Archive of Our Own ^beta

All the latest news on the Archive of Our Own! Cake, servers, and Rails 3!

We all still had slight cake hangovers at this meeting after our wonderful party to celebrate our servers' first birthday!

Baby servers are one - our birthday party

Thank you to all the Archive users and volunteers who came along to our birthday party to celebrate the first anniversary of our servers of our own! It was an amazing party full of squee, virtual cake, fannish chat and amazing creativity - check out our round-up post for more details of all our party hijinks! Since the party our users have been busy - we now have over 107500 works hosted on the Archive and over 9496 users!

We really appreciate all the lovely feedback we receive - thanks to the many people who take a moment to drop us a line via our Support form or leave us a comment to let us know the things they are enjoying. This project is the hard work of lots and lots of volunteers, and it's a huge boost when people let us know our hard work is appreciated!

Forthcoming changes - Rails 3

There'll be a longer gap than usual before we release any new features, as the next task our coders will be working on is the upgrade to Rails 3 (the framework the Archive runs on). This is a big job which will affect all the code in the Archive, so we're pausing work on new features to allow this to take place. We think that the shiny new features in the last release make up for a little pause!

News from our sub-committees and sister committees

• Coders are working on all the tasks necessary to upgrade to Rails 3 - writing more automated tests, updating our documentation, and figuring out the actual changes that will be needed in our code base.


• Testers are updating documentation about regression testing in readiness for the Rails 3 upgrade. Regression testing involves working through every aspect of the site to check that everything is working right and looking good (automated tests help to check these things, but for big changes there is no substitute for real people testing!)


• Tag wranglers have been thinking about ways of making our wrangling system easier for users to understand and keeping up with the many new tags being added to the Archive by our new users!


• Support have been working hard to keep up with lots of Support requests from new users. They're doing a fantastic job, but there is a higher volume of requests than usual, so please bear with us if it takes them a little while to get back to you.

If there are things you'd like to do or say, please share them in comments, via the AO3 support and feedback form, by volunteering, or in whatever medium you feel comfortable with. Everyone is welcome to this party!

This party had it all: a glittery cake to fuel our server anthropomorphic challenge, a scavenger hunt, reccing and self-reccing fests, teamwork to help each other upload back catalogs, and a special tag just for party fic. Here’s to another year of cheering each other on as we read, create, and transform.

Midnight to midnight is a long time to party but our wonderful guests have kept the energy high! Here are some details on our marvelous accomplishments:

• 1411 new works, 224 new users, 103 new fandoms!!!


• Archive Of Our Own Anthropomorfic!


• AO3 RPF!


• AO3 Party RPF featuring eye shadow and a sly reference to the OTW Brandbook!


• Collaborative AO3 Chat Party Poetry!


• Party icons!


• Our Favorite Things in the Archive. You can still add yours in the comments!


• 105K Works! A party-wide post-a-thon helped us reach our goal of 105,000 works posted to the Archive – and then we surpassed it! It was probably all that anthropomorfic…

We also compared time zones! And there were a LOT of them. During the last hour alone, the partygoers hailed from:

New Zealand — New York City, New York, USA — Buenos Aires, Argentina — Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA — Indiana, USA — Finland — Romania — Turkey — Quebec City, Quebec, Canada — Maryland, USA — Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA — Los Angeles, California, USA — New Hampshire, USA — upstate New York, USA — North Carolina, USA — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA — Niedersachsen, Germany — Dublin, Ireland — Seattle, Washington, USA — Missouri, USA — Ontario, Canada — England, United Kingdom

We even had a fandom roll call in our final hour! Check it out:

