I don't know if it's a premium feature or not, but ...
You know how it tells us how many stories we've accessed today? If you click that, at least on my screen, it shows 'Historical Access.' There's 17 YEARS worth of stories that I've read (or at least clicked on) on there.
If you've lost something, check your own access page out and see if you can find it there.
That's Premium only. For non-Premium members it's only 24 hour - sort of. It totally resets 24 hours after you accessed the first story on the list. I've been reading a story, clicked off to go make a sandwich, come back 15 minutes later and had it reset while I'm gone and show no stories in the last 24 hours even though I'd been reading one 15 minutes ago. It would be nice if that 24 hour reset could be made into a rolling reset.
IIRC, there's a blurb about it in the Premium description section… and I seem to recall that it was also limited… something like the last 500 stories you read… Sparky's idea of the rolling 24 hour reset is a good one… I'd take it a step further as say that the story 24 hour clock be reset with each access to the story chapters or description page.
It just bit me again. I just was reading a story 90 minutes ago. Came back to SOL just now and it showed 3/100 stories but when I clicked on it I got "No Stories in Recent List".
Ouch. Sounds like your going to need to bookmark them, leave the tab open where you'll run into the no more that 1 story every x seconds aka concurrent access, or spring for a premium account.
My machine says:
You logged in at: 7/8/2021, 11:49:45 AM
Your counter gets reset and this list flushed after: 7/9/2021, 11:49:45 AM
(I rebooted the machine around then yesterday)
If you look at My Account and then Account Information you will see when SOL thinks you last logged on, that is presumably the time of day your recently-accessed list goes down the toilet.
My Library -> Recent Stories
Unless that is also a premier feature now, I remember using it before becoming premier. It is a hard listing of the last 100 stories that you have fully accessed (visiting the info page doesn't count) sorted by last time of access (instead of alphabetical like clicking on the x/300 counter)
That's Premium only. For non-Premium members it's only 24 hour - sort of.
I'm not talking about the 24 hour story counter. For Premium, that still happens, with a 24 hour reset. So I read 5 stories, out of the 300 I can read, and that counter resets every day.
Right now my counter says StarFleetCarl (0/300)
I click on that, it goes to a screen that says No Stories in Recent List.
Then under that is a button that says 'History'. I click on THAT, it shows Page 1 of 17 pages. Cycle through, it goes back to 1650 stories, January 29, of 2007, when I first read 'Retreads', by Rotedrachen.
I can ALSO get to that history page by going to the My Account page. In the second group down, where it says, Total Downloads - to the right of that is a bar that says, 'Account History'. I click that, it goes to that same History page.
Just checked… History button and account history as described are Premium only… or at least they don't show up on my non premium account. List of daily stories read does however.
History button and account history as described are Premium only
Okay, well, that's why I said at the beginning I didn't know if it was a premium feature only or not. It's a good reason to go premium.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that and it will really help when I decide to reread a story that I have read.
SFC,
Thanks for showing us how to get to historical access. Going by my access history - 16 pages with up to 100 per page, dated back to 2013, maybe 2012 (dates start in late 2013 but with a couple of undated pages before that - I think they may only be tracking premium members. I had a number of non-premium years before I bit the premium bullet and I'm not seeing my favorites from my early years listed .. except very long running serials like Jeff and Arlene.
Is Arlene and Jeff a serial or a perpetual institution?
15 years, over 20Mb, and almost 800 chapters.
Is Arlene and Jeff a serial or a perpetual institution?
15 years, over 20Mb, and almost 800 chapters.
I consider it a 'perpetual institution', I don't expect it to ever end. It's the only serial I follow while it's posted. With others I wait for the end before starting to read.
I consider it a 'perpetual institution', I don't expect it to ever end. It's the only serial I follow while it's posted. With others I wait for the end before starting to read.
I gave up at about the time they started investigating the mystery in the Ice cave. Does it get better again? That was a long slog.
I don't know if it's a premium feature or not, but ...
It is.
It uses the data from the green/grey dots for read/unread. It only starts keeping track from the time one become premier member. So don't expect to find a long history if you subscribe today.
and if you allow your premier membership to lapse, but then renew within a certain time-period (3 months?), you still have the data and the other settings from before it lapsed.
Do story accesses during that six months get recorded, or is it only those made during premier membership?
As an idea for driving premier membership, how about recording say a fortnight's worth (rolling) of basic members accesses, and have that button on the basic daily accesses page pointing to a note about this being a premier option giving option to upgrade? - or, could that loose too many premier members who only keep the premier membership for this record?
ETA: How is the case of a story read and recorded, but then deleted from the site before viewing the listing dealt with?
Do story accesses during that six months get recorded, or is it only those made during premier membership?
Nothing gets recorded if the reader is not premier level.
or, could that loose too many premier members who only keep the premier membership for this record?
