The Writersky Blog

Official account for Writersky. Write and share with those who loves to read.

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The Final Chapter of Writersky

Hi everyone,

The Writersky journey is coming to an end. I'll be shutting down the website at the end of the year.

Writersky started in 2011, and it has been an exciting 15-year journey. This project was never built to seek funding — its goal has always been to provide the best possible reading and writing experience for the community.

Over the past few years, I've no longer had the time and commitment needed to properly maintain the project.

The cost has also increased to a point where it's no longer sustainable, so new registrations will now be closed. The site itself will remain accessible and usable until the end of the year.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey. There are many other platforms out there to share your stories, so please keep writing!

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Writersky Proofreader launched!

Sometimes, you just want a second pair of eyes to proofread your story before you publish it. Other times, you may want a bit of inspiration for your story. Writersky can now provide both services through https://www.writersky.com/proofreader! This feature is experimental.

Here is an example of clicking "Ink splash!":

Have fun writing!

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The Phoenix's Rebirth: A Destiny Quest

The war had raged on for years, and Keian had been drafted into it at a young age. He fought with all his heart and soul, but it was all for nothing. The war was lost, and Keian was left as a prisoner of war. One day, a group of strangers come to rescue Keian. They tell him that he has been chosen to travel the world and find his true identity and destiny. Keian is hesitant at first, but he decides to go along with the strangers. Keian is amazed by the beauty of the world. He meets strange and mysterious people on his journey, but he always manages to find a way to connect with them. Keian finds out that he is a Phoenix, and his destiny is to save the world from destruction. Keian continues to travel the world, and he learns more about his identity and destiny. He eventually defeats the evil forces that threaten the world, and he fulfills his destiny as a Phoenix.

-- https://www.writersky.com/tell-me-a-story

Lacking some twist in the story but this isn’t too bad for a short story! 

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Writersky Spotlight launched!

What is Writersky Spotlight?

Writersky Spotlight is a place at the top of our homepage to show case our authors’ stories. 

Why?

At Writersky, we aim to provide the best reading and writing experience, while helping our authors reach more readers. Previously, our homepage shows only “New” stories and sometimes it washes out older stories. Older stories no longer get exposure which makes it hard for readers to discover them. Some of them are really great stories too! We thought, “Okay, we need a way to showcase some of these stories.” That’s why the Spotlight section was created.

Do we pay to get on Spotlight? How do we get listed?

No. Authors don’t get on spotlight by sponsoring or paying. Writersky wants to promote good story that are worth reading. We have an algorithm (not yet perfected) that helps determine if a story would be a good spotlight story. For now, we rotate the spotlight every week. 

Any tips on how we can improve our story to be on spotlight?

Yes! We want to promote good stories so stories with proper grammar, good story structure, properly sized book cover, good summaries, multiple chapters, etc, will tend to have a better chance to be showcased.

We will continue to experiment with ways to help our authors to reach more readers. Happy reading and writing!

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You can now show support to story on Writersky

There are times when you are reading a story, you wanted to tell the author:

“Well done!” “I love this!” “I really like this” “I want to keep reading” “Great job, I love every word” “I'd love to see this continued!”

Now you can do that by clicking the windmill/fan button!

Imagine every story on Writersky is folded into a paper plane. Your support is like a windmill helping these stories fly higher and further in the sky to reach more readers!

Thanks for supporting your writers! Happy reading and writing!

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Writersky is now on HTTP/2!

After a lot of work and some hiccups yesterday, we are happy to announce that Writersky is now running on HTTP/2! What does this mean to you? Faster loading time!

What are the differences between what we used before (HTTP/1.1) versus HTTP/2? One of the most noticeable things is the way book cover images are loaded. Before yesterday, images were load in synchronous order - first book cover image loads, then second book cover image loads, then third book cover image loads...It would take a good 17 seconds to load all these images. Now, all the book covers load at the same time, reducing time to just 1.7 seconds!! This is one of the HTTP/2 features, request multiplexing. There are more HTTP/2 benefits than just this. Here is a good blog post: https://medium.com/@factoryhr/http-2-the-difference-between-http-1-1-benefits-and-how-to-use-it-38094fa0e95b

We are really excited to be able to bring forth this technology to improve our user experience for our Writersky users! Happy reading and writing!

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Big changes coming to Writersky

Hi everyone! It has been a while since we last posted. Over the years, some of you took your precious time to let us know what you like or what you would like to see on Writersky. We took a look at these suggestions/problems along with our data and we concluded that some of our features are not effective at meeting our goal -- to help writers share stories with everyone who loves to read.