Classical music RPF — Can I call "crack" as a fandom? — Community — Disney RPF — Miami Vice — House — Doctor Who, ElfQuest, Anita Blake — Tokio Hotel — Sophie's World — Highlander, Doctor Who, British Actor RPF — SGA — Beatles RPF — Fandom: YES. — baum's oz books! — Sherlock (BBC), The Dresden Files (books), Doctor Who (2005), Temeraire, Hut 33, Traveler, Supernatural, Merlin (BBC), White Collar, Chuck — this one's easy, I'm actually the ONLY ficcer in one of my fandoms! — David Eddings — Black Rock Shooter! — Power Rangers! — (monkees is the only fandom of mine where i have written poetry) — Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, DCU, Slings & Arrows, Promethean Age (oh GOD) — robotech is the only fandom that i've painted in! — Lord of the Rings — Vorkosigan — Man from UNCLE — \o/ Vorkosigan! — Star Trek, X-Files, Hilda Tablet and Others, McCarthyism RPF — Covert Affairs — elisabeth, tanz der vampire, mozart! — Jane Austen, Firefly, 28 Days Later, Once and Again, Breakfast Club, Naruto, Hikaru no Go, X-Files, Harry Potter — claymore, black rock shooter, pretty cure, akira (manga), belgariad/malloreon, elenium/tamuli, eureka seven, kino's journey, gundam wing, aaaand dc comics — Hellboy II — oh also JAMES BOND — Sherlock Holmes. Book-verse. — Iron Man — Akira — Harry Potter, Star Trek, X-Men and X-Men: Evolution — Battlestar Galactica! — ooh, robin of sherwood was my very first fic-reading fandom — highlander films, historical fiction, stephen king's rose red, raymond e. feist’s riftwar saga (and everything else in those universes he wrote, jesus christ mr feist), spooks, spice world.

Gentle reminder: the OTW and AO3 are run through fan energy, commitment, and donations — and eventually we’ll need more servers to slash with the existing servers. Please consider becoming an OTW member and donating to the cause!

We're celebrating the birthday of our shiny shiny servers! One of the most important and most exciting things about the Archive is the fact it represents the amazing achievement of fandom pulling together to generate the investment and expertise needed to create a true home of our own. Since September 2009, fandom has owned the servers, and the OTW is committed to making those servers a safe space for the fannish community.

Owning the servers is awesome, but just as important is what we use those servers for! We aim to make the Archive a welcoming place for fans not just because fandom owns the servers, but because the Archive is built by fans, for fans and has lots of awesome features which make a better experience for readers and creators. During our birthday party, Archive staffers and users have been talking about our favourite features - check out our list below and comment to let us know you what you love the most!

Here are a few of our favourite things!

Zooey, AD&T Chair: I LOVE the History feature! It keeps track of everything you view on the Archive, and records the date you viewed it and whether it has changed since. I am incredibly lazy about bookmarking fic, so this is totally a killer feature for me - when I think 'what was that awesome fic I read?' I can look back and find it. We're planning more features for this in future - I can't WAIT till we add the filtering option so it's easy for me to find a specific work without browsing through the whole list.

Astolat, coder: OMG advanced search! It is a little bit tricksy and we are still working on the GUI for it, but there is nothing not awesome about just being able to do: "tag: merlin/arthur (explicit|mature) words: >1000" and suddenly you have JUST THE STORIES you want.

Sidra, coder: Download as epub! You can browse the archive inside stanza on your iPhone and when you find something *poof* it's offline and ready to read. And when you get to the end, there's a link which takes you right back to comment. Super cool!

Enigel, coder: Tags! (Also known as "wuzzles".) Tags and the way they tie into browsing: I'll be reading a John/Sherlock fic and then I can use the tags to hop to the Sherlock (TV) listing, and then follow the Crossover tag and maybe pick up a new fandom... It's a never-ending link-hopping dance. :D

Yueix, user: Favorite feature so far is being able to read whole works (multi-chapters) as one continuous story.

bingeling, designer: I love the Archive simply for being multi-fandom. Whenever I'm in the mood to read something that's not my main fandom I simply check what the Archive has to offer and most of the time I'll find something. Pre-Archive it was always quite a bit of work to actually find the fic. If it wasn't your fandom, you didn't know its infrastructure. Thanks to the Archive I now always know where to start looking. ♥

