I used to use Google Docs to store and edit the raws but Wattpad is so much easier to use, especially because I don't usually group edit it with anyone. When my guest editor proofreads it for me I just print out a physical copy and share it that way, so I don't really use Google Docs for collaboration purposes at all, which is where it really shines.

The chapter navigation on Wattpad is smoother and I can even use my laptop to edit offline. Google Docs won't let me do anything offline. Sucks. So I've been gradually moving my edits over to Wattpad. The finished chapters have been published there too. I'll leave the Google Docs chapters I did up but I won't be updating those anymore after this month of releases.

edit: well Wattpad would have been perfect if it kept the quotation marks and apostrophes stylized.

• Settled on a way to distinguish admin comments from user comments by creating a NULL row in MYSQL. Enter admin comments directly into the SQL database for replies, then create a CSS rule to display it a little differently.

• Added RSS. The validator shows errors but it doesn’t seem to affect the functionality
• Updated the index page layout

• added more sanitization for the user input fields
• updated ATP page
• made some CSS changes

• switched to bootstrap and adjusted the accordion
• index page tabs: min-width to make them more uniform
• accordion card animation adjusted so not as harsh on scrollTop
• linked [closed panel] at bottom of the each chapter
• only one accordion pane open at a time.
• updated popovers for all story files with the exception of ATP
• made an outline file for loading up new chapters
• updated index tabs to include more info about the titles
• trying to decide if I want the definition list to be a drop down display as a modal
• Bootstrap 4 is pretty new so I don't think an upgrade will happen too soon so I modified the Bootstrap CSS file directly
• I do like the accordion from Bootstrap because it scrolls with the main window instead of using its own frame scroll

7/17/2018: work on notes

After having gone through the documentation for popper.js I really appreciate the amount of work and thought that was put into the jQuery documentation. The user experience between the two were dramatically different. Even as a newbie I can understand jQuery because it’s so clearly written, not to mention the amount of detailing in all their examples.

Although I liked the idea of poppers.js it was just too hard to understand so I had to nix the idea of using it. Instead I’m just going to go all in on Bootstrap. It’s good. I might as well just use it. I’ll parse out the CSS and mod it. The only failure it has is the lack of address for image inclusion in the popovers. Yes I can add it as a script but to do that for every instance of an image would be cumbersome. So as of right now I still don’t know how to handle images other than to just keep using the tooltip I have now. I may just stick to appending them to the end of the paragraph or include a link instead.

That was two days of solid work. Now I have to go back and update all the notes from the text to the popovers. I may hold of on doing so just because I’m not sure how much I will like Bootstrap. It does take longer to load…

7/16/2018: tooltips, dropdowns, and popovers

So tooltips/popovers/drop downs call it what you will but they are a pain to work with. Depending on where they’re positioned, sometimes they get cut off screen. I’ve fiddled with the css and the html and looked through online but … IT JUST DOESN’T WORK! I was finally going to give up and download Bootstrap because their popovers have the “auto” placement which automatically aligns with the window space. It was beautiful, so beautiful. But I didn’t want to download Bootstrap just for that one thing. Plus I liked my own CSS and tag names. If I got Bootstrap then I’d have to reorient myself to a new naming convention. I was going to bite the bullet but decided to do one final Google search “how does bootstrap align their popovers” and that sent me to Bootstrap’s documentation page. Scrolling through it, I saw the different stipulations for making the popover work… such as the need for popper.js. A javascript library just for popovers?! That’s exactly what I need. It’s all I need. Mini javascript libraries that do just one thing are great!

7/10/2018: Got WAMP set up and other stuff

Got WAMP installed so that’s cool. Now page my counts will actually be more reflective of the real traffic on the site.

Prettied up the index page and added some publication info. I want to put in the auto refresh for the comment box but I don’t want to use innerHTML either. I want to try using CSS to create a night mode and a day mode so I’ve been trying to keep my color palette small and consistent.

The code tab looks so shitty…

7/2/2018: icons and HTTPS

I feel good. Got HTTPS and annoying as hell apple icons in. -thumbs up- The HTTPS was not as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I’d have to install it and all this other stuff but Go Daddy took cared of the entire process for me. I just paid for the SSL and they did all the configurations. The only thing that didn’t go correctly was the redirect. I went into the “hwhateveracess” file and inserted the code for redirects. And it worked for the index page but it failed to work for any of the subfolders even though the code I used was supposed to affect the entire domain. I felt a little bad but I asked NU to update all links for my translations. Wasn’t sure they would but they did. Not only that, they were so FAST! I’m always surprised at their speed.

I also temporarily lightened my accordion colors to bring more attention to the notice banner up top. Will probably take it down in a month.

It also feels like my javascriptcomprehension has leveled up a bit. Will try to use it to make real time update for the comments display.

6/27/2018: drop downs and macros

I noticed the drop down menu css is a lot like the tooltip css so I may just merge the two together to cut down on some of the coding there. Also noticed the drop down is a lot like an accordion… just without the click javascripting…for mobile devices it would work fine to replace with it since there’s no mouseover but for the desktop it would be different. Not sure. Thinking about it.

