New story system
We are in the process of replacing the story system, which is the living heart of CC, so it's a bit nerve wrecking. You might have seen a preview of this in the last hook weekend but now we are about to roll it out site-wide.
I need some brave volunteers to help me test this. Let me know in the comments if you want to help.
Jon Bjarnason
CC Restructured! Things to know
So finally after years and years of waiting, the new CC site is finally here. If you missed my earlier blog and haven't played around with the beta site yet you might be in for a bit of a shock.
In this short blog I will go over some of the main changes in a FAQ format. Send more questions my way in the comments section and I'll do my best to answer them.
Jon Bjarnason
CC is changing... a lot
In my two previous blogs, with the catchy titles "The changing face of CC - basic layout" and "The changing face of CC - Story view" I discussed with you some of the things that I wanted to change about the look and feel of our beloved Critique Circle website.
Today I can announce with great gusto that I've completed some of the work in bringing the site up to the 20th century (I'll look into the 21st century next year) and I would very much like to invite you to take a look at the results, which are available in a special web address just for the occasion:
Jon Bjarnason
The changing face of CC - Story view
In my last blog I talked about some changes I want to make this year to the basic layout on CC. Check it out if you haven't already.
Today I am going to be talking about the heart of CC: The story view and the crit process. I personally think that the process of critting stories right now is pretty darn good, and I must be careful not to inadvertently make it worse while trying to make it better. Therefore I'm going into this with a little sense of apprehension.
Jon Bjarnason
The changing face of CC - Basic Layout
There has been some discussion lately about how dated CC has become since the look-and-feel of the site hasn't much in the last ten years or so. I will make it my new-years resolution to slap on a new coat of paint and make some visual adjustments.
This is the first of my blogs on the matter where I attempt to solicit input from you guys to help me understand what's truly important to you.
Jon Bjarnason
The first ten years
Critique Circle celebrates its ten year anniversary on Oct 21st! Congratulations, everyone!
In this blog I'm going to rant on a bit about this and that which comes to mind at this juncture. If you don't want to read the blog, at least scroll down a few paragraphs and check out the birthday gifts we've got for you guys.
Jon Bjarnason
Major changes to the Novel System
The novel system was first introduced to CC exactly five years ago, on January 14th 2007. To mark the occasion of the novel system's 5th anniversary we have just published the first major revision to this system since its inception.
For those of you who don't know that this is, every time you see a story on CC with a little blue book icon next to it, this is a part of a novel. This allows you to navigate between chapters at ease and allows the author to add all sorts of important and fun information to her chapters, making the pieces form a complete whole.
This system is available to premium members and has been a must-have for many people since it was first introduced. To date we have had over 1500 novels and a total of over 15000 novel submissions go through CC.
I wanted to do something a little special with the system to mark its 5 year mark, so instead of adding some simple features I decided to go back to the drawing board and re-architect the system from the ground up in order to add some of the features that people have been asking for, but I've been unable to implement so far because of the way the system was written at the start (before I had any idea how it would be used).
Jon Bjarnason
The CC Digest
We have just launched a new service at Critique Circle called The CC Digest which I wanted to tell you guys a little about.
This is a personalized newsletter-style email that we send out to our members once a month which contains updates that might be interesting.
Examples of the type of information the email contains is unread messages and crits, novels you have been critting, the activity of people you have regular contact with, buddy events, news items, blogs, novel updates and much, much more.
Jon Bjarnason
