I got back from a holiday in Portugal with Mistress a couple of days ago which is why I haven’t posted in a while. I could have posted while I was away but decided to just relax, in fact I spent a full four days whilst there without wearing any clothing at all, it’s quite liberating!
I like to read and specifically I like to read BDSM stories which is what got me into writing my own. From the very early days of my exploring BDSM I did this on a website called bdsmlibrary.com which I am sure many of you will be familiar with. What you may not know is that new stories have only been added there once since April 2017 and that it doesn’t look like the site will be maintained any longer.
I was quite dismayed to discover this as that site was a staple for my entire adult life and a great outlet for many talented BDSM writers out there. There are lots of comments on the forums about the seeming abandonment of the site and I have tried to contact the owner through various channels with no response.
So I decided that I would try and carry the torch of bdsmlibrary myself and set up a new site that caters for just the “stories” part of that site, i.e. not all the other commercial stuff that is on there. I did talk about this on the bdsmlibrary forums but that got me a swift lifetime ban from the forums which I am quite upset about as I was only trying to help the community and a few people were quite receptive to the idea.
The new site is currently under construction which may take a little while as my coding skills are very out of date (it’s years since I did any) and it is quite a lot of work, I’ve mentioned before that I am very busy haven’t I?! Mistress thinks I am crazy for taking on the project but I think it is something I could really give back to a community who really helped me through some lonely and unfulfilling times in my life.
The site will be called The Fet Library and I will update you when it starts to take shape as I will need as much help as possible to get the word out and get people using the site.
That’s all for now, Lo xx
Learning from my mistakes 
What a great initiative. If you need any help in getting the site running please do let me know as I would be happy to put some time into it.
Thank you that is much appreciated. I will definitely need help getting traffic to it I think. Also I know nothing about getting it on search engines.
Thank you for doing this, I will watch with anticipation. You inspire me to get writing kinky smut again!
I hope so, get something written and ready to release on the new site!
Wow!! Wishing you the very best of luck and I hope you have loads of fun!!
Thank you! It’s already a lot of work but hopefully worth it!
I’d concentrate on getting the new site up and running first and worry about the traffic / SEO later. I have WordPress wrangling skills.
What I’d personally find interesting would be a “curated” “meta site” that acted as a “sort of index” / type of “recommendation” place / “search engine” for BDSM stories.
Categorised (Mf or Fm or Mm or Ff etc).
A brief (no spoilers) summary of what the story’s about.
Who recommended it and why (a “review” of sorts).
And a link to the full story.
There are lots of stories on lots of sites (I could do a list of a few I browse) out there. Somewhere that did a “story of the day” post (or week if one a day is too onerous) would be interesting.
S
(phrases wrapped in quotes such as “curated” should not be read to literally)
It’s an interesting idea, maybe that can be the next project. I’ve got quite far with it already but it’s a lot of work and a lot of learning about writing websites, fortunately I have a little helper.
I just read a whole blog post about sitemaps!
Interesting. Let me know what kinds of help you might need. Hope you got your ass and other parts tanned [so to speak] on the beaches in Portugal!
I will thank you! I got quite a good tan on holiday actually, it was SOOO hot!
A Lifetime ban! Your good (well, perverted) intentions stepped on someone’s income stream. Though they have not updated they still get traffic (so advertising) and am sure they did not take it easy that you put that at risk*. That is Part A.
Part B is I would advise thinking not only of the tech part of the project but of other parts mainly costs and how it will be funded. Wherever you will host, if traffic picks you might be exceeding some service bandwidth limit. Same with space (though higher tier service offers may put this as unlimited). Then there are operating policies – who will vet what is being loaded or submitted to load? What topics, kinks, fetishes, subjects are allowed, and which not? Who has ultimate say (Chief Editor or a review panel)? Is there the possibility of any legal liability (that’s your field I reckon)? Sorry for playing Devil’s Advocate. It’s my job to do it when it comes to IT projects.
Otherwise, best of luck and feel free to pick my brains if you need help.
*On the plus side maybe it was a kick in their butt to get on with any updates they had planned.
I thought a lot about how it would work. I don’t think I’m going to curate it the way it was done on BDSM Library, that would be way too much work. Someone is helping me build it and is thinking of ways to ensure it doesn’t get abused or spammed or anything.
Legally, trust me I will protect myself!
Although I mourn the apparent demise of bdsmlibrary.com as well, I do fear that operating your own story site would quickly turn into full time job – hard to fit into your busy schedule. Since there are quite a few other story sites around (some of which I’ve used for my own attempts at penning a story), IMHO it would be better if you invested the time in writing more of your own excellent stories and showcase them here.
I’ve pretty much got my heart set on doing this now so I’m ploughing ahead, whether it succeeds or fails we will see I guess!
Good on you for taking this on, but it could be a lot of work. I suspect the BDSMlibrary code is not that complicated but not up to date. Given the age of the site it is probably PHP + database. It is somewhat sophisticated with submission, ratings, complex search, etc. I would presume there would be some open-source template you get you started, maybe even something wordpress-based.
The BDSM Library code is HORRIBLE! Or so I’m told by my helpful little expert! My site will be much easier to maintain and hopefully not too much work for me on an ongoing basis.
Maybe a few things like these:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/frontend-uploader/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/multi-rating/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-member/
Don’t reinvent the wheel. All the best. Let us know if we can help.
Hi Lois I agree about the disappointment of bdsm library not being updated its a real shame as I think it’s where a long time ago I first read about you! A new site is a fantastic idea and I’m sure you can get it up and running and it would be an amazing asset for everybody who loves to read bdsm stories. I do also agree with those raising questions about how the site will be hosted etc if it does well and also making sure that you have the correct posting policies in place to protect you. The other point about leaving enough time for you to continue writing is also critical because we all love reading your stories and real life tales.
I’ve got hosting all sorted and I will work out the legal stuff in advance. The beta site is about half done now so it’s moving quite quickly, hope to have something ready in a week or two!