due South Seekrit Santa gift exchange

This year's dSSS was a kind of a crazy whirlwind and it has several heroes who stepped in at the last minute (and in one case LITERALLY the VERY LAST MINUTE) to save somebody's dSSS. I am grateful and exhausted and exhilerated and also leaving right away to do Christmas Eve stuff with the family, but you guys. LIVE. Forty-three brand new dS works,

RIGHT OVER HERE.

You can jump straight to your gift from the category link with your name on the sidebar on the left (make sure you scroll to 2009, though)! I'll be back around later this evening if there are issues! Enjoy, you guys! And Merry Holidays.

I'm a little late with this, but here we go: these are the instructions for posting your finished work for due South Seekrit Santa. I'm splitting this into two separate posts because the instructions for artists and vidders are slightly different. Stay tuned, vidders and artists! Your post is coming right up.

If you were around last year, the instructions are exactly the same, so you can safely skim. :)

If you aren't sure about any of these steps, or you notice anything is missing or mistaken, please let me know in the comments!

( Instructions for writers (cut for lots of images) )

1. It seems that the weird error some people see when they try to login via LJ at the archive has to do with the size of your Friends list. It's workaround-able, if you really want to login via LJ: you need to go here and create a new custom friends group called "FOAF-knows" (without the quotes), adding only your own LJ to it. Once you've saved that change, you should be able to login via LJ at the archive (and at other sites where cross-service logins are allowed).

I also installed a plugin that lets you login to the archive with your AIM ID and have enabled anonymous commenting, so there are some other options, if you prefer.

2. Replying to comments is now possible again. I'm not sure how that got disabled, but if you want to respond to something another commenter has said, you can just click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment. The comment form still appears at the bottom of the page, but there'll be a new checkbox indicating that you are replying to a comment.

Please don't reply to comments on stuff you made just yet! That would give the game away. :)

3. Pinch hitters: I apologise, but I forgot to update your email addresses in the database, so your comments ended up being mailed to the wrong places. I just corrected this, so you should get any comments that are added from now on. I will work on getting those original comments sent to you, too.

And by the way, there are almost 300 comments at the archive already, which seems unbelievable. You guys are amazing. <3<3<3

Okay, artists and vidders: these are the instructions for posting your finished work for due South Seekrit Santa. I'm splitting this into two separate posts because the instructions for writers are slightly different. (Writers! Your instructions are over here.)

Again, and as always, if you aren't sure about any of these steps, or you notice anything is missing or mistaken, please let me know in the comments!

( Instructions for vidders and artists (cut for even more images) )

The dSSS Archive is now open for uploading!  This means that searching the archive for stories from previous years is no longer possible -- I've disabled that function for now.  Direct links still work, though, so if you've recced or bookmarked a favourite story, you'll still be able to get to it.

When you have finished writing your story for this year's challenge, here are the steps to follow:

1. Add html tags for italics, bold, strikethrough, etc., just as you would if you were posting the story on livejournal.  You don't need to add paragraph tags or < br > tags -- the archive will add those for you, as long as you have added an extra return between paragraphs (again, like you would for LJ).  If you'd like more info about this step, see this help page.

2. Save the story in plain text format (.txt).

3. Use the upload form at the archive to upload your story file.  The "author name" and "author's notes" sections will be hidden before the stories go live.  You'll still see them on the story when you post it, but don't worry -- I'll hide them before the archive opens for reading.  Remember that you'll need to select not to preview the story before it will actually post.

 

That's it!  If you run into any trouble during the upload process, please feel free to contact me at sprat75 at gmail dot com. 


ETA: We also have many lovely and generous beta volunteers!  If you're looking for a beta reader for your story, or if you aren't writing for the challenge this year and would like to volunteer, go here.

Fixed:

1) Weird date thing, whereby the archive decided that a couple of the stories were posted in 1973 (namely this one and this one, both of which you should now check out because they might have been excluded from date-based searches).
2) Weird category (ratings, etc) things. Or at least I think I got them all, anyway--email me if I missed something.
3) Lack of pairing listing in the search results.

Still weird:

1) Mysterious error two people have reported getting when trying to post a comment on a story ("Name and Comment must be completed" even when they, you know, had been)--if you got one of those, too, please comment here (with your os and browser, if you know them). If you want me to post your comment for you, email me with it directly and I'll duly cut & paste (because comments are love, man *g*).

ETA: a bit of investigating has revealed that these errors seem to be related to illegal characters in the comment itself (like < i > tags, etc - html won't work in that form, unfortunately) and to single line-breaks (hitting return or enter once at the end of a line - twice is okay, because the scripts are set to convert double line-beaks to < br > tags for you).

2) Email addresses displaying in the comments (evidently the archive has spambot-repelling scripts, but I don't know enough about them to confirm they're sufficient protection. zebra363 suggested they be concealed, just in case, and that does seem wise. I'm working on it.)

Please email or comment here with any other glitch reports. And thanks muchly to all of you who've been reporting so far--I'm new at all this, and your info has been helping immeasurably.