So I've tried to search Google using this site for any info on if he is ever going to write again but didn't find anything, so I thought I'd ask here. Does anyone know if he's given up writing or taking a long hiatus? I would pay good money for his stories.
Thanks in advance and sorry if I missed a obvious post already about this
Based on his January 2016 blog entry, it sounds like he's just got busy with the real world. According to that, he had a new job and was also trying for baby #2 with his wife. So, he's not an old guy like many of the authors here, and is probably still among the living. Barring tragic accident or unexpected health crisis, he's just busy raising kids and making money. Maybe someday he'll get the itch to write again.
So I've tried to search Google using this site
Remember that google can only "see" what is available without logging in. The sites own search facilities should give you way better results.
Remember that google can only "see" what is available without logging in.
When Laz said that a few days ago, he was referring to what the Wayback Machine could access. Google (and similar engines) actually has access to the stories.
To prove this to myself I entered the following string into a query (without the quotes):
"site:https://storiesonline.net/ otterley"
I was expecting some stories from The Wanderer / Denham Forrest and that is some of what I got, having forgotten that "Crisis at Ishtar" also contained the name.
Google can access no more or no less than the Wayback machine. What you found is probably what is available through the "preview site" link without a login. It would be a very bad thing if google or any other web crawler could access data behind a login.
The search found the word "Otterley" in chapter 40 of Allan Joyal's Crisis at Ishtar. If you believe that is in the "preview site" link without a login, who am I to try and convince you otherwise?
I checked my downloaded copy of that story and the word occurred twice in that story, both in that chapter. Search engines routinely suppress duplicate "find" results.
(btw, do a search on "robots.txt")
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en and https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag give some indications as to how things work. Just assume that search engines are not constrained by normal rules, but accept rules which were specifically created for them.
The wayback machine works differently and it *is* constrained by those "normal" rules. I imagine they could ignore them as well but lawsuits would follow and they have no reason to be that stupid.
This has drifted way off-topic.
but accept rules which were specifically created for them.
That is the only exception and maybe those are implemented on SOL. I sometimes use meta tags to do the opposite: specifically block search engines.
By-the-way: you can't compare the Wayback machine and a search engine, they are not the same. Wayback machine downloads as much of a website as it can to preserve it, search engines only index the (contents of) pages.
My comparison of the Wayback Machine (whose rules you seemed to think applied to search engines) and search engines was to say that they were different and followed different rules.
(btw, do a search on "robots.txt")
From Google's robots.txt site:
If you want to block your page from search results, use another method such as password protection
Isn't requiring a login password password protection?
Isn't requiring a login password password protection?
Requiring a login is a sure way to block search engines but you would block every human visitor too. Robot.txt is almost useless. It's only a suggestion to search engines. Hundreds of other crawlers ("bad bots") ignore it. Google's ad-bots ignore it too.
Setting a meta tag in every web page works a bit better (or setting the meta tag once in the web servers' .htaccess file).
Requiring a login is a sure way to block search engines but you would block every human visitor too.
Except those who log in with a password.
When I log into my bank's website, I have access to my data on their databases. Logging in gives me access. No search engine can see that data. I'm trying to understand the difference between my bank's databases and SOL's.
When I log into my bank's website, I have access to my data on their databases. Logging in gives me access. No search engine can see that data. I'm trying to understand the difference between my bank's databases and SOL's.
It's not about databases, it's about web pages.
In laymen terms:
A web crawler is an automated 'bot' to 'crawl' the web to retrieve web pages. A web server makes web pages available to the internet. Code on a server can retrieve data from a database and generate a web page to display that data. Web crawlers can 'read' those web pages, not the database that was used to get the data. If the web site or the web server that makes the web pages available requires a login than a web crawler would also need a login to 'read' those pages, just like you need to login to your bank's site to view your personal pages. This means that a web crawler has no access to databases and thus has no access to the SOL database, only the web pages that it is allowed to 'see'.
Disclaimer: Heavily simplified for non-IT people.
Disclaimer: Heavily simplified
Just the way I like it. I went to a cardiologist the other day and he explained the problem with my heart in technical terms and I finally had to say, "I don't understand what you're saying."
Logging in to my bank gives me access to my data on their database. That data is brought into my browser window for me to view. I'm sure you're not saying when it's in there, a web crawler can see it.
So that should be the same with SOL. If you can only see the preview page without logging in, how could Google get results from what it doesn't have access to?
If you can only see the preview page without logging in, how could Google get results from what it doesn't have access to?
Setup a free login to SOL?
I went to a cardiologist the other day and he explained the problem with my heart in technical terms and I finally had to say, "I don't understand what you're saying."
At least he told you something. Two years ago when I was in the hospital they discovered I was diabetic, but never told me. Last month while I was having the initial appointment for cancer their lab found my glucose was over 600 so I was told to go to the ER. Confirmed the diabetes but still high. Monday went in for a biopsy on the right lung. During the procedure I gained a collapsed lung. Good times seems to be rolling along.
Two years ago when I was in the hospital they discovered I was diabetic, but never told me.
There's NO justifable excuse for that, and they ARE legally liable for NOT informing you, but chances are, since they ONLY noticed it afterwards, the responsibility falls on multiple parties, only a few of which actually have the legal authority to either access or forward the information.
With ANY text performed in-office, you either need to demand an immediate answers, or when they send it to be processed by a medical lab, you need to explicitly sign 'Medical Release' forms to ALLOW the doctor to forward the results to YOU. Since I work with a variety of physicians regularly, I routinely assign each access to the variety of my medial reports, so they're ALL working from the same up-to-date data, rather than guessing where my health stands at any moment in time.
You can NEVER rely on anyone else to 'watch over' your health. Your health is SOLELY your responsibility, and you don't keep on top of it, you'll never get better.
Finally, you can't trust doctors, because their main responsibility isn't in making you healthy, but in SHUTTING YOU up. As long as you state that you have an ongoing issue, they'll keep issuing one pill after another, or increasing doses, until you LEAVE THEM ALONE.
I've had to say "Enough" with various doctors, stating "I'll work WITH you, but I WON'T continue taking the current dosage because it's NOT helping!" You've got to be willing to intervene in your OWN case, otherwise they'll overdose you as a matter of course. :(
So that should be the same with SOL. If you can only see the preview page without logging in, how could Google get results from what it doesn't have access to?
SOL does, the key, is that the webcrawlers can access the 'freely accessible' webpages, but not your private account (i.e. no one can access Author's data, only their posted stories and public comments).
Even with login sites, there's a clear distinction between "public" and "private" pages/data, and it is not controlled by 'secret' bot logins.