I have taken on yet another project recently and wanted to give you all an idea what to expect from it.

As some of you may know, WebFictionGuide.com may be closing it's doors soon. If you're not familiar with it, the site is used to link to web fiction all over the internet. The owner of the site, Chris, recently posted a thread in the forum asking whether they should shut down, make the site read-only, or try and move to another host so that they can keep the site running on outdated code. I was already thinking about building a replacement for that website before Chris made that post, so I offered to rebuild it in the first comment.

I've talked to Chris a little bit over email, and he wants to make sure I'm actually committed to this project before he considers allowing me to replace his two domains (and transfer over their data), so I've decided to go ahead with the project like I was just doing it on my own. I bought WebSerialist.com and am currently working on the code for the website. If he is comfortable with the new version, WebFictionGuide.com and TopWebFiction.com may eventually point you to my remake. Otherwise, I'll still build the site as WebSerialist.com.

The Website

WebSerialist.com is going to have a lot of the same functionality as WFG and TWF. The goal is to make a modern website that is easier to maintain, and much more user-friendly while still adding a lot of useful new features. I also have made the code open source so that anyone can contribute, bug fix, and test it. If you're interested in helping, it is written in Flask (a Python web-framework) and you can find its GitHub page here. The GitHub page is also a good place to check the progress of the code, even if you're not a coder. You can also always ask questions in the comments of this post or on twitter.

Below is a list of features I plan to include:

• List fictions
• Claim fictions as your own if you are the author
• Approve fictions (this will be as simple as checking the story's link and then clicking an approve button)
• Vote for fictions on a weekly basis (no login required)
• Releases - Add links to your recent releases. Only the three most recent will show on your fiction page and you cannot submit the same link twice.
• Ranking lists (such as: Trending, Best Rated, Most Viewed, Most Votes, Newly Added, and Recent Releases)
• Following your favorite fictions - This will give you in-site notifications when a new release is posted by a fiction you follow.
• A forum
• And probably more

The code is still in its infancy as of posting this. I'm currently working on the functionality for logging in, signing up, and adding fictions. Sprig is going to take priority over this project, so it might still be a couple of months before I have a live website that people can use. And even then, I will probably be adding features as I have time.

So if your interested, you can subscribe to ensure you get updates on my progress, or follow me in one of the other various ways listed in the side bar. If you have any suggestions or ideas too, I'd love to read them in the comments!