| Mia's Index of Anthro' Stories |
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Changes
Well, some say too much success can be bad for you. in the case of MIA's, I must
say that that can certainly be true sometimes. I started out with approx 20
titles listed on the day I set up the Index, now we're slowly creeping up on
the two thousand mark, in other words, two orders of magnitude
more than what we had at the start. I cannot but think that this shows that my
original vision of the Index was a tremenduous success, and the hit stats on the
servers that MIA'S resides on certainly testify that it is popular.
Unfortunately, the sheer size of the Database is going beyond what the original
software was designed to handle, at present I'm using a perl script that parses
all the data, then indexes it and writes out all the web-pages. This was fine
for twenty stories, or even two hundred, but at two thousand, it's beginning to
take 15 minutes just to do a run, and I usually have to do several to get all
the bugs out. Then there's the issue of having to type in all the data that is
e-mailed to me, this is beginning to take up a SIZEABLE chunk of my
free time, especially since my new job doesn't give me as much of that as being
a student did.
For all those reasons, I've decided on two measures to correct things. First,
on the software side, I'll be integrating a true Database Engine into the story
database, one designed for handling data such as is now in the Story database,
and two, I've decided to take on help in adding to the database.
The database integration has been proceeding apace, there is still lots to be
done before I can run this whole show via the Database, but there is already one
fruit of my labor ready for showing, namely the Furry Story Search Page. This page is currently
only available on the fanarchive server, furry.de needs to set up some of the
infrastructure for the Database Engine still, but I am informed that they are
working on it. Btw, the Search page is by no means finished, I should be
adding bells and feeps to it for the next few months, I just thought having it
available now would be appreciated. Please send me all errors
and problems you encounter in using the page, but don't send me suggestions
for added features or changes yet, it's much too early for that.
Finding help in adding to the Database wasn't that hard given that Graven had
already been helping me a lot in adding data, I just decided to make it
official. You may find his contact info, and the names of any others that I
decide to add in the future on the Staff Page.
I just wish to state that doing all the programming for the Database Integration
has been taking even more sizable chunks out of my free time, thus limiting
the ammount of time I have for updating the index. This has contributed to
the severe lack of updates in the last months. Unfortunately, until I get it
all working, things will continue to be slow, I appologize for, but am unable to
change the fact. Still, at the end we'll all have a much better Index
available to all, and one that doesn't depend so much on how much free time
one poor overworked kitty has ;-)
- Miavir
MIA'S Staff(To E-Mail us))
| Mia's Index of Anthro' Stories |
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