First of all, happy New Year everyone!

Second, there are some significant (but good) changes coming to Sweet Temptation. I'm stepping down as owner & mod of Sweet Temptation, but the site will not disappear. Rather, it is changing ownership to the incredibly capable hands of Holly, Mari (Dusty273), and OKDeanna, all of whom should be familiar names to you if you're an avid reader at this site. I strongly believe that in their hands, Sweet Temptation will only flourish in the best way possible.

Thank you everyone for all the support you've given this site.

1. Submission Rules: When you submit a new story or an update to a current story, please make sure you read over the Submission Rules carefully. Rules #3 and #11 are going to be especially enforced, even if your story has already been validated or if you're a validated author.
   
   
2. Registration Required: As of today, if you want to read a story rated NC-17, you MUST be a registered user of legal age of consent in order to access the story. This rule is being implemented in an effort to minimize exposure of violent/sexual content to minors. While we realize this measure can be easily sidestepped by a young reader willing to do anything to get to the smut, we feel it is necessary on our part to at least try.

If you have any questions about any of the above, please do feel free to Contact us.

On behalf of all your Sweet Temptation mods,

Yani

I'm a little nervous about the new layout, but I hope some of you will like it. I've very lamely called it Hot and Cool and made it the default layout for the site.  Don't like it or prefer the previous layout? I've added the "Pick Your Skin" block over on the sidebar so that you can change the skin to whichever you prefer. You can also set your personal skin options by going to My Account and Editing Your Preferences.

Whether good or bad, let me know what you think! I'm open to suggestions if they will help make your stay at ST more comfortable. If you run into any trouble, be sure to let me know.  

Jaesha has joined the mod staff here at Sweet Temptation! She will be taking over mod duties for Saturday & Sunday. Meli will continue being your friendly neighborhood mod on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and I will cover all the other days.  Welcome, Jaesha!

I noticed we've reached over 200 members now!! Yay!!! Hope everyone is enjoying all the fic! Don't forget to review! 

Text Resizing
This issue should be all solved now. If you continue having problems increasing the font for stories, please let me know.

Responding to Reviews
An update was released that was suppose to fix this issue. If you are still unable to respond to reviews, please let me know

Text Resizing
I'm aware that text resizing in stories will only work sometimes. I've looked into the issue and know why it works randomly, but I haven't yet figured out how to solve the issue.

In the meantime, here's a workaround solution:

Firefox & Internet Explorer
If you are using either of these browsers, just press Ctrl and +, and the font on your browser should automatically become larger. You can also do this by going to the View menu, Text Size, and then selecting how much bigger you want the text.

Responding to Reviews
This is a bug in the current version of eFiction and unfortunately, not something I know how to solve. I'm waiting for the maintainers of the script to release a new version that will fix this problem. Until then, please hang in there.

If there are any other issues you find while browsing the site, please do bring them to my attention. Leave a comment to a news item, use the Contact form, or leave a tag in the Shout Box. Any of these methods will get my attention.

Thank you.

Thanks to flibble, we have now reached 100 stories archived at Sweet Temptation! Huzzah!!!

And thank you to all of you who continue posting here, both stories and reviews! *hugs* 

Just an update:

The looping issue with the story index has been fixed, and I've turned it back on sitewide. If it's a feature you liked, and you turned it off per the instructions below, you can turn it back on.

Last night I did another eFiction upgrade, and when I finished, all *seemed* to be working fine. Come to find out this afternoon that wasn't the case. 

I've turned off the story index, so when you click on a story, you will be automatically taken to the story itself, and not the table of contents. If you are logged in to your account and you still can't see the story, follow these instructions:

1) Go to "Edit Your Preferences " under the Account Info page.
2) Where it says "Display table of contents for stories", take off the check mark.
3) Hit Submit to save your settings. You should now be able to view the stories without any problems. Hopefully.

The good news about the update? The Ratings link, under the Browse By menu is now working. Yay!

The mods and I have decided to slightly amend the rules for posting at Sweet Temptation. The following has been added..

If you've contributed 3 or more stories to the archive, you will be granted unmoderated posting privileges. In other words, you've gained the trust of the moderators by bringing in quality fantasy Spuffy fic to the archive, and as a thank you, you will be able to post stories/add chapters without having to wait for approval.

I just went through all the authors, and everyone that's posted 3+ stories should now be able to add stories without waiting for a mod to pop in before their stories can be read by visitors. If you've posted 3+ stories and you find that you still have to wait for a moderator, let me know and I can fix it.

January 15 marks Sweet Temptation's one year anniversary. Yay! Over the past year we've gotten nearly 50,000 visitors, posted nearly 2,000 reviews, 161 members, 50 authors and 80 stories! Pretty good year, if you ask me. I have a challenge for you, though...

Can we get 100 Spuffy fantasy stories by January 15? It would be awesome if we could! Know Spuffy fantasy writers out there that aren't posting here? Invite them and encourage them to post! If you're a writer yourself, and you have more stories to share, feel free to add them! 

And readers... make sure you let the writers know that you are enjoying their stories. Post reviews, share your thoughts! Let's make and break that 2,000 review mark! 

First, obviously, is the layout! I wasn't planning on putting up the new banner for at least another week. However, with the upgrade came new settings that made the previous layout obsolete. I rushed to get this one done and I had to learn what was new, so if elements of the layout are wonky, please let me know so I can look into them. This layout has been tested in Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.

