Updates
Site updates and new features.
2026
15 September
Beta inline-comment button on touch wasn't firing or was being covered by native mobile OS menus. It should now appear near the bottom of the screen when you highlight text during beta reading to allow you to comment on the highlighted text.
Cover upload - the "Upload cover" button is now disabled until you actually select an image using the "Choose file" button (browse). Cover image is either an uploaded cover, or a chosen Unsplash. If you have uploaded a cover or chosen an Unsplash image, any cover pattern or colour you choose is not visible. Cover image wins.
Cover upload - there's now a progress bar when you select an image from your device to upload, so you can see it's actually doing something. Wait for that to finish to see your uploaded cover.
Username character cap - usernames and beta reader guest names are capped at 15 characters now.
Beta comment daily cap - beta comments (per user) are capped at 30/day. There's a progress bar showing the user how close they are to their daily cap, and when they reach it it tells them how many hours until it's reset. Story owners are exempt from this cap. This doesn't guard against a guest user logging out and coming back as a different name and spamming again. That's the trade-off for having non-account comments.
Beta comment length is now capped at 1000 characters. It was 4000. What was I thinking? 1000 is two good-sized paragraphs. Should be plenty for even your most verbose beta readers!
Font preview button has been added to the story settings font selector. Press the information icon next to the font selector to see a preview of fonts.
A new selection has been added to the rule set - "Strip extra spaces". Typing two or more spaces at once because your keyboard is just too enthusiastic? We got ya.
Add part and add chapter in the story structure editor are now on their own lines. There was some weird wrapping happening.
3 September
Live collaboration editors can now create and edit notes, frontmatter, endmatter, characters, and locations. Delete is still left to the story owner.
2 September
Font improvements:
More fonts! Junicode - a catch-all font for when you need all the character variations. Two decorative fonts: Redacted, and Redacted Script, for when you want things completely unreadable (or you want to type stuff in secret). NB: Readers have a plain font button for accessibility purposes, so Redacted and Redacted Script contents can be read by people using that button.
An information icon next to the font pickers in the scene editor, so you can see what all the fonts look like without having to just try them all.
Beta reading improvements:
Better handling of beta comments. Highlight text to comment on specific phrases, or comment on the whole scene. Editors can filter comments to specific users, or unresolved etc.
See comments made on your beta while editing your story. There's a Beta button in the left drawer if you have beta enabled on your story. It shows you the comments for the scene you are currently editing.
Public beta links. You can generate public beta links. Generate one for each person, or one for each group. Revoking a public link is permanent and anyone using that link gets a message that it has been revoked. Public users are required to put in a display name and check a Cloudflare anti-bot check. They can choose to put in an email and save their details for next time. This saves in their browser's local storage only, not our site.
Pause beta. Instead of stopping beta (which wipes all the comments), you can pause it so that beta readers cannot access it, but you still can. Beta readers with accounts will see a "PAUSED" stamp on the story tile. Public beta readers will see a message telling them it has been paused.
In beta, public library, and story owner reading view, choose the font size, reading pane width, and toggle to a plain font.
We can now add more in-built cover options via the admin panel. If you want to design some cover options for everyone to use, reach out to me on Discord or in the forum. See covers and images documentation.
Option to choose Unsplash images for your scene editor background to make writing even more enjoyable and pretty. This is for your writing surface enjoyment only and it will not carry through into published stories. See appearance documentation.
Option to choose an Unsplash image as your story cover. This will carry through into published stories. Attribution is automatically displayed everywhere. See covers and images documentation.
Moved cover selector to above the Save button. Dunno why it ended up below.
Drag and drop or paste an image into the scene or notes editor will do nothing now. You have to add images via the image button.
Connect to the Matrix space (Discord alternative). Connect up your Matrix account to get access to the Matrix space. Documentation for Matrix settings.
Shuffled some things around in the rich text editor toolbar so that it all works just a little nicer on mobile.
31 August
Completed word-count challenges post a message to the Discord challenges channel with the leaderboard, like sprints do.
