ToS, Website and App Updates

Monday, March 3, 2025 9:05:52 PM

Hello everyone!

We wish to inform you that we've updated our Terms of Service, specifically clauses 3.1, 4.1, 5, 6.2.vi, 7, and 9. These updates mainly involve adding relevant links where necessary and introducing our new payment option on the website, which serves as an alternative to PayPal. If you wanted to subscribe but couldn't do it via the app, or PayPal, please check out our new alternative.

We also improved our guidelines to further clarify our artwork rules, as we received feedback that our previous Artwork guidelines were unclear.

The rest of this blog post will cover the latest website and app updates from 2024–2025. It has been quite a while since our last proper changelog, which was back in 2022, so we figured this would be a good time to show you some of the updates.

The past few years have been hectic for bestuseller.com, with our development team working tirelessly to modernize and upgrade the site’s backend. While most users might not notice these changes directly, they have significantly improved performance, streamlined maintenance, and enhanced our staff portal. These behind-the-scenes updates are crucial for our small team, making operations smoother and more efficient. Please note that in the following changelog, we’re only sharing the public-facing updates.

Speaking of our team, we are happy to inform you that we've seen steady growth in recent months, allowing us to hire more people. In addition to the co-founders, Wing and Kanadaj, we now have three developers and two moderators, which is quite the growth from a few months ago, and this is only possible thanks to your support.

First, just a quick introduction of myself: I’m Dawn, the new bestuseller.com Moderator. Some of you may already know me, but I’d like to introduce myself for those who don’t. I’ll be handling some of the blog posts and community interactions moving forward, so you’ll be seeing a lot of me around.

Now, without further ado:

Website Features:

Added global tag filters
Allowed collaborators with edit permissions to open deleted chapters.
Improved fanfiction search and made search tags case-insensitive.
Masked review stats for authors who have disabled them.
Removed CAPTCHA requirement for replies.
Improved EPUB import and accessibility.
Only sent comment reply notifications to users who enabled them.
Added a delay for global notifications to reduce spam.
Disallowed replies to threads older than six months.
Allowed authors to see private poll results.
Added a tooltip plugin to the chapter editor.
Allowed deleted chapters to be visible on the follows page.
Allowed Ruby tags in comments.
Allowed exact minute selection for scheduled drafts.
Added a publishing page and submission form.
Introduced a partner books slider.
Added a newsletter opt-in/out option.
Implemented a preview feature for chapters in the author dashboard.
Improved the fiction ranking module.
Notified users when someone replies to their idea comments.
Logged word counts for fictions on chapter release.
Revamped the Trending list algorithm.
Launched an experimental new chapter editor.
Improved fiction status display (Ongoing/Hiatus/Stub, etc.) in lists.
Added Writathon Analytics (shareable stats for the next Writathon).

These are just some of the updates we’re sharing. For a longer list, take a look here

App Updates:

Focus Areas: TTS improvements, premium features, UI/UX updates, and stability enhancements.

Premium Features Added:

Auto chapter downloads and storage management (Version 1.60).
Bug fixes for premium users, including ad handling and carousel navigation (Versions 1.55 to 1.59).
Enhanced download and chapter syncing options.

Resolved Multiple Ad Issues:

Fixed persistent ad-related bugs on Android.

Offline Reading Optimizations:

Improved swipe gestures and offline reading performance.

UI & Accessibility Upgrades:

Enhanced partner book visibility, search relevance, and fiction icons.
Improved horizontal scrolling and text table formatting.

Expanded TTS and Server Interactions:

Added in-app TTS with better parsing for italics and special characters.

Extra Functionalities:

"Add to Home Screen" feature for Android.
Enhanced in-app search capabilities.

App Update Summary:

47 app updates in 2024, many focusing on bug fixes.

As we have an updated changelog with the app after every update, there isn't an update page for it. But, this was January’s, so you can see how often fixes are pushed through.

App Updates (Jan 2025)

Version 1.72.784 (Jan 27):

iOS: Additional fix for random app crashes.

Version 1.71.782 (Jan 24):

iOS: Attempted fix for random crashes.

Version 1.70.776 (Jan 19):

Android: Fixed TTS/Chapter audio issues on Android 15.
Shared: Improved handling of quotes and italics in TTS.

Version 1.69.773 (Jan 15):

iOS: Fixed external links issue on iOS 18+.
Shared: Fixed Patreon and PayPal button interactions in page mode.

Version 1.68.771 (Jan 14):

Shared: Disabled chapter sync pop-ups, improved search relevance.

Version 1.67.769 (Jan 14):

Shared: Fixed spoiler content display, extended Read Later previews.

Version 1.66.767 (Jan 9):

iOS: Fixed edit suggestions bug.
Shared: Resolved login issues.

Version 1.65.763 (Jan 5):

Android: Fixed black status/navigation bars on Samsung devices.

Version 1.65.761 (Jan 2):

Shared: Extended chapter download limits, fixed offline loading issues.

As usual, we’d like to thank the users who reported these bugs which allowed us to fix them. If you see any issues, please don't hesitate to report them here

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