Hmm. So *if* I enter keywords that are groups of stories, the Sphinx search finds that group as if the group was in its own 'folder'. So... I could put F:Adult to find my adult-content stories, not just ones with an adult character, or F:HumanFox to find stories with humans roleplaying foxes.

It's a workaround.

- Does this quasi-folder have to come first in the keyword list?
- How do I change *just* the metadata, leaving the story file alone?

     Getting the idea there. I could sum up drastically and just say, tag your stories with an
extra keyword [that IDs a story as part of a specific group].

     Then use Sphinx to do an ultra-targeted query on that keyword/tag. Ping! You're staring
at a page of all the stories in that group, as if you were dealing with a folder.

     That a query can be 'embedded' as a [ url] link is maybe the most useful part of
this. Set 'em up, and a reader or viewer can quickly get at the group of work they
want to read or see. Say..., this looks kinda like a folder, doesn't it? :- )



     As for the text of a query, the keywords operator seems a bit tricky (and undocumented).
Keywords cannot contain reserved characters. As in, characters that aren't allowed in
a regular URL link. I think F:Adult would appear as FAdult. (The : gets stripped).

     Logical, sorta. The list of keywords we enter is destined to become links on the page,
just below the Submission Information. Choose another tag there and you're
in business.



     It also looks like keywords is doing a straight pattern match, not a search per se, when it
peeks into a keyword list. As in, the order of keywords does matter.

     To get a match, something like keywords Gay Wolf Male has to find *exactly* the words
Gay Wolf Male, together and in that sequence, in the keywords list. Wolf Male Gay
would not match. (I think)

     So this folder idea has it's limits. Works fine on a single keyword/tag. To make it combine
a view of multiple groups [in one search] is trickier. Haven't worked that out yet. Think
multiple keyword statements might succeed? But have worked out the idea of
subfolders, done simply by arranging keywords properly.



     Say Erotica is a high-level group (no surprise on FA). In it are Gay, Lesbian, and Hetero
stories, Then there are species-specific stories: Wolf, Fox, Bunny. So that's the specific
order of the keywords to go in each story, ie., Erotica Lesbian Bunny.

     A keywords Erotica will return all stories. A keywords Erotica Gay returns a subgroup
of erotica stories (as in, a subfolder). keywords Erotica Gay Wolf gets you down
to the lowest-level group.



     Upshot: The way we want to organize our stories defines the keyword/tags we'll use.
Breaking it all down into categories gives us a tree structure, and more keywords to
plant. We are configuring our stories so certain specific kinds of search queries
can be run.

     Re. the above, notice how keywords Erotica Wolf matches nothing. Those two keywords
aren't together. A search on the group erotica and the group species is *not* configured.
This would require planting a second set of keywords into everything. Short keywords
may be an asset.

     Lotta work (if you want to go to extremes here). Arguably worth it? Depends. Should
work for some. And correct, no more than a workaround.



     And if I take your question on metadata right, no, none of this affects the story as
such. What we're dealing with is the keywords component of a story submission
(or art submission; all the same).

     When any sub is created, we get room for 250 chars of keywords. In theory other
people can find our work if they happen to search on a keyword we enter. This is
not news.

     But *changing* that keywords list? Who ever does that? Easily done, though,
with the Change Info command. There it is: The keywords box.

     On the one paw, mapping out this structure of groups (and the keywords you want
to use) qualifies as one type of metadata. The contents of the embedded
query links you create: Another.

     The most important: The keywords you plant in the subs themselves. For artists,
I can see this being a lot of work. For writers with a ton of stories, trying to
categorize will be the work. Won't seem like much to show for it, either.
Just a few ordinary looking links on the main page, or wherever.

     But Ping! Oooo, look at all the stories. Just what I wanted to read. :- )


 fwbrown61

So this folder idea has it's limits. Works fine on a single keyword/tag. To make it combine
a view of multiple groups [in one search] is trickier. Haven't worked that out yet. Think
multiple keyword statements might succeed? But have worked out the idea of
subfolders, done simply by arranging keywords properly.