Form submits (create rule set, create scene) now have a submit guard to help prevent double-submitting (and creating accidental duplicates).
Some drop-down menus weren't highlighting selected options all the way across. Styling fixed now.
Install app section of user settings was a little confusing if the button wasn't showing at all. Button now always shows but is disabled if the install feature is not available in your browser.
You can now duplicate a rule set so you can quickly create a new one for a different story without having to start from scratch. See editor rule sets documentation.
Added redacted text option in the rich text editor. This carries through to beta reading view, and published (public library) view. EPUB and Word exports show these as blacked out (highlight to see the text), and Text and Markdown exports just mark them with a redacted marker. See the scene editor documentation.
You can now set a default font at story level. This will be the default font in every scene, but you can change the scene font (new option in left drawer), and change the font of highlighted sections of text (from the editor toolbar). These font choices will show in the beta reading view and published story. EPUB will export with your font choices. Word will attempt to, but that relies on fonts being installed and recognised on the computer that opens the Word file. Fonts cannot be applied to Text and Markdown exports. See the scene editor documentation.
Added some more font options - one more sans serif font, two monospace fonts, and two handwriting fonts. Using only Google Fonts for licensing purposes, and only variable fonts for sanity purposes.
Reorganised user settings into logical groupings / tabs and updated the user documentation.
Fixed some issues with the move tool. You no longer get an "unsaved version" message when returning to a scene you moved text out of. If you move a whole paragraph, place your carat at the end of the paragraph you want it after and click move - it'll create its own paragraph after that one. Placing the carat at the start of a paragraph will place the copied paragraph before it. Deselect "Place in its own paragraph" if you want to place the moved text inline at the carat.
Layout fix in admin UI for Manage > Users.
Layout fix in forums to keep kebab menu for a thread over to the right and actually usable.
29 August
You can now save the magic 8 ball result as a favourite on the writing tools page.
You can see your saved favourites from the notes overview, notes, and scene editor pages.
There is a new "Editor rule sets" tab in your user settings. Here you can create multiple rule sets that allow you to choose whether you use curly or straight single and double quotes, plus other pre-set punctuation rules, and set your own replacement rules. Note: you can only apply one rule set to a story, so build up all the rules you want to use in one set. (In the future I will have a "Duplicate rule set" button so you can quickly set up a new rule set rather than starting from scratch.)
There are two new buttons on the rich text editor to allow you to convert all double or single quotes between curly and straight.
You can set how you want the save status (on solo stories only) to display. In your user settings there are four options: text coloured, text subtle, icons coloured, icons subtle.
28 August
Clicking in an empty scene or note, or clicking below the last line, will now place the cursor at the end of the scene / note. You no longer have to try and aim for that one invisible line on an empty canvas to get your keyboard to show up on mobile!
Editing or adding parts / chapters / scenes in the story overview page now reloads the page to where you edited / added rather than scrolling back to the top.
Tidied up my admin UI. I can find things now.
Tidied up commenting on beta reading view and published stories.
Beta reading settings include selecting which scene statuses to include. So does the story publish settings (for publishing to the library).
Download all your comments from beta readers into Word, Text, or Markdown format. You are also prompted to do this before you stop beta reading on the story, as this will destroy all comments.
Unpublishing a story from the library no longer destroys all likes, comments, bookmarks and subscriptions. They come back when you republish.
A comment or post/reply can only be reported once. The person reporting it must supply a reason or they can't report it. Minimum character length of reason is 10 characters, max is 200. They gotta write something, but not an essay thanks. Once a comment has been reported, no other user has the ability to report the same comment.
Various small cosmetic tweaks.
27 August
Added version history to notes / frontmatter / endmatter. It's in the left drawer at the bottom.
The forum line on the mobile menu would migrate to the right if there were unread notifications. It now stays put on the left.
Usernames and icons would sometimes float above the rest of the text in the forum thread header (in the thread list). That's now fixed, they also stay put where they belong.
