FurRag
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| FurRag | |
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| Author(s) | Owners: Alex Vance
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| Website | |
| Launch date | 2005 - Present |
| End Date | Ongoing |
| Genre | Story archive |
FurRag is a furry fiction archive which caters to all types and genres of furry literature. It offers advanced text formatting, multi-chapter story creation, automated word count, and extensive fields for story summaries and authors' notes per story and per chapter. The site is laid out for reading comfort, providing clear, compact controls while maintaining the focus on ease of reading.
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[edit] History
FurRag was started in 2005 with the goal of being the definitive furry fiction archive, and was dedicated to catering to all tastes and all genres of furry fiction. Rapidly developed and deployed in Beta form in time for the 2005 National Novel Writing Month, development stalled after the coder who'd assisted FurRag's founder, Alex Vance, had to leave the project.
While several attempts were made to develop the archive further, with various people assisting, none bore any conclusive results. Toumal, founder of the Yiffstar archive of primarily erotic furry fiction, offered the use of his site's codebase several times, and Alex passed on several of the features he'd originally planned to implement, some of which have since appeared in Yiffstar (such as the availability of an oekaki-board connected to each story, easier chapter navigation, and a more extensive favorites system).
[edit] FurRag and SoFurry
During the development of SoFurry, plans had been made to merge FurRag's user base into the new site. FurRag would have then been slowly shut down. This caused considerable negative reaction from the users though, as SoFurry was perceived to be a heavily reader-driven site, while FurRag is a heavily writer-driven community. After some deliberation between Alex Vance and most of the regular users, it was agreed that, for the foreseeable future, FurRag would be kept alive, fully functional and completely separate from SoFurry.
[edit] Features
In April 2007, after several months of working on the project solo, Alex announced that FurRag was now out of Beta. Thoroughly redesigned, the site featured a sleeker interface and expanded functionality. Users can choose to receive e-mail notifications when an update has been made to a story, collection or by an author they've marked as 'favorite' and FurRag now features an integrated review system rather than having an automated bridge to the site's forum, as implemented in the Beta version (the code for this bridge had been provided by Toumal).
[edit] Community and 'collections'
With the new site, Alex hopes to improve the community aspect of furry fiction. A particularly significant piece of functionality to achieve this goal is that of the collection. A collection is a set created by a user which can contain any story available on the site, and stories can be part of an unlimited number of collections.
Anyone who finds a collection they're interested in can mark it as a 'favorite' and receive notification whenever a new story is added to it.
Collections can also be made 'open', in which case any reader can add stories to the collection, or 'moderated' which offers the same freedom, but which requires the collection's creator to approve a story's addition to the collection.
The notion is that readers with a particular set of interests will start groups for those interests, and add any story they encounter that's relevant, to those collections. In this way, FurRag avoids requiring moderation, and doesn't need to offer a 'recommended reading' list.
By making the creation of collections available to all users, FurRag encourages the formation of user communities with shared interests and offers them the tools to rapidly and easily share and discover stories they might be interested in.
[edit] Site mascots
When the site was first created, Alex Vance commissioned seasoned artist Kamui to design four characters, who would emblemize the four user types originally devised in FurRag's functionality scheme. With the April 2007 update, the number was reduced to three.
- Jack Rad is a fox with an active lifestyle, an optimistic attitude and enjoys coming home and enjoying a nice relaxing read. He represents the 'reader'.
- Nick Brilliant is a dedicated, sedentary lupine writer who prefers to be left alone with his ornate typewriter and bristles at interruptions. Jack's enthusiasm for his work is an annoyance to him, though it's often Jack who looks after him when his dedication starts to affect his health. Nick represents the writer community on FurRag.
- Dick McCritic is a tough-skinned raccoon with a critical eye and rather high standards. Representing the 'editor' on FurRag, he also signifies the firm but diplomatic way an editor should deal with the frequently negative response to their constructive criticism. Dick is therefore calm, clear and patient.