BLOT
OK, I’m not gonna make you stare into the light any longer if you don’t want to, because today, we launch Dark Mode.
Like the look of it? You can activate it in ten seconds by heading over to your Settings page and toggling it on under the UI Customization header!
Next, I’m continuing to work on converting over the Planner feature from the spreadsheets — should be launching soon!
You all liked chapter tags so much, I thought: why not give projects tags too? This will allow you to organise and filter your projects however you want — be that by series, standalones, genre, completion status… whatever you like.
It should be self-explanatory, but you can find the new Project Tags functionality at the top of the My Projects page. Here’s mine!
I’ve also added a ‘Hide Completed’ checkbox for easy filtering. Want your selection to remain permanent? Head to your Settings page and set a default!
Finally, I’ve made some slight aesthetic improvements to the page, to make it a tad less crammed. These aren’t actually in the screenshot above because it only occured to me to make them after I’d started writing this post… But you can check those out for yourself.
For me, there’s nothing quite like gamification for getting me motivated. With that in mind, I’ve added fun new BADGES to the site, which will unlock when you fulfil certain conditions. You’ll see a couple in the image below, but there are more…
Whenever you unlock a badge, you’ll be notified by a red highlight icon in your profile menu (the same as when you get a league invite or friend request!).
But you’ll also be able to see all the badges you’ve collected on your profile, and you’ll be able to see what other users have collected on their profiles too!
Don’t want these made public? All good — just change your settings on (you guessed it) the Settings page.
I’ve finally cracked it; automatic plot structures are now transitioned from the spreadsheets over to Blot! I’ve launched four different plot structures for now:
…but more will be coming soon!
Again, here’s an example of what that looks like (and no, I haven’t written much more, I’ve been building this!):
I’m a 4-act structure purist, so that’s what I’m working with, but all four options should work in the same way.
Remember, these automatic plot structures are guides only — if you have, for example, your Dark Night of the Soul a littler earlier or later (and your story demands it!) then that’s of course absolutely fine.
You’ll also find information about the plot structure as a whole when you click the ‘Structure Info’ button, and clicking on each plot element in the table will also display some information.
That’s the main change for today, but I’ve also:
A quick to explain (but very long to implement) change today: I’ve added a ‘Reset Password’ workflow to the login page.
I’ve continued my work on the back-end for the Project page, and I’m thrilled to say I’ve cut the load time by 70%. Trust me, it was hard work.
Page speed is hardly a glamorous change, but TAGS is. I’ve implemented a new feature suggested in the Discord server by AnAngryWeasel — you can now assign colourful tags to each of your chapters in a particular project.
Here’s an example from my latest project (yep, I know, I haven’t got very far yet):
If you click on the tag on the left-hand side, it’ll also highlight all relevant chapters. See? Glamorous.
Made calculations of Project page more efficient, to improve load time. More work to be done here!