Multiple keywords works perfectly. As do operators!

url=/search/@lower^fwbrown61$ & (@keywords fwb61sf | keywords fwb61nvl)
This will give all SF and all Novels/Novellas combined together.

This also works in the event that there are groups that overlap. If there are 10 stories, and seven of them are tagged as SF, and seven are tagged as NVL (Two are Sci Fi Novels. :P) then the above query will return one copy of each, of all ten.

Let's say that WriterDude has a "Subfolder" that exists in more than one place. Like you have "Novels" and also "Short Stories", and both can contain "Dooker Enterprises" stories. You only want ferrety stories that are short stories right now, not novels.
/search/@lower^WriterDude$ & keywords SS & keywords Dooker

That will work as long as you don't tag things as both a SS and a Novel. Only Dooker Short Stories, no matter whether you have them tagged with "dooker ss" or "ss dooker"

You can technically have Navigation Submissions if you feel like it as well. The downside is that doing navigation submissions bouncing to searches then to Nav submissions from the searches makes an extra set of clicking to nav. But Nav submissions can bounce to other Nav submissions instead.

     Got delayed a bit, but time to reply to this. (And nice to see that this idea is starting to make
ears go poing.)


     Yes! Bang on. Using OR with a group of keywords does something real folders can't: Displays
the contents of a number of these 'neo-folders' all at once. Spell aggregation for me.

     Put Sphinx's logical operators to work here (AND, OR, NOT) and you can cherry-pick subs out your
gallery. You can put tags into your subs to make it look like one arrangement of folders
exists.

     But write a more complex search query and Ping! Now it looks like something Completely
Different. And you didn't have to change a thing. With a real folder system, oh groan, wotta a
ton of work shuffling things around.

     (You hint at the idea of tags that indicate length of story. *That* would be hellish
useful, and far beyond just anybody's individual gallery.)



     Did I say neo-folders back there? Yup. Think it's time to stop calling this a way to 'do folders'
on FA, since that's not what's really going on. But if people keep *thinking* folders, meaning
a way to store stuff in an organized structure of 'locations,' then it's confusion and
faulty thinking alla over the room, walls, ceiling, the dog...

     Neo-folders: Strange word, but could work. The method here is just a simple but powerful
retrieval technique, using search query links. The point is to make life easier for furs who
want to read or view your stuff. Or you, who'd like to manage it all.

     FA's servers are not being bugged to create 'space' for us, then to possibly collapse under
the workload (Somebody please tell me Yak appreciates this.)

     Or to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit (rowr), they're not folders, they're just drawn that way. :- )



     AND: You also hint at the keys to the kingdom vis-a-vis subfolders. That I hadn't worked out
much past the fuzzy stage. We visualize subfolders in a tree-like way, in a hierarchy:

     Yiffy Tales
        |
        |-- Male
        |-- Female
        |-- Who Cares?
        |-- Utterly Bat-shit Fetishy
                |
                |-- Commishes from Fwbrown61 :- >

     Non-Yiffy Tales
        |
        |-- Male
        |-- Female



     This is logically what we wanna build. But this is not what the users will eventually see. 'Cause
can't exist on FA. All the users will see is a batch of search query links that allows them
to get at the stories, as if they navigated this tree to arrive in a given subfolder
the way God intended folders to work. Could look like this:

     Query link - Yiffy Tales
          Query link - Yiffy::Male
          Query link - Yiffy::Female
          Query link - Yiffy::Who Cares?
          Query link - Yiffy::Fetishy
               Query link - Yiffy::Fetishy::Fwbrown61 Commishes (Aieegh! My eyes!)

     Query link - Non-Yiffy Tales
          Query link - Non-Yiffy::Male
          Query link - Non-Yiffy::Female



     We can give the impression of hierarchy, if we want to. And laid out like this, we can instantly see
the tags that need to be installed to do it. The idea is to set up keyword phrases that Sphinx
can search for instead of just individual words.