I don't think anybody cares that their read/unread story status is maintained if they don't care to keep a membership going.
ETA: How is the case of a story read and recorded, but then deleted from the site before viewing the listing dealt with?
When a story gets deleted, the database automatically deletes all records related to the story, from read/unread statuses, to votes, to download, bookmarks etc...
So it disappears from every user's history too.
While you all are on the subject of the HISTORY file, is there any way to add a find or sort function to that thing? Now, when I want to check back on a story, I have only a page forward or back arrow to use. With a history file the size of mine it is almost impossible to fully use. Am I unaware of a function that makes the History file more accessible? Pretty please.
is there any way to add a find or sort function to that thing?
The history is your 'Read' stories. So in the categories search and the advance search pages, if you select to filter by 'Read Only', you'll be searching your history and you can sort it by whatever criteria you wish.
Lazeez, thank you for a very well run site. Yes, there are a few things I wish were done differently and there are occasional outages, sometimes due to attacks, but overall it is head and shoulders above similar sites and the attention to detail and your knowledge of that detail make this my favorite site to read stories.
I don't think anybody cares that their read/unread story status is maintained if they don't care to keep a membership going.
I am a disabled veteran on a very tight budget. My landlord raised my rent again when I was scheduled to renew. I had to pare away my $20 a month for print books too. It took about 90 days to find a way to afford SOL Premium.
Premium is a worthwhile investment, at least for me. However, no matter "How much I care" ... "The gods of the Copybook Headings cannot be denied!"
I agree with Sparky 953 even though I dis-agree with Laz's scoring methods. My real concern is 'who takes over' when Laz reaches 99 and retires? One or more maybe fill-ins now are not very good, IMHO. Having a little knowledge and previously had some web sites I know it is much work and feel SOL has been doing a great job.(Except for scoring- been saying that for 10 years)
Maybe it's the Big Bucks Lax gets from SOL, maybe not.(Joke)
Just to be clear, that (long term list) is a PAID Premium thing. Cheap people, such as me, only get one days worth.
48 pages, but the dates run out at 2006 and part way through the 42nd page. My first story with a date is Mack the Knife's Murder Isle, which was never finished, on 9/9/2006.
The interesting ones for me are stories that don't have dates, but that weren't published until later than 2006. I see some of them in their proper time slots, as well, so I think there's something strange with the data.
Quick question Carl - is 17 years an estimate? My list is 38 pages and some 3800 entries, but I can't see that any of them are dated. I might be missing something.
And out of interest, what's the "oldest" entry on your list?
My list is 38 pages and some 3800 entries, but I can't see that any of them are dated. I might be missing something.
The 'History' feature's own history is complicated.
Two features were combined to create the history page. The 'Recent Stories' from the library, and the green dots feature.
The 'Recent Stories' feature in the library was implemented in 2006, but it was off by default as it was basically user reading tracker and premier members needed to opt in.
However, due to how many requests of the 'how can I go back to what I read' type from premier members, I created the green dots/flags.
Initially, the green dots were a simple read/unread bit of data with no date. Later, I changed it to mark when the last read happened.
Later, I copied the access date from the 'Recent Stories' feature to the green dots.
However, if a story's green/grey dot had no date, and was never tracked using the opt-in 'Recent Stories' feature, then it remains with no date in the History list.
So the end of your history list (page 38) does not have any dates because they were never recorded, but if you go to later pages, like 37 or 36, the 'date' column will be populated and the earliest ones cannot be before 2006.
Now I'm thinking of complicating the history further by copying the stories' creation date or conclusion date into the green dots that have no dates.
Just had a quick look and it's about halfway down page 31 that the dates disappear - around story 3085. The earliest date is 2001. Has it really been that long? Wow.
Goes to show though, I've used the history list before, but I never noticed the date column. I guess some things you just take for granted.
So, just to add my thanks to that of others here for al the time & effort put into this site and all its features.
Okay, now that's odd. I clicked over to page 32 and all the stories had dates and much more recent than 2001. Now even page 38 had dates and the earliest is 2004.
I think I need to clear my browser cache.
The earliest date is 2001. Has it really been that long?
No.
You must have hit the History page as I was updating the green/grey dots records.
1 - I updated the dots with no date with the serials' update dates
2 - I updated the dots with no date with the stories' creation dates
3 - I updated the dots with a date smaller than the account's creation date with the account's creation date.
So now those 2001 dates should be somewhere in 2004 for you.
That makes sense - and explains why it all changed in the space of a few page clicks.
Mine goes back to 2011 though I know I was reading stories 20+ years ago before I started working overseas.
Thanks Lazeez for 20+ years of entertainment!
2007 is my start, though I joined in October 2002- so it took me five years to write my way to Premier status...LOL
Currently I am on 401 stories accessed, though a good few of them are my own which I have accessed to check formatting and to download when I have lost my master files- doh!
