Help Page — Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an account? How do I get one?How do I change my password or email?
I forgot my password — what do I do?
I can't seem to log out — what do I do?
What are the submission rules?
How do I submit a story?
How do I split my story into chapters?
How do I manage my account, stories, etc?
How do I get help?
Do I need an account? How do I get one?
You don't need a member account if all you'd like to do is read stories. But, as a reader, having an account allows you to designate favorite stories and authors, provide reviews by your account name, and enable other members to contact you via your profile. This is done in a way that protects your email address.
If you want to submit stories, then you must have an account on the website.
To get an account, follow these steps:
Click on the Log In link in the main menu bar, then click on Register to proceed. Fill in your information and hit 'submit'. Your account will be activated immediately.
How do I change my password or email?
Once you have an account, you can always change the settings for it by clicking on the "Account Info" link and then on the "Edit Personal Information" link. If you want to change your password, you'll need to enter it twice, in the side-by-side boxes. I forgot my password — what do I do?
To recover a lost password, click here and enter the e-mail address with which you registered. Your password will be sent to you shortly. If that doesn't work, contact the webmaster via the contact form.
I can't seem to log out — what do I do?
If you clicked on the box labeled "remember me" when you logged in, then the site installed a cookie on your computer so that you'll always be logged in. To reverse this, go to your browser's cookies and remove the one called 'useruid' that arrived from stargatefan.com.
What are the submission rules?
See our Submission Rules.
How do I submit a story?
To submit a new story, you must first be a member of one of the Yahoo! groups on our main page.
Next, you'll need an account on this website, as described above.
Then you'll need to prepare your story as a 'plain text' file. The website programming will convert the story to html for you. In every place that your story has a line break (aka carriage return), the website will create one in the html version, so be careful to have 2 line breaks between paragraphs, one after each line in a lyric or poem, and none inside of paragraphs. You may use a limited number of html tags in your story, to provide bold, italics, and horizontal lines, for example. The submission page will show you exactly which tags are allowed. All this means you can't copy/paste or submit a Word document as a story, since .doc files have all sorts of stuff in them besides the text you wrote. To convert a story from Word to 'plain text', do this:
- Do "Save as" and choose "Text only" (no line breaks). The file will be saved as a .txt file. Note that all 'line breaks' will be converted to line breaks in the story, so you only want them to appear at the end of paragraphs or lines of lyrics or poems.
- Close the file in Word. Re-open it in a text editor such as Wordpad (PC) or Textedit (Mac) and check that such things as quotes and apostrophes look simple, rather than curly. If you had bold or italic formatting in the Word version, you'll have to re-do that formatting using html code (<i>, <b>, etc). Re-save the file if necessary.
- If your story is very large, say above 125Kbytes in text form, then your browser may stall while posting it to the site. You may need to break it into chapters for posting. But you can always give it a try first.
For the case of submitting a new story, here are a few things to watch out for once you click on "Add New Story" link.
- Don't use any html formatting in your summary (italics, bold, etc), as it messes up the main page summaries. Also, don't add carriage returns after the Summary text, inside that box.
- Under Choose a Category, the sub-categories will change in some cases once you choose a top-level category. For example, if you click on "Slash Pairings" and release the mouse, then the possible slash pairings will appear in the list. Click on the list again and pick the appropriate choice. Then, click "Select" to add that category for your story. Your story can have multiple categories, (though a story can't be both General and any of the relationship-focused ones), so pick all that apply. If you make a mistake, you can click on "Clear" and start over. The bottom of each menu has a selection to back up to the main categories.
- Regarding categories, if your story has a slash pairing and a het pairing, choose each one from the respective menu and click "Select". Don't pick "Threesome" unless three people get together romantically all at once.
- In the Genres, Warnings, and Characters list, you may pick multiple choices by holding down the CTRL key on Windows, or the "Apple" key on Macintosh computers as you click. If you click on an entry by mistake, simply click on it again to un-select it.
- Be sure to give your story an appropriate rating according to the appropriate minimum age to read the fic, similar to the US movie rating system G to NC-17.
- Be sure to mark your story complete if the chapter you are submitting is the only or final one for the story. This will lead more readers to your story. You may name each chapter whatever you like, or not name it.
- Use your Author's Notes to provide extra explanation, thank your betas, warn of any items not covered in the Warnings block, etc.
- Story Block. Here's the important one: you must not copy/paste or upload a Word document as your story. The story must be a text file with no line breaks and no fancy formatting. If you created your story in Word, then see the instructions above. Failure to properly format may result in your story being removed.
- Be sure to Preview your story! If you see strange formatting, then you can adjust it either in the Story Text block or by editing, saving, and re-uploading the text file containing your story.
- We prefer that you post your stories here in their entirety rather than posting links to them, because links tend to break over time. However, if you want to post only a link to your story, then you must 'code' the link using html commands. You must do this in the Story Text box, and there must be some text in addition to the link. Here is a sample of how to do this:
- Once you're happy with the look of your story, click on "Add Story" to add it. It will be added to the archive immediately. You may always edit your own stories via the "Manage Stories" link in your "Account Info" page.
- If the story is part of a series, you'll need to add the story to the series. To create a series, visit the "Add New Series" link of your "Account Info" page. To add a story to the series, visit the "Manage Series" link of your "Account Info" page. You may do this any time, and you can always adjust the order of the stories in a series.
If your story is very long, say more than 30,000 words, you may want to break it into chapters to avoid users getting browser time-outs when trying to load it. To do this, submit your story as described above, but only load the first part into the story text box. Then, visit your Account Info -> Manage Stories page, find your story, and click on Add New Chapter. You can then add the next part of your story. You may repeat this process until all of your story's chapters are added.
How do I manage my account, stories, etc?
You have complete control of your stories, series, etc. Simply visit your "Account Info" page and select the appropriate link. For example, to edit a story you've submitted, select "Manage Stories".
How do I get help?
If this page is not enough help for you ;) you may e-mail us via our contact form.