The daily activity heatmap (in goals/statistics) would have overlapping text if the start of the timeline had month headers on two consecutive columns. Now the first column's header is suppressed if the second column has a header. Only happens at the very end of the month, but still annoying.
Buttons in forum threads were confusing (especially the subscribe / unsubscribe). I have removed them all, and now you just have a kebab menu to the right with all your potential actions written in plain English.
Editor tabs for the drawers sat really close to the text and editor toolbar icons. I have given more padding to the text and toolbar to keep it away from those pesky tabs.
The note titles were displaying very weirdly. Crowding in on the tabs, and all the way over to the left on wide screens. Realised they didn't need to be there (scenes don't show the titles in the editor window) so I have removed them. Note titles show only in the left drawer, just like scene titles do.
You can now edit your scene, chapter, part, note, frontmatter, endmatter title directly from within the scene / note editor using the pencil icons. Delete and reorder have remained on the notes / story overview pages for safety.
Oh, and security fixes fully applied now.
24 August
Fixed bug where starting a new sprint after finishing a sprint (and not reloading the page) would count the previous word count in the current sprint. Sprints now start a clean-slate word count even if you haven't reloaded the page.
Sprints with a time goal also now count down from the set time to zero, and auto-complete once the timer has finished.
New "Move" button in the editor menu allows you to select some text and move it without affecting words added / removed data. It's a net-zero move that allows you to rearrange content in your story without messing with your word counts.
Some security-strengthening on the site. Forced HTTPS, HSTS policy enforced, upped TLS version, increased minimum password length (enforced only for new accounts or password changes).
19 August
Fixed app icon. If you installed the app using Chrome or Safari, uninstall it and reinstall it to see the icon without a purple border.
Added instructions for "installing" this on Windows, Mac, Android (via web wrapper for now - actual app to come later), and iOS to your account settings page under the "Install app" heading. Not looking to create .exe or .dmg installers for what is essentially a website, and you can have the app-feeling using Chrome or Safari anyway.
Fonts are now loaded into the site via the admin interface and don't call Google Fonts externally. Better for privacy. You shouldn't have noticed much change except that we lost the Lato font (it's not variable weight), and we gained the Roboto font.
14 August
Enabled live collaboration for everyone. You can change a story from being solo writing to live collaboration in the sharing tab. Invite users to collaborate. You can all type at once. There's even a chat so you can nudge people or just ask things - it only keeps the last 100 messages, though.
13 August
Added a whole user guide section to the information icon. These are detailed user guides for every part of the site. Existing pages have been renamed to About.
Daily activity heatmap now opens on the most recent week with today's cell visible - an improvement on smaller screens where you had to scroll right every time to see your most recent heatmap squares!
Added "Cast" and "Places" tabs to the story overview. Go check them out! Neat visualisations of when and where your characters and places turn up.
9 August
Launched story templates - pre-built structure and notes for different kinds of stories. When creating a new story, you can start with a blank canvas, or choose from 6 templates to help you kickstart your writing:
Freytag's Pyramid (Classical 5-Act Arc)
The Hero's Journey (12-Step Monomyth)
Save the Cat! (15-Beat Screenplay & Novel Structure)
Romancing the Beat (Genre Romance Structure)
7-Point Plot Structure (Dan Wells Framework)
The Snowflake Method (Randy Ingermanson Framework)
6 August
Button alignments on mobile for story overview are now consistent - scene name and word count on one line, status and action buttons on second line. Action buttons are always aligned to the right now.
Notifications on mobile caused the notification badge and text in the menu to right align. Fixed the wayward CSS and the text stays put now.
Changing your theme properly recolours the site now. Everything takes on the tint of the primary theme colour instead of staying purple.
Quality-of-life update for admin panel. Documentation pages can now be ordered through the UI instead of using a Z-index value in a field. Hooray.
More statistics. Users get two new stats blocks on their page: writing pace, stories. Admin gets a bunch of fun number statistics to look over. No actual content is shown to admin, just counts.
Story overview is now broken into three tabs:
Structure - The order of your parts, chapters, and scenes.
