Sunset^{loving women+ online}

I've done some minor site updates, but I want this to show up in the homepage blurb so I'll list it first: I'm running Sunset's first event, a prompt meme! You can read about it here. We have an updated config so you can leave 80 prompts as opposed to AO3's 50! I love being able to do that >:)

It's multifandom and very chill. I really would like Sunset to be a community, and I thought beginning to run regular(ish) events would be a good way to help connect :) I'm considering running an exchange after this, please let me know if you have any thoughts on that!

Anywayyy the updates:

-Fingers crossed, kudos and subscription emails will now work. No idea how I managed to leave out those tasks from the production schedule, but alas I did.
-We now link to the other non-AO3 OTW-Archive sites in a dropdown in the header. I love our affiliated sites!! Check them out!!
-I changed the "beta" part of the header for no reason other than I thought it would be cute.

And further, I have some questions on making Sunset more of a community if you're so inclined to answer:

-How would you personally like to be involved in a Sunset community, if you are interested in such a thing? What would you like to see? What forms of connection (e.g. a Discord, a forum, new social features, etc) would you most enjoy?
-What can I do to further improve the site?
-If you have any feature ideas, I'm always looking for more projects. Thank you!

So we hit 300 users and I am going to take a second to be a little emotional. When I first set out to make Sunset I pretty much expected it to never happen. I had zero experience with self-hosting. It was a daydream! It took me about a year and a half or so to practice and understand things enough to even begin to attempt self-hosting OTW-Archive, and it was a wild and deeply frustrating ride at times trying to figure it out. But I am so glad I did!

Sunset has been an amazing project and it has been so tremendously rewarding to work on. I’ve made so many amazing connections through it and I really hope that Sunset has allowed others to make new connections, find new things they enjoy, or just have lots of fun. It’s meaningful to me that people focused on sapphic relationships in fiction should have places dedicated to their interests and if I can provide a good time in any way that’s really all I want!

So, I wanted to say from the bottom of my heart:
THANK YOU ALL! Here’s to years of more. P.S: working on some more cool stuff for the community and site, so stay tuned!

Good news! The invite request form is now on-site, right on the get invited page. No need to open an external link any longer! New users will be able to go to the get invited page and type the information I need to approve accounts directly into the invite queue form. It will be much easier for both potential new users and me to get Sunset accounts up and running. Thank you to Melo of Superlove for the guide.

I am also working on editing configurations for prompt challenges and exchanges. AO3 stops prompt challenge requests at 50; I've increased it to 80, since Sunset is much smaller and can handle it. I am also considering bumping up max exchange requests to 15 as opposed to AO3's 10, but I will need to do more testing before that can go live.

While browsing WayBack Machine's AO3 archives from 2008, I noticed they used to have a button that said "Try a new author!" and it linked to a random site user. I thought that was cute so I upgraded the code to the current Rails otwarchive uses and now we have it on the homepage!

For other otwarchive admins, you can implement this using this link, it's pretty easy.

EDIT, 12/29/25: I didn't think this needed its own news post so I added it on to this one. I've done some much needed updates on Sunset, such as:

-Linked to the content policy in the about menu
-Changed the content policy because why was it entirely in bold text until now
-Added a site button to footer and about page so you can link to us if you want
-Changed the embed description so link embeds for Sunset no longer say it's a project of the OTW

Hope you're all doing well. :)

We have seemingly been hit with some spam commenters, who somehow snuck into the queue just as I was sending out emails. The offending user has been banned, but please inform me if you see any spam comments from a logged in user. Scam comments often talk about art or fic commissions/requests and may ask you to contact them outside of Sunset; do not do this.

To further prevent this in the future, an update will be coming soon to the invitation system, based off of Superlove's; there will be a built-in form on the invite queue request page, as opposed to an external one and no one will be accepted as a member if they leave it blank.

Sorry that this managed to sneak through.

We now have status updates! A refresher from last news post:
-This is a feature I've been hard at work developing for the past week
-I'm extremely proud of it
-It's intentional that status updates don't have comments! I don't want this to be super social media-y, rather I want it to be a place we can post information about our fics, updates on how writing is going, fandom thoughts, etc.
-The character limit is 3500 (I believe) for statuses.

You can reach timeline under the Browse dropdown, and New Status from the post dropdown or your user dashboard navigation.

I hope this works. Please email me at [email protected] with any issues, or comment here!

Sunset will be going down on November 14th at 7:00PM EST to add its first new feature! I’ve been playing around with Ruby on Rails and have developed a very basic status update + timeline view for Sunset. Your status will show up on the timeline page, as well as your user page, if it is set. New status button will be available from the users page, the "post" dropdown, and the timeline will be available from the "browse" dropdown. You can optionally add current mood, music, and an icon, which will be resized to 50px, so I suggest using something relatively square!

You can’t comment on status updates at the moment, and this is intentional; I’m trying to keep Sunset an archive for now, not social media. It’s just a fun little place to promote your works, show off the fic you’re currently most proud of, promo your friends fics, etc.

Please do not misuse this feature i.e. use it to spread hate. I developed it out of love!!

If you'd like a live preview, you can go here for the profile view, and here for the timeline view.

If you run an otw-archive site and would like to implement this feature, I documented how I did it here: at this link.

Thanks! I'm so, so excited for this :)

Sunset invites are open, the form is still required :) A reminder since some of the other OTW-A instances are being targeted at the moment: while we disallow underage RPF for legal reasons/admin's comfort, we still hold an anti-harassment mindset and anyone who engages in harassment even off-site will be banned. Harassment & wishing death on website owners is NEVER acceptable, we run these sites because we have a passion for fandom, we do this in our free time for the love of community, please treat us with respect & take us in good faith. It is reprehensible to treat site owners the way the admins of the other instances have been treated, and I stand firmly with them and their decision to moderate the site in any way they choose.

Thank you.