Helka, kääntäjä: Minusta on hauskaa, että niin moni pieni fandom on edustettuna Arkistossa. Yli 5500 fandomia! Joissakin fandomeissa on tuhansia tarinoita, joissakin vain yksi ainokainen, mutta jokainen tarina on arvokas. Voin mennä fandom-listaukseen ja selata vaikkapa kaikkia kirja-fandomeita, tai sitten voin etsiä jotain tiettyä fandomia etsintä-toiminnolla. Ja joka päivä Arkistoon tulee lisää tarinoita! \o/

lorax, user: Favorite archive feature by FAR is the challenge sign up features. I did remix through the auto sign up this year, and it's fantastic and keeps everything so easy to find. I'm really looking forward to seeing how yuletide uses the challenge sign up through the site this year, if they do.

Julia, Übersetzerin: Ich halte das Eigene Archiv jetzt schon für eine wunderschöne, nützliche Sache, aber was es für mich auszeichnet ist dieses Gefühl, dass nach oben hin alles offen ist. Dass durch die Vorschläge der Nutzer gepaart mit der Reaktionsfreudigkeit der Programmiererinnen zusammen Stück für Stück ein Archiv entsteht, das in der Summe seiner Teile dann doch verdammt revolutionär ist -- besonders, weil es im Moment erst einen Bruchteil seines Potentials zeigt.

mlle, user: My favorite feature is the little symbol box next to each work. It tells me at a glance whether or not a fic has anything in it I want to avoid. Priceless.

X-parrot, tag wrangler: As a hopelessly pedantic author, I love that whilst replying to a comment, I happen to notice I'm missing yet another "the" in my latest chapter's final paragraph, I can hit "edit" and instantly put that to rights!

Christie, user: I love the freedom to post anything and the great search :D

Anne-Li, Support staffer: I love that it is central, you don't have to look at a gazillion places to find (good) fic.

Derry, user: My favourite feature is the ebook download! I can stuff my PRS full of juicy, glorious fanfic with just one click!

Tai, tester: My favourite thing is the Reading history - I don't have to muck around bookmarking stuff I want to read and then wondering where I put it, just open the page and come back to it at leisure.

theliterator, user: Here's what I love the most, which is what I'm using right now. The importer.

zelempa, coder: I am still discovering new features so what I love in advance is this blog post.

Alison, tag wrangling committee: My favourite is ALL the features.

Share some of yours!

We currently have nearly 9000 users on the Archive, who between them have posted more than 100,000 works, in over 5500 different fandoms. We figure this means we are making lots of people happy! Let us know in the comments to this post what you enjoy about the Archive!

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy biiiiirthday dear servers, happy birthday to us! The beautiful, beautiful servers of our own are one year old! We're incredibly proud of the fannish energy and investment that enabled us to buy our beautiful servers - thank you fandom!

Birthday presents

As our birthday gift to fandom, we've launched an AWESOME code release. Release 0.8.1 includes skins, mobile exports, and a very special guest logo!

As part of our birthday goody bag, we're also giving every Archive user an invitation so that everyone can invite a friend to the party! If you go to your user home and check out 'Manage invitations' you'll be able to see and use your invitation. You can also request more if you need them!

If you don't already have an Archive account, you don't have to be left out! Just add your email address to our Invitations Queue and you should receive an invitation within a few days. Everyone who was in the queue after we released our birthday code was issued an invitation right away!

Birthday party!

We're having a party to celebrate, starting now! Drop into our Public Discussion chatroom anytime today to join the party - Just head for this URL and type in the name you'd like to represent you, and you'll be in: https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/28473.

Singing happy birthday!

All birthday girls deserve some praise! Throughout the party, we'll be talking about what Archive staffers and users love the most about the Archive -- we'll round up a sample of these, and post them for everyone to enjoy and add their own thoughts to! Everyone's killer features in one place!

Also posted on the OTW News Blog

Welcome to Revision 2998, up from 2850. 8 different coders worked on this release! \0/ [sparkles]

Highlights

Refactoring, performance fixes and automated tests

Our senior coders have been continuing to work on refactoring, performance fixes and automated tests in preparation for our upgrade to a newer version of Rails, the programming language the Archive is made in.