     All stories get the tag Yiffy, or better, Yiffy-Tales. (or Non-Yiffy-Tales)

     Stories to be marked as Male get two keywords, placed together: Yiffy-Tales Male.

     Yiffy female stories get, you guessed it, Yiffy-Tales Female. Keep going with Yiffy-Tales Who-Cares,
and Yiffy-Tales Fetishy.

     Last is a three-word phrase: Yiffy-Tales Fetishy Fwbrown61-commish. These stories have three attributes
that Sphinx has to be able to see.

     Repeat same with Non-Yiffy-Tales. Notice that hyphens are helpful. Keeps Sphinx from thinking
it's got a buncha keywords in paw when what we intend is just a single term.



     All done but the shouting. The search query links simply tell Sphinx to pick out a phrase, one that'll
be present in only certain specific stories. As in:


     /search/@lower^WriterDude$ & keywords "Yiffy-Tales Female"


     (@keywords Yiffy-Tales & keywords Female) is as splendid. Searching on the phrase is a bit
more precise. Experiment, go crazy. Or more so. :- ) )



     What I have *not* done much of so far is think about easy ways to use this technique. Mea culpa;
been busy. Which is what other furs are gonna need if they want the benefit. I've written a small
but spicy technical paper here.

     Need to do up a Users Manual. Working title: Power, Magic, and Universe-Quaking Spellcrafting
With Sphinx, FA's Fiendish but Friendly Search Engine. (Well, a title should be honest. :- ) )

     Just drawing out what you want the 'neo-folder' structure to be. Then plucking your tag structure
off the page. Tha's a pretty easy idea, all right. Since realized this while thinking about your
comment, gotta be a joint patent. A pawprint will do for signature.



     Must say, I'm starting to get curious to see what folks are doing with this idea.*

 fwbrown61



( * If everyone in Admin turns into a newt, we'll know somebody's
figured out the magic part. :- > )

I vote that we take something akin to the old Chia Pet commercials (Cha-cha-cha-chia!) and call them FA-Fa-fa-FAlders! Wait... No... perhaps not. Falder? Hmm.

Anyway... The downside to the ordered falder/subfalder tags is a combination of the order as well as recursive visibility.

An item tagged as "yiffy-tales female" will show up under both "@keyword yiffy-tales" and "@keyword yiffy-tales female". The issue comes for tag planning, since one might have "stories female yiffy-tales" in the keywords, and that would break it showing up in "@keyword yiffy-tales female" but would still work in "@keyword yiffy-tales keyword female".

Preventing recursive visibility can be handled by excluding subfalder tags. Then something that is a "file" in the "yiffy-tales" folder will show up in it while things in the "yiffy-tales / female" falder will not. But that requires explicit exclusion of all subfalder tags in the falder-content-generating search query.

In theory, the main issue lies in the fact that links to falders must be in a submission, but the falders as generated by search results cannot link to other falders. At best, if there is some way to game the relevance order, subfalder submissions could be the first listed in a falder result, but then people would still need to click from there to a subfalder result.

The real downside though is that the falders don't carry many important true-folder functions, such as the ability to newer/older through only a specific folder.
Ahh well.

Ascending date comic falders and other such fun things for the win.

     Falders. I'll credit the potential there. It can be read as 'FA folders,' as you note, which right outta
the box tells people they're a little on the weird side. Fits in perfectly around here. :- )

     That said, your second [correct] downside point is worth exploiting. This is a search technique that's
being turned towards one of the things real folders can offer: ease of retrieval. Beyond that,
essentially nada.

     Use this technique and your gallery will end up a little better organized, but it won't really be *visibly*
organized. That'll only show when somebody clicks a search link.

     So I'm starting to like S-folders. S for search. Which is a reminder about what the heck is going on here.
And more important, what *isn't* going on. The right name should do this, should give
an easy tip about the nature of these 'not-really-folders.'



     But on to other things. Agreed: Mapping out a tree structure (like real folders), gives you the double, triple,
or quadruple word groups to install into the right subs. Depending on how nested you want go.

     (One limit to this method, BTW, is how much free space you have left in the keyword box.)

