I thought I would take the opportunity to explain some of these glitches and bugs we're all enjoying.

First and foremost, the forum software version 4.0.0 was a complete rewrite from the ground up that converting our existing data to work in the version.  This has happened before, because we started on version 1.1 back in 2003.  That's years before Facebook, for you Millennial.  This is a lot of baggage from issues over the years and things glitch.  Indeed, we experienced a bunch of issues during the upgrade process stemming from this.  But to add fun to the whole thing, we went from version 3.4.9 to 4.1.19.0.  This means we jumped over 50 updates in one go.  That is just the forum software.  Our stories archive software is a fully rewritten from the ground up to work with the new forum software.  We tested a LOT of versions.  The one that went live on Gay Authors was our 26th update.  The tenth of 'feature complete'.  We've squished a lot of bugs.  Unfortunately, technical bugs are like Hyrda.  You cut one head off only for two more to appear. 

Now, we've gotten a few people tell us how awful we are handling the upgrade and how we shouldn't upgrade without bugs.  This statement shows a lot of naivety when it comes to dealing with software in general and this site in particular.  Microsoft is a company employing 100,000 people, yet turns out bugs daily.  We have 0 employees.  We have a volunteer staff that must make time between full time jobs, family and the general requirements of life in order to run a website.

It frankly pisses me off that people have the audacity to demand anything from me at all.  This site is free.  We don't charge you to read stories. We don't charge you to post stories.  Sure, we have have Premium Content, which offers a number of additional stories and ad-free browsing on the site.  And it is through the generosity of those members that makes the site viable.  It also pays for the server, the government requirements of businesses like licenses and taxes.  And, like the rest of the site, we barter with our premium content authors compensating them for participating in the program.  The ads help pay for things too.  We do not put up donation requests or constantly beg people for money.  That is not the model I decided on when I built Gay Authors.  We started there and it sucked.  Never knowing from month to month if I had to scrape money together to keep the site going.  Screw that. 

So, yes, we have bugs.  But ask yourself this:  What is the critical Mission of Gay Authors?  Providing access to great stories.  The bugs are not preventing this.  Stories can be accessed.  New stories can be added.  The bugs we are experiencing are annoying, certainly, but they don't stop you from reading stories.

So go read some and we'll work on getting everything else going.