As for what's new with this version of eFiction, read on!

• You can now co-author a story with another member of the site and use your existing usernames!
• When adding a story, there's a section where you can add story notes.
• You can view how many times your story has been read. Even if readers don't review, you can see how many people have actually taken the time to read your work!
• You can now add links to your LiveJournal and MySpace accounts by editing your Bio information.
• The Shoutbox is totally new! Keep it busy!
• You can now choose to use the rich text editor. By default, this is turned on site-wide, BUT you must have it turned on in your Preferences. Go to your Account Info, click on Edit Preferences , and check on "Use tinyMCE WYSWYG editor". Alternatively, you can toggle the editor on and off by clicking on "Use tinyMCE" below each text area.
• Want to know when an author responds to a review? You can set this setting on in your preferences, too! Follow the instructions above to edit your preferences and just check on "Contact when author responds to review" to know when an author replies to your comment!
• Not new, but... Anonymous reviews are once again allowed. I'm hoping the new CAPTCHA element (the thing that gives you random numbers to enter) will dissuade the spammers from, well, spamming. I really hate turning off anon reviews!
  

Anyway, that's some of the new stuff integrated into eFiction 3.0. If you see anything that confuses you or you can't find a feature, let me know and I will try to offer some guidance. Despite all the new goodies, I know that there are still several bugs that the developers need to work out. Up on the menu, the Browse By Ratings doesn't exactly work yet. I know it will eventually. I just know it.

If there's a feature that YOU would want to see integrated into the site, please let me know! What would make the site more inviting to you? What would you like to see more of on the site? Your opinions matter to me, so please do share!

And most importantly, enjoy!

:o)

First of all, happy new year to everyone! I hope everyone has had a fantastic year so far!

Secondly, I just finished upgrading our eFiction program to the latest version, which functions just a little differently than the last version, so things might look wonky for a bit, especially as I work on a layout that is compatible with version 3.0. I'm really hoping this new version will help kill some of the issues we were having with the last version, namely in the spamming department. 

If you encounter any problems while visiting the site, please let me know ASAP so that I can look into it quickly.  This is absolutely important. I want the transition to be as seamless as possible, and your help in detecting trouble areas is imperative. 

Also, if there are any concerns or if you can't find something, feel free to ask me and I will try to help you as best as possible.

Thank you! 

It's come to my attention that ST is being attacked by spammers again, but this time via the review system. As a result, anonymous reviews will not be allowed at ST, until I can come up with a better solution. What does this mean? You must be logged into your account if you want to leave a review for a story. I know this is very inconvenient for a lot of readers, and I'm very sorry to be taking such a drastic measure. Unfortunately, eFiction does not come with the best anti-spam filters. I will try my best to find a way of blocking spam non-reviews while still allowing anonymous reviews, however, I can't promise I will find a better solution.

Authors: If you find that you've been a victim of these spam non-reviews, you now have the ability to delete those. If there are too many for you to do one by one, just use the contact form to tell me where all the non-reviews are located and I will delete them for you.

Again, my apologies for the inconvenience.  

Sweet Temptation has a new home: http://www.sweet-temptation.net, so please be sure you make that change in your bookmarks! I know the site looks a little funny right now, with the missing images and all, but I'm going to work on figuring out what's going on as soon as I get some sleep. I'm hoping it will fix itself...

And of course I'd figure out the image problem after I posted. Hopefully everyone can see Buffy and Spike up there on the header now...

The issue with the Challenges section has also been fixed. In order to reduce the amount of spam it was getting, you now must be a member of the site in order to post. Sorry about that, but it had to be done for the sake of my sanity.

Authors! Please look over your stories and make sure that everything is as it should be! I tried my best to move everything without any glitches, unfortunately that's not always possible. If anything is amiss, please let me know ASAP, so that I can recover any missing data. Thank you!

Just an FYI: If you are looking for inspiration for your next Fantasy Spuffy story, we have a Challenges section here on the site, and there are already some nifty ideas! Check it out and see if any of the challenges call to you!

If you want to submit challenges, then please feel free to do so! Only Fantasy challenges, please!! Any canon-based challenges will be deleted.

Have a canon-based challenge you'd like to make? The Bloodshedverse has an excellent challenges section, and I highly recommend it for placing your own and finding story-inspiring ideas.

Spread the word! Voting at Spuffy Awards is open, and lots of fantastic fic has been nominated! Many of our resident authors are up for some amazing awards: Sara M, wattie, shampoocommercialhair, Spikeslovebite, angelic_amy, Addie Logan, Niamh, effection, Dusty273, beasleysmom, Mrs. Muir, Nikilicious, Megan, and last, but never least, one of our community maintainers, Holly. So go do your duty as a member of this community and vote! You even have the choice of only voting in the Fantasy categories, if that's all you like to read. So really, no excuse to not vote. Voting will be open until June 5, but don't leave it till the last minute! And please make sure you read the rules. You want your time and vote to count, right? Of course!

Lastly, (and I meant to post this many moons ago), Sweet Temptation was honored with an award from the Lost in Spike Awards...

Thank you to whomever made that possible! It really is an honor, especially considering how young the site is.