Placed comments under details tag so it’s out of the way of the main text. It doesn’t show up in all browsers but I’ll work on that some more later. Maybe place it in the drop down as well? Man really feels like the drop down is all powerful here.

Found a format workflow that works for me. Realized I could just use macros in Notepad++ to add my p tags. It was hard to use the copy and paste function cause it felt like I was overreaching with my fingers, so my life is also a lot easier now. Not bothering with aggregator sites anymore either.

Redid some of my html coding too. Yeah I’m one of those people that need to clean their room up before they can study.

6/6/2018: backups are looking good.

Updated the 404 error page to include a Google Docs links to all the chapters. That way if I really mess up people can still read the text version of the story. It won’t be pretty or formatted very well but at least it’s available. As a bonus it’s easy for screen readers. So =) Also did a back up of the site so I feel pretty secure about that.

Looking into RSS/Atom because of a reader comment. Let’s see if I can code one. A static one looks pretty easy to do but I’d prefer to make a dynamic one that updates on it’s own. It looks a little complicated though, seems like I’d have to include a database… which may be beyond my abilities right now. I only barely understand enough to make the one for the comments. Anyways wish me luck!

Also while looking into it I discovered why there were rss requests in my logs. Turns out if you use a CMS like Wordpress for example, even if as a content creator you don’t know about it, there is an rss page for your site already installed. So even if there are no links for a feed sign up readers can still sign up. They’d just have to type in the URL with ‘rss’ at the end. It should work. Sounds interesting. I’m a complete RSS newbie, I haven’t even subscribed to any feeds. I will try figuring it out as this month’s goal. But anyways, it explains why there are people who are searching for justreads.net/rss. I’d never made an rss page so didn’t understand why anyone was searching for it.

Also I feel like my world got rocked a little. Previously I’d always use the html entity &rsquo for apostrophes because when I typed it straight in the code editor it would color the text blue, which I took as a bad sign, like does it think it’s code? But apparently if I just copy and paste, like say from my Google Doc, the text is OK. No color changes. Not sure why that is, but it certainly makes typing a lot easier!

5/23/2018: Tabs

Well I figured out why I got those mysli_num_rows.... errors. Turns out it didn’t like the fact that I had html commenting in front of it. -shrug-

Stylized the images and updated the translation tab. While I was at it I also took off the “Fanfic” and “Translation” in the menu bar. One was redundant and the other... well... honestly... whenever I get around to it I can always just add it back in there.

Fixed the opacity of my #container to my liking and added a leafy green background for spring. Currently am working on designing an icon so I can get rid of those annoying “apple whatever icon” errors.

5/17/2018
database errors

So I made my database better and that’s good... but now I’m not sure what my error is. Previously I had the comment display in a separate file and there were no errors, but when I put the comment display in the same page as the content I get errors. It still displays fine and everything looks the same so not sure why the error is there. Error message looks like this
Warning: mysqli_num_rows() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result,

Also why isn’t it consistent? The errors don’t show up in all the iterations, just some of them.

5/13/2018: database renames

Redoing my database so taking off the comments links for now.

5/6/2018: HTML 5 entities

There were many successes and failures. I don’t remember them all. It’s just a haze right now, but some goodies I learned were:

<q> for quick quotations

<details> and <summary> for a straight html drop down display without the javascript, though it does not work on old timey Internet Explorer (Edge is OK though). I will probably just stick with the accordion but this is good to know about.

<small> to display smaller text. Can be used instead of creating a whole new div or span for minor content like notes. It’s not stylized, but for speed it works well. The only downside is it can’t be a child element of block tags like <p>.

I had a copy and paste nightmare with some of the files. It was a catastrophe. A mess, a hot hot mess. I had to just walk away. Good for my translations though as I finally picked them up again.

I think instead of a journal I’ll do an “Errors I learned from” page. Perhaps I’ll start it next week.

4/19/2018: comment box

I’m smirking because everything looks good. Will work on getting the “Translation” page itself formatted something this week or next week. I’m leaning towards using tabs to organize the information.

4/18: PHP MySQL and error_log

I celebrated too soon with the comment box, because although I did create a functioning one that showed up appropriately for the user, I didn’t realize there was such a thing as an “error log” in each folder. I was only aware of the errors generated by MySQL itself. That log is the most useful thing ever, annoying, but super useful. Annoying when there are errors in it, but useful because it tells me where the errors are. So for the comment box there were a slew of error messages in the log. I was shocked. From what I’m given to understand the log helps provide details on errors that may or may not be problematic. It looks at the syntax and other mysterious stuff (to me anyways) and basically just says, “Hey you may want to look at this. Yeah your code runs and it works but... best practices are not being followed here.” Basically it was telling me to stop fudging things because there may be consequences in the future. What kind of consequences? Security issues and display issues going forward when other things are entered into the mix. So knowing this I decided to try my best to figure it all out.

And I did.

Absolutely no errors in my log. Completely clean. I am so happy. It was a tremendous amount of work and frustration, from cache clear errors, database server weirdness, to my confusion over my folder bread crumbs. I should have done a better job doing my wireframe. Things are finally settled and it took all of a whole week. Honestly I don’t think that’s too bad.