     Ergo a search on the root keyword (ie., Yiffy-Tales) will indeed find every sub, regardless of where it
is in the 'tree-that-ain't-visible.' Is this a useful idea? Might be for somebody, to set up
a query to display *all* of their work under a root category.



     But that's the only query that would do it, on just a single keyword. All other queries are set to
search on a double, triple, or quadruple word phrases. And Sphinx will only return subs with
that specific phrase of keywords.

     Ie., keywords "WordA WordB WordC" will find a sub that contains WordA WordB WordC in *exactly*
that order. Other subs may contain WordA. They won't be found, even though that's obviously
one of the keywords Sphinx is looking for.



     Upshot #1 of 2: Oh yah, tag planning, and setting up the *order* of the tags, is the key here. If that's
done right, the search queries all but write themselves, and they'll work. If not-right, I can
see people having snarling trouble debugging things. (And in a way, this is a sort
of programming task.)

     Upshot #2 of 2: Because these *aren't* folders, we can't think the root Yiffy-Tales as being a
'space' in which to store subs. All subs have to find a home in a terminal falder/s-folder that's out
at a branch in the tree. Or trying to do a retrieve will catch other subs we don't want to see.

     This is gonna take some 'splaining. Lucy. And I didn't see this before. Hmmm. Must think
about it.



     As for falders/S-folders being limited to submissions, not so at all. These are done within a
[ url][ /url] tag, which creates a regular link, and you can put links *anywhere* on FA.
Subs, comments, journals, even in shouts.

     But more important, you can put them on the MAIN PAGE. Set the links up in an orderly
way, someone visits your main page, they like the pretty layout, and Click!

     Now they're looking at your work. Where they might have not done so. (Funny how everybody
visits Yiffy-Tales Orgy Female first. :- ) )



     I think this is the real power of this method. If you want people to read your work (or view your
art), you have to *present* it to them properly, and make it easily accessible.

     FA's gallery system only goes so far. But a neat arrangement of falder/S-folder links right
there on your main page? Improvement, I call it. (And there are more'n a few writers
around here who could use it).



     Shall close here. The idea of 'subfolder submissions,' I get it, and think there might be some
potential, but gotta do more thunking in the AM. Getting too near beddie-byes. **

 fwbrown61


( ** Lest I fall asleep at the keyboard, Did that once, head
straight through laptop screen, ouch. That was a good
laptop too. :- ) )

i dont read it but i can imagine you can just place tags, and then a link to the main page going to an search inquire (or watever its named) with the exact tag soo the selection can be the "foolder" itself, if you enter the gallery by the gallery link, you will see the random submision things.

     Pardon reply delay; this summer's been rough.

     And you've got the idea in the proverbial nutshell. Plant tags/codes into the keywords
section of your subs. Then write a small batch of search query links, each one set to search
for a specific tag/code (or combination),

     Put those links on your main page, and <Click!>: You can do a search into your own
galleries, What comes up: The subs that contain a specific tag/code.

     Folders--if we had 'em--would do more than this, but using these search query links
gives us the essential thing: The ability to view a pre-determined selection of subs on
demand. And without needing to walk through the whole darn gallery trying to find
'em. Sphinx, FA's search engine, knows where they are (thanks to the tags/codes)
and hands them to you on a platter, no waiting.



     Maybe a useful notion there: That what you're doing is a creating a view into your gallery,
or several of them. As in, decide first what kinds of subs you've got [that you want to look
at]. Then decide what the tags/codes should be to identify 'em. Then go in and type
'em in..

     A real folder system would let you create subfolders in which you'd store certain subs
of the same type. Meaning the fact that some subs are in a subfolder identifies what
they are. Tags/codes in the keywords box does this identifying directly, with a bit
of text. Happens to be text that Sphinx can read; we can use this.



     As for how to actually do the search query links, for that I'm afraid you're gonna
have to read the article. :- ) On the other paw, this isn't anywheres close to rocket
science, which does make me wonder. Can't, simply *can't* be the first fur to
figure this out.


 fwbrown61