Skins

Skins are here at long last! You can now choose how the Archive displays fonts and colors when you're logged in to your account.

We have a few site skins ready-made for you. You can see a quick preview and the code we use to make them at the skins page. Now, when you look under "My Preferences", there is a drop-down menu that lets you choose a different look and feel for the archive. For more details on how to create and use Skins, please check out our Skins Tutorial.

This is just the beginning. Skins are still in beta, and we have some great plans for the future, including a much better Wizard to help people create their own skins.

Ebook downloads

Lots of fans asked for this, and we're very happy to be able to release it at last - we've added the option to download stories for your ebook reader. You can choose from epub, mobi and PDF formats.

Minimize your user page's inclusion in search engines

We've added a new preference, to minimize your user page's inclusion in search engine results. This isn't a guarantee, as not all search engines respect the guidelines, but it will help. This setting currently only affects your user profile - the next release will apply it to your works as well. However, if you want to make absolutely sure your works don't appear in search engines, you'll need to lock them to Archive users only.

Changing "Pairings" to "Relationships"

In order to reflect the purpose of the field more accurately, we have changed the 'Pairings' label on works to 'Relationships'. We think this better reflects the diversity of romantic configurations as well as encouraging people to include friendships in this field (this was always the plan, but we didn't advertise it well!).

Friendship tags work the same as pairing tags have worked in the past and, once the wranglers have wrangled them, take the canonical form "Sha Gojyo & Cho Hakkai", so this is what your friendship tags will look like in filters!

Known Issues

See our Known Issues page.

Release details

Features

• Introduction of Archive skins! This involved many, many separate code issues!


• Added the option to download works in mobile formats


• 'Read later' button - adds the work to your viewing history (if you have it enabled) and flags it as unread.


• Moved revision number from the header to the footer, for greater prettiness.


• Added sparkly logo for Archive birthday!


• Changed 'pairings' to 'relationships' across the Archive.


• Added lots more automated tests for collections, skins, chapter rearrangement, autocompletes, tag wrangling, visibility, series rearrangement, support form and CSS sanitization.


• Split different advanced search types onto separate pages.


• Added the option to minimize the inclusion of works and user profiles in search engines.


• Added lots and lots of new options for colored text!


• Added the option to mark series as works in progress or complete.


• Added a feature to suggest posting a work or bookmark to users who have nothing on their user homepage.

Bug Fixes

• Fix for broken bookmark autocomplete.


• Text areas (like the post work form) were affected by a very annoying bug in IE8, which made the text jump after every edit. We added an IE8-specific style sheet to get around IE8's bugginess.


• Fix for bug which caused errors when wranglers added synonyms to a canonical freeform tag.


• Importing works: Ensured that the original posted-on date is preserved when a work is imported form another site.


• Fix for bug preventing the creation of new series.


• Fix for bug which erroneously caused works to appear as if they belonged to collections.


• Ensured that users will not see the date in their local time if it is the same as the Archive default time (so they don't see the same date twice).


• Fix for some inaccuracies in character counter.


• Fix for overzealous imports from Yuletide - these no longer import navigation!


• Changed outdated 'challenges' link in site map.


• Ensured that works still get added to history when read chapter-by-chapter.


• Ensured that 'add to collection' link appeared when viewing works chapter-by-chapter.


• Ensured that 'redirect to back' will work without an error for users who have set their browsers not to send referrer information.


• Ensured that running our automated tests does not send test messages to our Support bug tracker!


• Fixed minor inconsistencies in HTML and grammar of our TOS.


• Added a hyphen on the Archive homepage.


• Fixed a problem causing the wrong name to appear in notifications for co-authors.

Willkommen zur Revision 2998, die auf Revision 2850 folgt. 8 verschiedene Programmiererinnen haben an dieser Veröffentlichung gearbeitet.

Anmerkung der Übersetzerinnen: Alle Links in diesem Text führen zum Archiv, das zur Zeit nur auf Englisch vorliegt. Für weitere Details siehe die englische Version der Anmerkungen.

