Is your BF a PHP hacker? I had to modify a few files in Wordpress to make it do what I wanted it to do. WordPress internally uses PHP's mktime() function to handle dates, which limits you to dates back to 1970 -- even though the MySQL database stores the dates in a format that would support dates back to ancient times. So I think I just hacked wp-includes/functions.php and changed the mysql2date() function to format dates without going through mktime(). I think I may also have had to modify the code that generates the calendar.

But this was with the older version of WordPress. I haven't upgraded to the new one yet, and in fact I was kind of holding off because I am working on writing my own software to display the story. But if you're interested in using old dates too (which you should, because sometimes I get confused in your story ) and you're using the new version of WordPress (which looks like 2.5.1) let me know and I'll go ahead and upgrade Lothere for the time being. And I can send you the modified files afterwards.

It's not a big deal for me, in the grand scheme of everything else I do. And for security reasons I probably should have upgraded long ago. So don't fret about asking me to do the work.

Edit to add unless the latest version has changed a lot, you have to do more than modify the calendar code. The blog-editing interface will overwrite your dates with Jan. 1, 1970 every time you save a post unless you modify the date-fetching function deep down.

Good luck.

I like WordPress an awful lot as blog software. Really, I have no complaints in that regard. But as a story-writing program, it is lacking a few things. That's why I am writing my own. The two features I want the most are (1) a system to store the list of characters who appear in each chapter so I can easily put a list of all chapters a character featured in on their bio page. Or so that you can search for all chapters including both Egelric and Alred, or whatever. And (2) some user-level features so that you could log into the story site and have some extra features. Like a way to bookmark your favorite chapters, or maybe rate chapters.

Or perhaps it would be useful for someone who is still reading through to be able to bookmark their most recently read chapter, so that when they come back they will go directly to the next one, rather than coming to the front page (with all the yummy spoilers) and having to find their leaving-off place again. Honestly I have no idea how people do that... make browser-level bookmarks and just replace them every time they do a chunk of reading? Write down the chapter number?

And better search! God damn! Try a search for Aia and you get zip! Poor Devin!

Once I have my own version up I am free to do pretty much whatever I want, though. Maybe I will think of other things, or they will be suggested to me by my doughty readers. I am using the site as a way to learn a bunch of new technologies, so I win on both sides.

When I first started reading, I wrote down the month & year. When I started re-reading, I just used my browser history, but that only stores for 30 days, so when I had to take a break here at work, that info was lost. So I have no idea where I left off the second time.

Is there anyway for a person to do this who is completely inexperienced with hacking anything?

I'm trying to start up my own Kingdom story...it's gonna take forever to get started since the actual simming takes so long.

Ooo I think I may have had the most complicated method of all for reading the back chapters. My issue at the time was that I couldn't be online at the same time as my boyfriend (our network was under a strict proxy and we were not allowed to set up a WAN). So until we ultimately figured out away around that, I had to open dozens of chapter windows, disconnect myself from the internet and hand it over to the bf. I would remember where I left off because I would read entire years at a time. I do not recommend.

Karen, do you have a blog at wordpress.com, or do you have the WordPress software installed on your own server? In the latter case I can just give you a copy of the files I changed and you can put them on your server. If you're on Wordpress.com, then you're stuck, you can't modify their source code.

Edit: Now that I think about it, in the very beginning, when I still had my blog hosted at another site, I was just putting the dates at the top of each chapter. It meant that you couldn't search using the calendar, but at least you could read when the events took place. In my place (unlike Verity's), that had some meaning outside of giving a sense of the passage of time, since my story takes place in real history.

Also, Penelope, I think everyone who has read the entire story deserves some sort of award, but you deserve a special medal for reading in spite of those constraints.