Sharing - Publish to the library, enable and manage beta reading, and soon-to-come live collaboration.
Readability & Tone - Basic analytics of your story.
New hidden achievements. These will show up as milestones under your word count and streak badges on your profile.
Badge notifications. Now you're notified when you earn a new badge. Edit your notification preferences in your profile settings.
5 August
Fixed an issue with the scene editor on iOS. The scroll wasn't allowing you to see the bottom of the text.
4 August
Prettier badges. Replaced the text-pill badges with nicer coloured SVG pentagons. More badges to come in the future with prettier pictures on them, too.
3 August
Added version history to right drawer of scene editor. Every 1.5 minutes of active typing, a new version is saved. A maximum of 50 versions are kept. You can restore back to any version. Each version records the words diff (added / removed) from the previous version.
Added a banner if you open a stale scene editor where new edits have been made on another device. You are told that the local version is older, and asked whether you want to use the newer version, or keep your older version (overwriting the newer one).
Some UI improvements, especially for beta reading. You may have noticed a new "Shared with me" tab on the home page (your "My stories" page). Beta reading is now there, and the soon-to-come live collaboration feature.
Story tiles now have little icon indicators for:
Shared to profile.
Published to library.
Beta reading enabled.
Live collaboration enabled (to come).
Filters on "My stories" page now include sharing and collaboration options, so you can easily see all of the stories you are sharing on your profile, you have published to the library etc.
Fix: Using the "Back to my stories" link from a story overview of a story inside a folder, now returns to the folder instead of all the way back out to the main page.
Fix: Threads in the "Graveyard" forum never show as unread now.
Improvement: Colour picker now has an "Apply" button so it can't randomly close while you're trying to adjust your colour. Replaced the "Add" button (which did nothing) with a "Random" button that will actually randomly insert a HEX colour code.
Goals are now collapsed into one block in the right panel / drawer of the scene editor.
Failed to fix: In Safari, the account menu won't close when you are no longer hovered over it. You also can't keyboard tab along the navigation menu items. This works in Firefox and Chrome. I cannot get Safari to play ball. Parking this until my stress levels go down.
2 August
Fixed a bug where trying to highlight the scene, chapter, or part name when editing this from the story overview would glitch. It was interacting with the drag-and-drop reorder on the page.
Added a starred note feature. On the story notes page, you can star a single story note (not frontmatter, endmatter, character, or location). Then in the scene editor, the left drawer has a button to quickly access your starred note. This means you can now quickly access your story outline, for example, without having to leave the scene editor. Or another note of your choice.
1 August
New user onboarding tasks. All user accounts get some onboarding tasks showing on their "My stories" page. You can dismiss them manually, or they vanish when you complete them. Onboarding tasks currently include:
Add a profile picture.
Set your timezone.
Join the Discord server.
Set your notification preferences.
Complete your bio.
Start your first story.
Invite beta readers to comment on a snapshot of your story. This doesn't publish your story, beta readers need a join code to access the story. They comment on a scene. New snapshots bring unresolved comments forward with them.
Authors: set up beta reading from your story overview page.
Beta readers: go to my stories > shared with me to join a beta read, or to keep reading / commenting on joined stories.
Split / merge scenes. Move the cursor to where you want to split a scene and use the scene menu in the editor to split at that point. This has the benefit of not messing with your daily word count tracking (which cut & paste would). You can also merge two scenes (merge up) by going to the second scene and choosing to merge up from the scene menu in the editor.
NOTE: You will lose any highlighting in the split or merged scene, so remove any highlights first.
A + icon has been added beside chapters in the scene editor, and beside all note types in the notes editor, to quickly add a new scene, note, frontmatter, endmatter, character, or location.
Publish settings are no longer wiped on unpublish, so you don't have to remember what you wrote for your blurb if you decide to publish again.
NOTE: Likes, comments, and bookmarks are still wiped on unpublish. This is deliberate. Pushing a new update to a published story keeps likes, comments, and bookmarks, and notifies subscribers of the update.