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What is the History button for?
The history button takes you to a story's entry for the manuscript tracker. The print world isn't as fast as the digital one and sometimes it can take months if not years for a story to actually make it onto the pages of a journal or magazine, so history allows you to keep track of where your work is at. To use the manuscript tracker, make sure to upload your story as hidden (editors won't take stories that have been released online). You personally will still be able to see it on the site but it will come with a red wrapper to remind you that only you can see it. From there, click the History button and add to the story any info you might want to store about its publishing adventure, from where it has been sent to how much it costs in postage.
What are Headliners?
These are the top rated stories on a month-by-month basis, depending on what people put in their quality meter. Only public stories will appear here, not hidden or writing circle stories.
Just because the month has changed does not mean older stories will disappear from the list. However, a story which has been posted in October will appear above and push down the list any story posted in September no matter how good it has been rated. So. Hint! Hint! If you care about your work making headlines, post it on the very first day of a new month.
What are Library Searches and how do they work?
Since there are so many ways in which the library can be filtered, we thought it would be a good idea to allow people to save their search settings. This is done by typing a name for the search in the box at the bottom of the page (where it says Save This Search). Clicking the Browse button will then record the search and have it appear in the Navigation Window under Searches. Later on, if you want to run this search again, just click its link.
Notice that after clicking the browse button, the name of your search will be returned to the Save This Search box. This is done so you can fine tune the search and save it again. However! Your changes to the saved search will not be saved unless the Update Search checkbox has been checked.
What are the Elements?
They are word tags which allow us to filter out the stories on the site. They are a bit like genres, except that a story may have more than one. For a guide to what they mean individually, click here.
What are Watches?
In earlier incarnations of Digital Pulp watches were known as Author Tags, and it was basically a system we invented to help readers keep track of their favorite authors. Currently, it does this, but it also keeps you up to date on their activity. If you go into a users profile and click the Add Watch button in the "People Watching Me" section, you will receive a small message any time they write a new story or post a new journal. It also sends the writer an automated message telling them that they have a new watcher - which will brighten their day.
How does the story reader work?
It comes with its own help file which can be found by clicking the question mark at it's base.
What kind of stories can I post?
DigitalPulp.org believes in innocent until proven guilty. We do not have an editor
so you can pretty much get away with posting anything on the site that you want. However, we do care about this site and part of the terms and conditions of this site does
allow us to remove any story without warning or explanation. We also listen to user complaints
and investigate all claims of site abuse.
Balancing this out is also our love of free expression and artistic licence. Considering the
amount of rejection involved in the publishing process, isn't it nice to have a place where you can
publish your fifty page opus about an elderly Elvis hunting vampires in North Dakota, but using surf music instead
of a hammer and mallet? We think so.
So where does one draw the line? It's at our rating system. It mirrors the American movie codes,
largely because this is something everyone knows and can agree upon. G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17. Notice there
is no X. Does this mean you cannot have graphic sex in your story? That depends. How much do you feel is befitting
the NC-17 rating when saddled with the Erotica element?
On the whole, content - unless dealing with pedophilia or instructions for terrorists on how to make explosive devices - is nothing to lose sleep over. What you really need to be careful about is doing something which might
be taken as an intentional misrating in order to create mischief. Everyone knows G is for kids. Intentionally writing an R rated story
and then giving it a G rating will get you kicked off the site, far more so than publishing your collection of
Penthouse letters from the late 70's as NC-17.
For more on the MPAA film ratings system, click here.
Content aside, the other way to get into trouble on the site is to misplace stuff. Stories means Stories. Do not create a Buy My Book spiel and then submit it as a story! This as well as philosophical ramblings, drunken ramblings and what happened in my life today, are what the journal is for. People get very irrate when they start to read a story only to find there is no actual story in it. Especially us.
It's good to remember that you're dealing with writing. Unlike all other forms of media, in being read a story is asking a favor of its reader. For them it is an investment in time which you - through simply writing and submitting the story - have promised to pay back by filling the reader's head with a dream which is far better than anything they could have come up with on their own. This makes being an author an entirely precarious position, one which is only held as long as you can consistently deliver without faultering. Musicians can make a bad record and recover. Artists can paint their name on a toilet and have people smile at them. Tom Hanks has made more bad movies than good ones. An Author can never afford to drop the ball.
Can I post poetry on Digital Pulp?
No, that
is what our sister site DigitalVerse.org is about. Try it, you'll love it 
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