Highlights

Refaktorierung, Leistungsverbesserung und automatisierte Tests

Unsere erfahrenen Programmiererinnen haben in Vorbereitung auf die Aktualisierung zu einer neuen Rails-Version weiter an Refaktorierung, Leistungsverbesserung und automatisierten Tests gearbeitet. Rails ist die Programmiersprache, in der das Archiv geschrieben wird.

Designs

Die langersehnten Designs sind da! Ihr könnt jetzt einstellen, in welchen Schriften und Farben das Archiv dargestellt wird, wenn ihr mit eurem Nutzerkonto eingeloggt seid.

Wir haben einige fertige Designs für euch vorbereitet. Eine kurze Vorschau sowie den verwendeten Code seht ihr auf der Seite für Designs. Unter "My Preferences" ("Meine Einstellungen") gibt es jetzt ein Aufklappmenü, in dem ihr das Aussehen des Archivs für euch bestimmen könnt. Mehr Informationen darüber, wie man Designs benutzt und erstellt, findet ihr in unserem Design-Tutorial.

Aber das ist erst der Anfang. Die Designs sind noch in der Betaphase und wir haben große Pläne für die Zukunft: etwa einen viel besseren Design-Assistenten, der euch beim Erstellen eigener Designs hilft.

E-Book-Downloads

Auf eure zahlreichen Wünsche hin haben wir die Funktion hinzugefügt, Geschichten in gängigen E-Book-Formaten herunterzuladen. Ihr könnt zwischen epub, mobi und PDF wählen.

Verringern des Auftauchens eurer Nutzerprofile in Suchmaschinen

Wir haben eine neue Einstellung hinzugefügt, mit der ihr die Wahrscheinlichkeit verringern könnt, mit der euer Nutzerprofil in Suchergebnissen externer Suchmaschinen auftaucht. Zwar können wir nicht garantieren, dass alle Suchmaschinen diese Richtlinien einhalten, aber es hilft auf jeden Fall. Momentan betrifft das nur euer Profil – in der nächsten Veröffentlichung werden wir das auf eure Werke ausweiten. Falls ihr absolut nicht wollt, dass eure Geschichten bei Google auftauchen, müsst ihr den Zugriff auf Archivnutzer beschränken.

"Pairings" werden zu "Beziehungen"

Um den Zweck des Stichwortfeld besser wiederzugeben, heißen "Pairings" von jetzt an "Beziehungen" ("Relationships"). Wir glauben, dass damit die Vielfalt romantischer Verflechtungen besser dargestellt wird und außerdem Nutzerinnen eher dazu ermutigt werden, auch Freundschaften in diesem Feld einzutragen (wozu es zwar immer schon gedacht war, was wir aber nicht deutlich genug gemacht haben).

Freundschafts-Stichwörter funktionieren genauso wie die früheren Pairing-Stichwörter. Sobald die Stichwortsortiererinnen sich ihrer angenommen haben, erscheinen sie in der offiziellen Form "Sha Gojyo & Cho Hakkai", und so sehen eure Freundschafts-Stichwörter dann auch in den Filtern aus.

Bienvenid@ a la Revisión 2998, actualizando la número 2850. ¡8 programadoras diferentes trabajaron en esta revisión! \0/ [brillitos]

Estos son los puntos destacados de la Versión 0.8.1. Para leer los detalles de todos los cambios, por favor lee las Release Notes (en Inglés).

Puntos Importantes

Refactorización, arreglos al rendimiento y pruebas automatizadas

Nuestras programadoras más antiguas han seguido trabajando en refactorización, arreglos al rendimiento y pruebas automatizadas en preparación de nuestro cambio a la más reciente versión de Rails, el lenguaje de programación en el cual está hecho el Archivo..

Temas

¡Por fin tenemos temas! Ahora puedes elegir cómo el Archivo muestra fuentes y colores desde tu cuenta de usuario.

