When we built our current site in Drupal (now more than three years ago!), we kept it as similar to the original eFiction site as we could. Part of this was convenience—not having to figure out the "what goes where" amid so many other big tasks and decisions—and part of it was to make it easier for our members to transition to the new site.

This week, to fix an ongoing issue where profile pages were throwing an error, we moved users' Favorites lists off of their profile—where they were in eFiction and where we kept them as well—and onto their own page. You can still access the Favorites list of any user in the same place: at the top of the profile.

This made me think that a quick primer on Favorites—and her sisters, Bookmark and Follow—might be useful this week.

Favorites serve as a sort of personal rec list of fanworks and creators on our site. Your Favorites list is available publicly; hence, you have the opportunity on Favorites to share the reason you have added a fanwork or creator as one of your faves. This is also publicly available.

Bookmarks are similar, but they are private, visible only to you. Logged in, you can find your bookmarks on the My Bookmarks page. Bookmarks are handy for the days when someone drops a 60K novella, and the rest of your week is packed, but you don't want to forget to read it. Or when you've started a fanwork you'd like to check out again later, want to mark all the works about a particular character or relationship, or any other number of reasons why we may want to put a pin in something but aren't quite ready to share your choice with the world.

Finally, following a fanwork (My Follows for logged-in members) will notify you via email when that fanwork is updated, the creator adds or updates a fanwork, or a new work is added to a tag you follow. These are also private.

In all instances, you can add or remove a favorite, bookmark, or follow by clicking on the fanwork and using the links at the top of the page.