So, about a year ago we started rebuilding Writersky. During this time, we re-evaluated some of our features:

Amazon Buy button 

The Buy button links to the author’s Amazon page for their book. The idea was to support and help our authors sell their stories if their book is already on Amazon. Unfortunately, when we pulled a report from 2017 to 2019 in Amazon, there were zero books sold from these Writersky buttons. We did not help our authors. This button is just taking up space. We decided to remove it. 

Commenting section

Currently, we have a commenting section at the bottom of our story but we noticed no one really leaves any comments. Ideally, we want our readers to leave a comment for the authors, share some after thoughts, provide constructive criticisms, encourage the authors, etc. Unfortunately, the number of comments left on each story remains very low. As a result, we are going to temporarily remove the commenting section until we figure out how we want to improve it. 

Popular section

The “Popular” section was supposed to be a place where readers can find what is the “most popular” stories on Writersky. This unfortunately didn’t go as planned. The stories on this section ended being the same over the past years. The most popular stayed most popular. This is not helping the readers to explore any popular stories. We decided to remove it. 

Takeover

Takeover was a fun way for our writers to write with their friends (or strangers). Over the past 5 years, we had less than 10 takeover stories created. it is not something our readers/writers are looking for. Although we really like the idea, it is clear to us that this is not something useful. We are going to remove it. 

Beside these four changes, there are also a lot of new changes coming. Stay tuned!

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Leave a message for your author

You can now leave a message on the author’s public profile page. You can use this page to (but not limited to):

- Ask them questions - Tell them how great they are - Tell them which books you like - Support them

Thanks for choosing Writersky! Let us know if you have any questions!

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Sign in with your Google or Facebook account, add your excerpts and Amazon link. That's it.

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Leaving comments on Writersky

Writersky uses Disqus(https://disqus.com/) as the commenting solution.

I am concerned Disqus will use my data...

Disqus allows you to opt-out using this link: https://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/1657951. 

Do I need to register with Disqus?

Not anymore! You can simply sign in with your Writersky account and you can comment away! More information can be found here: https://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/1104796-single-sign-on 

Can you let me know if someone left a comment on my story?

Of course! Writersky sends you an email when someone leaves you a comment. If you don’t want to receive email, however, simply go to you Profile > My Preferences, uncheck “Notify me when someone posted a new comment“ ,“Notify me when someone reply to an existing comment“ and then you will stop receiving comment notifications.

Housekeeping rules

Stay on topic - This helps keep the thread focused on the discussion at hand. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article or an “open thread”.

Be respectful of other commenters - Meeting differences of opinion with civil discussion encourages multiple perspectives and a positive commenting environment.

Don’t feed the trolls - Carefully consider your response if you encounter a user who displays combative behaviors.

We reserve the right to remove comments - Comments that we find to be abusive, spammy, off-topic, or harassing may be removed.

Contact our moderators if you have questions or concerns - We can be reached at: https://www.writersky.com/contact-us

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Minimized the font bar in mobile view

We have just released 2.5 where we made a very small change on the mobile UI. The font bar on mobile/tablet is now minimized so now you have more reading space! ;)

This release also fixed a couple of other small bugs/issues we found. As usual, if you have suggestions or feedback, please feel free to contact us! https://www.writersky.com/contact-us

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Crazy Tonight is now on Writersky

What do you think will happen in the story? Leave a comment and let the author knows!

https://www.writersky.com/magictodo/Crazy-Tonighy/

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Writersky with Facebook login!

You can now sign into Writersky with Facebook! Reading and writing should be this easy.

https://www.writersky.com/login

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Writersky maintenance on March 07, 2015

Dear writers and readers,

Writersky will be performing maintenance at 8:00pm UTC (3:00pm EST) on March 7th, 2015. We are scheduling a maintenance window for two hours, however the actual downtime are expected to be much less.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

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Is Writersky OK for your child? Read Common Sense Media's website review to help you make informed decisions.

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Stories under pending?

If you noticed your story under "Pending", it means that it is under review by our staffs. 

Why does Writersky need to review my story?

To maintain content quality, ie. we ban spammers. We don't want users to advertise products on Writersky. We want Writersky to be one of the best reading/writing platform.

How long does it take to review?

Usually a day. If it takes longer than a day, please contact us via https://www.writersky.com/contact-us or Twitter.

Why is my story not approved?

Please review the Terms of Use (https://www.writersky.com/terms-of-use), and feel free to contact us if you still have questions. 

I can't do anything when it is in pending.

Yes, you cannot edit the story once it is under review. You may edit it again once we approve it. In the mean time, explore new stories on Writersky and leave some comments for your fellow writers!

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Sign in with your Google+ account

Happy new year 2015! Remember those new year resolution? Well, we have one done!

You can now sign in Writersky with your Google+ account. https://www.writersky.com/login. Reading and writing should be this easy.