Tenemos unos pocos temas para el sitio ya hechos. Hay una vista previa y el código usado para hacerlas en la página de temas [NT: en inglés]. Ahora, bajo "My Preferences" (Mis preferencias) hay un menú que te deja elegir un aspecto para el archivo. Para obtener más detalles sobre cómo crear y usar Temas, por favor mira nuestro Tutorial de temas [NT: en inglés].

Este es sólo el comienzo. Los Temas todavía están en beta, y tenemos grandes planes para el futuro, incluyendo una interfaz mucho mejor para ayudar a la gente a crear sus propios temas y la opción de agregar imágenes de vista previa para tus temas.

Bajar Ebooks

Muchos fans pidieron esto, y estamos muy felices de poder ofrecerlo finalmente -- hemos agregado la opción de bajarte historias para tu lector de ebooks. Puedes elegir entre los formatos de epub, mobi, y PDF.

Minimiza la inclusión de tu página de usuario en motores de búsqueda

Hemos agregado una nueva opción, para minimizar la inclusión de tu página de usuario en resultados de motores de búsqueda. Esto no es una garantía, ya que no todos los motores de búsqueda respetan las reglas, pero ayudará. Esta opción actualmente sólo afecta su perfil de usuario - la versión siguiente lo aplicará también a tus obras. Sin embargo, si quieres estar absolutamente seguro que tus obras no aparecerán en motores de búsqueda, necesitarás limitar su acceso a sólo los usuarios del Archivo.

Cambio de "Pairings" (Parejas) a "Relationships" (Relaciones)

Para reflejar el objetivo del campo de texto más correctamente, hemos cambiado la etiqueta 'Pairings' a 'Relationships'. Pensamos que esto refleja mejor la diversidad de las configuraciones románticas como así también fomentará la inclusión de amistades en este campo (¡este era siempre el plan, simplemente no lo publicitamos muy bien!).

Las etiquetas de amistad funcionan de la misma manera que etiquetas de parejas han funcionado en el pasado y, una vez que los organizadores de etiquetas las han organizados, toman la forma canónica de "Sha Gojyo & Cho Hakkai", ¡así que así se verán tus etiquetas de amistad en los filtros!

Skins are here at long last! You can now choose how the Archive displays fonts and colours when you're logged in to your account. So, if you'd like a larger font, or you want lower contrast, or you just really love the colour green, you can tweak the Archive to look how you want it to look.

Please note that the skin you choose only affects how you see the Archive, not how your works display to other people.

What is a skin?

A skin is a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file that changes how a webpage displays in your browser. Skins change font size, font face, and display colours for each user, providing a reading experience customized to your wants and needs.

Who creates skins?

The Archive coders have a few site skins ready-made for you. You can also create skins for yourself (more details follow), and use skins created by users which have been publicly shared.

How do I change my skin?

You must be a logged-in user to use skins. There are two ways to change the skin you use for the Archive:

• Go to 'My Preferences' under your user home. Under the 'Site Display' section there is a drop-down menu where you can choose from all approved and publicly available skins, as well as your own skins. Simply select the skin you want and select 'Update'.


• Go to the Public Skins page where you can view all publicly available skins. Select the skin you want by clicking the "Use" button. The page will reload using the selected skin.

How do I create a skin?

Skins are created using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). If you've never used CSS before, fear not - it's easy to pick up the basics. We also have a Skins Wizard to help people who are unfamiliar with CSS - this is still in beta, and we'll be adding more options to this in the future.

Creating a skin using Custom CSS

• Go to 'My Skins' under your user home and select 'Create New Skin'. By default, you'll be taken to the page for entering Custom CSS.


• You can use a limited range of CSS properties and values. The full range of allowed CSS is listed under the Archive Interface section of our FAQ, or you can select CSS help (accessible via the blue question mark) to access the list of allowed properties and values directly on the page. You can also use the Allowed Value Autocomplete to check whether a particular value is allowed - just start typing the value and see whether our autocomplete recognizes it. For example, typing 'lemon' will bring up the value 'lemonchiffon', one of our allowed colour values.


• Your skin title is a short descriptor that lets you remember what this skin is like. You can enter more detail in the Description field. Then you input the CSS you want. You can also add a preview image - this is entirely optional for private skins, but you must include a preview if you want to submit the skin for public use.


