I was wondering if anyone has been successful in duplicating the category-specific format of the "Characters" classification in order to create other category-specific classifications such as "Pairings" or "Spoilers." The only site-wide classification I find necessary for my multi-fandom archive is "Warnings." It's driving me crazy that I can't feasibly devise a way to limit new classifications to specific categories. It doesn't make sense to have the SG-1 pairing Jack/Sam available in the pairing-selection for Harry Potter just as it doesn't make sense to have a spoiler warning for post-HBP in the spoiler-selection for SG-1.
My main interest at the moment is having both "Characters" and "Pairings" searchable. I had considered changing the terminology in languages/en.php to "Cast" as AO3 has down in their archive and including both characters and pairings in the same list, but that really clutters things up and doesn't look professional. Also, it doesn't solve the question of how to add category-specific "Spoilers." Such a capability would might also help solve my problem of a fandom made up of several different series that frequently crossover or reuse characters (CLAMP is notorious for having cameos and also for their alternate realities with characters that have the same names and faces, but different pasts), since I've been dreading entering character names repeatedly for different series that will muddy the database.
So, um, help?
You could duplicate the characters functions...all of it. It's not something for the faint of heart to take on.
I did!
I abolished the Characters (I always thought this as unnecessary) and declared it pairing.
In my categories (i.e. HP-slash), I took care that the I add only male characters.
In the none-slash categories, I use Harry Potter and all the females I could find and declared it as Pairing.
Finished. It was always there, but the designers and everyone else (mods, admins, site owners, public, readers, authors, even the Queen) thought this to use as the label already indicated, Characters. Who gives a ^&%^&% what characters are playing in the fic. Everyone is interested in the pairing.
The only technical changes I made was renaming Characters into Pairings.
😀 😀 Tada! It was the best change ever and almost without effort. In the Ficdom.net you will find many universes (categories) with many different ficdoms and they (mostly) have have their own pairings (previously known as characters).
Tammy made a very nice design with the eFiction, that you can do something like that without changing the whole thing. Excellent software, excellent work.
I think you misunderstood me. I wish to have both characters AND pairings available. I do write some gen fic or stories where a relationship is seen through the eyes of another character. In these situations, only being able to select a pairing would be ineffectual.
I'm currently considering simply adding pairings as a classification and removing the {pairingsmenu} from the browse.tpl so that pairings will appear in the entry metadata, but won't confuse users by making EVERY pairing available in EVERY catagory. Mine is a personal archive, so this shouldn't be problematic. I wouldn't really recommend this workaround for a large archive.
You could duplicate the characters functions...all of it. It's not something for the faint of heart to take on.
Do I understand this correctly that this would mean I go through all the files before installing efiction, copy all the code bits related to characters and add them as e.g. "pairings". Then install the whole thing and pray I did it right and didn't miss anything?
sounds like a bunch of work I wouldn't mind trying. But: updating from 3.x to 4.x would be pretty much impossible, right?
Old
URL: http://fiction.intayale.de
Version: 3.3.1
Modules: Challenges, Story Tracker, Mulit-lang. eFiction
PHP: 4.4.8
MySQL: 5.0.51a
New
URL: http://intayale.de/deFiction
Version: 3.5
Modules: Last Login
PHP: 5.2.9
MySQL: 5.0.77
You'd probably have to install eFiction, then edit the database to duplicate the characters table for pairings, then modify your files. And yes, it would make upgrading very difficult for you.
yeah. thought as much. Thanks for the hints. I'll think about it. Maybe I'd rather wait for v4 to come out. Will see.
Old
URL: http://fiction.intayale.de
Version: 3.3.1
Modules: Challenges, Story Tracker, Mulit-lang. eFiction
PHP: 4.4.8
MySQL: 5.0.51a
New
URL: http://intayale.de/deFiction
Version: 3.5
Modules: Last Login
PHP: 5.2.9
MySQL: 5.0.77
