on 9/18/2013, 5:25 PM--

Hi, @Mimi--are you still having this issue yesterday (Saturday) or today (Sunday)? If so, send me an email to lucy at bookcountry dot com so I can get started logging a bug. I'm sorry that's happening to you--it must be really frustrating!

I am not having that issue on either of the computers I am working on, but if other members are having it, please let us know, either via email, private message to me (if we are connected) or here on the thread.

Thank you!

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Hi there, Jay--

Sorry you're having issues with the hyperlink manager. It's a bug we're aware of and are planning on working our way through. 

When I've encountered this before, however, I've always been able to see and click on the "OK" button when I scroll down past the transparent section. Isn't that happening for you? If not, will you please send us a note to support@bookcountry.com with a screenshot of what you're seeing + your browser info?

Cheers,

Nevena

BC Coordinator

Nevena,

Of *course* I got an email notification RIGHT AFTER I POSTED. C'est la vie, no? 

Thanks!!

x♥x

Noelle

I just uploaded my first manuscript today and have everything done EXCEPT the screen shows I don't have the book details filled in. All the fields are filled in except a subtitle, which shows optional. My book doesn't have one.  I even tried saving with a pseudo subtitle and it doesn't show it's done.

Is this a known glitch?

This version of the site has been up for a while, but the same bugs persist.

1. Open a window like this to add a reply, and for unknown reasons the system inserts a return after you type the first character.

2. Reviews still don't have the paragraphing fixed. They're there when you edit the review but push the post button and paragraphs don't even have a line feed in the finished review. They just run together.

3. The hyperlink manager, which was fixed, has reverted to an undisplayed middle and is unusable again.

Hi Jay,

Thanks for these well-organized notes about the site. I am sharing them with our development team. In the meantime, I am not quite sure what you mean about the "hyperlink manager." Will you send me a screenshot at support at bookcountry dot com?

Thank you!

Lucy Silag

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Here's another one, reported way back in August.

In the fantasy folder one of the members asked for critique and posted the URL of the story. What appeared on the page was

  http://www.bookcountry.com/Bookdetail.aspx?BookId=6146

But what was copied to the clipboard and then appeared in the URL window when I pasted the clipboard was:

http://www.bookcountry.com/Bookdetail.aspx?BookId=6146  - See more at: http://www.bookcountry.com/Community/Discussion/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=8589934669&page=3#sthash.hQidZokz.dpuf

 Obviously, your code isn't handling a clipboard copy command properly.

Another related thing, is that when copying the clipboard into comments window of any forum post the position on the page is lost and the display lurches down to what would be the top of the page were there no comments window.

And finally, with the old website if someone asked for review they never had to post the URL of the story's page because everyone's home page linked to their work. Yes, we can find it by searching bookd for their name, but that's not obvious to many people. Why not include links to their posted work on the home page, so a member can see what the result of their advice looks like?

Hi Jay--thank you for the feedback. These 3 things are all issues that our team is aiming to fix this year. We'll keep the community posted on how we are developing.

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Sorry to be a pain in the neck, but there is more, one I just noticed: When someone pushes the add a comment button, not only should the comment window open, but because it's assumed the user actually has something to say, the window should open ready to type on the first line, not require the user to manually select it.

But the real reason for this comment is the quote feature, which is awful. You can't highlight and quote text to be quoted as you can in a review, but have to take the entire post. But when you try to chop out the part of the quore that's not needed, and then type in your comment below that, the entire quoted section often vanishes and you have to begin again. And if you've made comments in the body of the quoted post before dropping down, you lose everything you did to that point, and the undo function doesn't work so there's no recovery.

Making it more confusing there are ghost characters at the beginning of each line, some of which blink on and off like a lightening bug when the cursor moves over that line.

I am having trouble uploading my book. I get to the book details section, add them, yet cannot progress beyond that point. The system doesn't seem to recognize the "save" and allow me to access the chapter designation tool.

I have cleared the browser cache and restarted but to no avail. I had also sent an email on 1/23 to BC support but it must have been lost in the platform migration (?) since I have not heard a reply.

Ideas?