Upload Microsoft Word Documents!
Writers, I've got some excellent news for you. I'm happy to announce that you can now upload :wordfile: Microsoft Word documents for the chapters of your story! :veryhappy:

No more messing with html exports or copy/pasting into the FCK editor. When you upload a MS Word document, it will automatically be converted to html and stored in the database. Then you can use the FCK editor to add any flash content or images that you desire.

Based on my initial tests of the MS Word to HTML converter, it appears that it generates HTML far more accurately than the FCK editor does so your formatting and spacing should remain intact. I have noticed some spacing problems with documents generated with Open Office though. I do not know if this is a problem only with Open Office .doc files or all .doc files. Please tell me about your experiences with the new MS Word document upload and what you think of the accuracy of the conversion.

I know in the past some people have had problems posting content to the writing section in the Red Curtain that was originally in a MS Word document because it defaults all of the text to black. Hopefully no one will be having this problem anymore because the html converter automatically changes the text to white for any RC submissions.

Please note that I can't take all of the credit for this feature. I am using a free Unix program called wvWare to handle the MS Word to Html conversions. It's probably the same thing or similar to something fanfiction.net uses, though I could be wrong. All I did was write a PHP API for it and integrated it into the site.

Other Writing Section Changes
There have been some other major changes made to the writing section. Now when you post writing, you'll be asked to select a writing Type. You have to choose between Poetry, Original Fiction, Fanfiction, and Tutorials.

By making these changes, all poetry is more easily separated from the fiction. Most poetry does not fit into any Genres so all poetry has been removed from the Genre, Original, and Fanfiction galleries and instead just remains in a general Poetry and Song Lyrics gallery. Some of you poets may not like this change. If you don't like it, please make suggestions for Poetry sub categories. The Genre galleries I feel are not really the place for Poetry so if you don't like having all of the Poetry in one library, we could separate it out and allow Poetry its own set of libraries. The question is, what would those libraries be.

Also, the Type library selection has been removed. Libraries that used to be under Type, such as "Drabbles, ...", "Lemons," "One Shots," "Song Fics," and "Lemons,"  have been moved to Genre so please look for them there. This change makes finding writing and posting writing a much more pleasant experience.

Also, new writing has to undergo a publishing process similar to the comics section. When you post new writing, it is not live on the site until you tell it to publish. This is to allow yourself time to add any images or other content to your writing through the FCK editor before the entry is visible to the public.

Future Changes
I understand one of the frustrating things about the writing section is that there is no way to delete a chapter. I will have this issue resolved within the next week hopefully.

Any comments on these changes are much appreciated.