• If you check the 'public skin' box, it will submit your skin to be added to the site skins available to everyone. Our volunteers will check it over to make sure it is appropriate, and then add it to the public skins. Please note: Once a skin submitted as public has been officially approved, you will no longer be able to edit or delete it. Please be sure you are happy with this before submitting a public skin! Please also note that not all skins will be approved.


• When you've filled in all your choices, select 'Create' to save your skin.


• Once you have saved your skin, it will appear as an option in the drop-down menu on your preferences, and will show up under 'My Skins'.


• Select your new skin as described under 'How do I change my skin?'

If your skin is not public, only you will see it in the drop-down menu in 'My Preferences', and only you can access it.

If you need help writing custom CSS you can browse the code of existing skins under Public Skins to see examples of the kind of code you can use. There are lots of great general resources for CSS online - we recommend the W3 Schools CSS tutorials as a great place to start. There's also an unofficial AO3 skins community on Dreamwidth - check out ao3_skins for other shareable skins and help and advice from other fans.

Creating a skin using the Skins Wizard

Please note: This feature is in extreme beta and lots more spiffy user-friendly features will be added in the future.

• Skin title: A short descriptor that lets you remember what this skin is like.


• Description: this is where you can put more detail about the skin.


• Width of margins: This will set the width of the margins on works pages (i.e. when you are viewing a story). The default is 3 - using a bigger number will give you bigger margins, and a smaller number will make the margins smaller!


• Font, with comma-separated fallbacks: This will set the font used for all body text (e.g. works, summaries, etc but not titles or headings). Just input the name of the font you would like to use. If that font is not installed on the computer you are using, then the Archive will 'fall back' to your next favourite font - either the next font in your list, or the Archive's own default fonts. For example, if you put 'Papyrus, Comic Sans' then the Archive will display in Papyrus if you have it, but if it doesn't find Papyrus on your machine it will display in Comic Sans instead.


• Background colour: This will set the main background colour for the Archive, i.e. the main page colour. You can specify the name of the colour you want, or for more control use the hex colour code - the W3 Schools list of colour codes lists the most common of these.


• Foreground colour: This will set the font colour for the Archive. You can specify the name of the colour you want, or for more control use the hex colour code - the W3 Schools list of colour codes lists the most common of these.


• Relative font size: This will set the size of your font. The default is 100 - if you pick a number bigger than this, the font will enlarge. If you pick a number smaller than 100, the font size will decrease!

How do I add a preview image for my skin?

Create a screenshot of how the Archive looks while using your skin and save it in PNG, JPEG or GIF format. Edit the skin and use the Browse (or Choose, in some browsers) button to navigate to your image. Click Update. The image will appear as a clickable thumbnail, leading to the original image.

What happens when I submit a skin as public?

1. The skin will be added to a list for review by Archive admins, and will appear as 'Pending approval' on your Skins page.


2. An Archive admin will review the skin for security, accessibility, and innovation and decide whether or not it should be added to our range of Public Skins. Please note that skins will not be reviewed immediately, and not all skins will be accepted.


3. The admin will decide whether to approve or reject your skin:

• If they accept the skin, it will be marked 'Approved' on your Skins page and added to the range of available Public Skins. You will no longer be able to edit this skin. The admin may add a short comment which will also be visible on your Skins page - this will not be visible to other users.


• If they reject the Skin, it will be marked 'Rejected' on your Skins page. The admin will usually add a short note explaining their decision.

What if I want a particular skin?

If you want a particular design for the Archive, you can create it yourself! If you don't have the skills, you can browse Public Skins to see if someone else has created something you like. You can also try asking at the unofficial ao3_skins community for help.

If you have particular accessibility needs which you think might be met by a skin, then get in touch with our Support team for help. (We can't create custom skins for individual users, but we are keen to develop skins that will address issues for groups of users, particularly where accessibility is a factor.)

As always, if you have questions about how skins work or hit a problem, our Support team will be happy to help. Go forth and customise your Archive!