Wednesday, April 30, 2014

It’s Spring! Looking for new subscribers and donations


For over ten years HASA has been providing JRRT fanfiction for all genres, characters, ratings & story lengths. We get hundreds of readers a day, making HASA a great place for readers and writers. Subscribers would be the best way to keep HASA going.

This is a good time for more subscribers. Currently, our balance will soon be six months behind for hosting costs.

HASA is ad-free and fee-free, and we do not sell your contact information to marketers. HASA depends on donations from members and readers, both one-time gifts and subscriptions. It would be great if we could get some more donations and subscription to help get us closer to positive.

If only a small percentage of our members and readers donated every year or got a monthly subscription we would be in better shape. If we had more subscribers it would be easier to keep current.

Our PayPal account has three ways to donate:
• Monthly subscriptions - set up a monthly recurring donation in amounts from $5 to $25 dollars.
• Yearly subscriptions - set up a recurring annual donation in amounts from $15 to $50 dollars.
• One-off donations of any amount.


If you're a little short on spare change at the moment, donations of time are always appreciated. There's an archive full of stories just waiting for comments, authors who would love an email complimenting them on their work, challenges that need entries, playlists that need to be created, research that needs doing and forums begging for discussions. If you are an author, please consider donating a new story.

Thanks for enjoying HASA!

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

HASA How-to April 2014: password security

As you no doubt have read, a major vulnerability in SSL (the secure channel used for HTTPS) has been detected recently, affecting many web sites.
We are pleased to confirm that HASA was NOT affected by this vulnerability.

However, this is a good time to review your password security. Good password security practices include:

  • Using a password manager, such as for instance LastPass
  • Change passwords every six months to a year
  • Never reuse passwords
  • Make sure passwords are at least 10 characters in length, include upper and lower case letters, have numbers and (if the site allows it) use non-alphanumeric characters.

At the very least:

  • Do NOT use your Facebook password on other sites. You can use an integrated login (if you are told "Log in with your Facebook account") because the other site is handing the information back to Facebook, no storing it locally, but don't reuse that password anywhere. Change it at least very six months - set a reminder on your calendar.
  • Use different passwords for each financial site you use (your bank, PayPal, credit card site, etc.)
  • Password protect your phone!
  • Let XKCD show you how to construct a super-secure password that is easy to remember

Safe browsing!

Sunday, April 6, 2014

HASA news - Birthdays, Challenges, Stories

April Birthdays
Is your birthday in April, and would you like a drabble about your favourite character or topic? You can request it here.

Not sure what the birthday cards are about? Have a look at some stories written for previous requests.

Challenges
The Listicle Challenge, which started on March 25 to celebrate VmE Sauron Day, will run until the end of the month. Find all the details here.

Just as Challenges come from Prospective Challenges, Prospective Challenges come from Nuzgûl, and Nuzgûl need attention to grow from tiny ideas into big stories. Step into the Nuzgûl hutch. The bunnies don't bite (much). And who knows what ideas you may come out with?

March Stories
All writers love feedback. It is the lembas and miruvor that sustains us as we write our story, and leaving a few words about a story you read is always a nice thing to do, whether the story is new or old.

Every fifteen minutes HASA highlights a story chosen at random from the Reviewed and General stories in the archive. Read the currently featured story on our front page.

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In March:

---25 General Stories were published or updated.
---no Beta Stories were updated.
(Please note, you need to be logged in to view beta stories.)

Thank you for reading and writing at HASA. Enjoy!