The Lab has moved

[docbyron]

Hey all, the Lab moved to its own domain (http://www.docs-lab.com) recently and got a bit of a facelift. I wanted to avoid advertising the fact until I was sure it was reasonably stable, which it appears to be. And of course, it's still evolving, so I'm always up for bug reports or feature suggestions.

[jimi20]

This is great news! Well done Doc

[N_brazil]

Looks wonderful... Great work. Was this transformation magic, potion, or technology?

[Northwind]

Updated my bookmark. Thanks for keeping the site going, Doc!

[N_brazil]

I know he said he would be down if maintance on the 18th. Is the site down now for an server update or is it blocked by the great Chinese firewall?

[Peanutt_Buta]

I assume you're alluding to the fact that we can't login or register? Just a heads up, that's my current problem with the site.

Also, a couple of the stories fell through the cracks. I know a couple haven't been recovered, so if you ever posted to that site, you should probably check and see if your work is still there.

I submitted some content a decade ago and the current version of the site has finally lost it. Fortunately, I have an updated copy ready to post when registering and login function returns.

EDIT: Also, the art gallery appears to be missing. Will the Lab feature this in a future update or is it gone for good?

[QuestionDeca]

Just wish more people re-applied their tags after this move.

[docbyron]

The issue with login/registration has been fixed. (And that's why you don't make a "quick update" to something before heading to work without double-checking, Doc. How embarrassing... Normally I fully test in a dev environment, but laziness got the better of me.)

@Peanutt_Buta: Yeah, a few authors couldn't be recovered after the hack. Some authors are missing because they deleted their submissions, though. Also note that any stories that were in the old forum but not the archive are just gone.

Easiest thing would be to just re-submit once you've registered.

As for the art gallery, if the art was attached to a story, it'll be coming back in a future update. There is no stand-alone art anymore; it has to be submitted to complement a story. Main reason for this is there are already plenty of TF art galleries and I wanted the Lab to focus on stories.

@QuestionDeca: Yeah, I tried to figure out a way to recover the old tag relations. I was able to get some (maybe 25%), but the rest were impossible. It's something that should gradually fix itself, since most stories allow any logged-in user to add tags to them (unless the author disabled it).

[Peanutt_Buta]

Awesome!

[DarkMWE]

Hey Doc, glad to see you back up and running.

Just wanted to let you know that I'm still out and about, and still have old copies of the Lab backed up. If you need old artwork or stories from the old HTML dinosaur age, let me know.

-MWE-

[docbyron]

Edit: The site was experiencing some speed issues, but I've pushed a number of optimizations that should fix the problem.

[docbyron]

@MWE: I've got a backup of the story files. I think the reason a lot of users are having trouble finding old stories is that it was impossible to fully recover the original titles on a lot of submissions, so a ton of them were imported with just the first word from the original title, or all of the words smashed into one, like "Storytitlegoeshere".