This minor NarraFirma release contains one speed improvement and several interface improvements.
Better loading speed
The fees of the hosting provider we have been using to host all of our web sites for two decades have been going up and up. So we decided to save some money by moving narrafirma.com (with its demo version of NarraFirma) to a cheaper hosting service. After we did that, we discovered that NarraFirma would not load and gave us an error. It turned out that the cheap managed WordPress service we had chosen was rate-limiting NF’s client requests for messages, allowing only so many requests per second. Our old hosting service did not do this, so it was a lucky break that we were able to see an error that our users might have been seeing that we had not.
When we built NarraFirma in 2014/15, we had the client part of the software request 100 database records from the server at a time. That worked well then, but today, some managed WordPress servers (like the one we tried out) limit how many requests a client can make from a server per second (to cut costs). That’s what we were seeing: rate limiting. We fixed the error by changing the NarraFirma client to ask for 1000 database records at a time, thus spacing out the requests over longer time periods. The greater size of the bundle did not (and should not) cause a problem because most of the records are very small.
We decided not to keep the site on that server, mostly because I didn’t like the way they managed their WordPress sites, and in the end we saved some money by installing my new Story-Colored Glasses blog on the same server as NarraFirma is on.
The only change you are likely to see in NarraFirma is that it should now load faster. We considered making the request size configurable (instead of changing the hard-coded 100 to 1000), but it’s probably not necessary to burden you with a decision like that. If you ever see an error when you are loading NarraFirma, please do tell us about it.
Updates for the fourth edition of Working with Stories
We found and fixed the rate-limiting problem in … I’m going to say February. But I didn’t find the time to put out a new release until the end of April. That was because, as a rule, I try to make at least one small visible improvement to NarraFirma at least once a year, to prove that it hasn’t been abandoned, and the 100-to-1000-messages change wouldn’t be a visible change. So I went looking for something visible to change.
I soon realized that I should update NarraFirma to match the new fourth edition of Working with Stories. These are the things I changed:
- I changed the image-map diagram on the home page of NarraFirma (and on its help system) to match the new diagram in WWS.
- I changed the labels and order of some of the PNI planning questions to match my new explanation of the questions in the planning chapter of WWS. (Your data will not be changed.)
- In the help system, I changed every excerpt from WWS3 to a similar one in either WWS4 or WWS Simplified. That was boring and tedious but necessary. Now the book and software match (mostly) again.
- In WWS4, I moved the story-sharing assessment tool to the new Miscellany book. As I did so, I changed one of the questions in the tool. It used to be called “Real stories” and read “Did you see people tell stories that were recountings of events based on emotional experiences from particular perspectives?” Now it is called “Habitation” and reads “How often did it seem to you that people inhabited the stories they told?” In this new NF release, I decided to ease the transition between these two questions by combining them thus: “How often did it seem to you that people inhabited the stories they told? That is, how often did their stories recount their own experiences from their own perspectives?” I think that change will preserve the meaning of legacy data while providing an opportunity to think through the new question.
I decided not to change every term I changed when moving from WWS3 to WWS4. I don’t want to confuse NF users, and also, some of the words are in your data as well as in the NF interface. Backward compatibility has been an important consideration with every change I have ever made to NarraFirma. If you created a NF project in 2015, you can still open and use it in 2026. That is important to me.
These are the terms I changed in WWS4 but not in NarraFirma:
- In WWS4, I no longer talk about “catalysis reports.” I decided the word “report” seems too authoritative and less open to challenge. Now I just call what you produce in catalysis “catalytic material.” But the term “catalysis report” is all over NarraFirma, including in your data, so I have left it alone.
- In WWS4, I no longer talk about “story forms.” I decided that was too esoteric. Now I just call the things you use to ask people for and about stories “sets of questions” or “question sets.” But “story form” is all over NarraFirma, including in your data.
- In WWS4, I no longer talk about “group story sessions.” I now make a clearer distinction between “group interviews,” in which people share stories but do not participate in exercises, and “story-sharing sessions,” in which people take part in game-like exercises. In NF the terminology is of “story collection sessions,” and “activities” such as group exercises are optional. I left that alone.
- In WWS4, I stopped using the term “eliciting questions” in favor of the clearer “story-eliciting questions.” NF calls story-eliciting questions “eliciting questions.” I did not change that.
- In WWS4, I changed “narrative incident reports” to “narrative incident accounts” (see previous discomfort with the word “report”). I decided not to change this term in the recommendations system of NarraFirma because I think it might be in some people’s data.
Quality-of-life interface improvements
Every time I come back to NarraFirma to give it another week or two of my time, I hate how it looks. It’s a dated interface. It was dated when we first released it in 2015. That’s okay. NarraFirma is free, useful, and reliable. I don’t think reasonable adults need their software to be dumbed down and full of eye candy. Sure, yes, if we got a huge grant to make NarraFirma better, I would want to use some of the funding to build a better-looking and easier-to-understand interface. But since that’s probably never going to happen, it’s fine the way it is.
Still, every time I come back to NarraFirma, the ugliness of it nags at me, and I look for a few things I can tweak (in the time I have) to make it look just a bit better. This time I changed a few things that should make NF a bit more approachable.
- I expanded the one-word headings on each section page to several words. I was trying to be succinct when I wrote the headings, but I can see now that they were confusing. So now, in the Planning section, for example, “Orient” has become “Start planning your project,” and in the Collection section, “Collect” has become “Gather your stories.” That makes much more sense.
- I indented the page names on the section pages. This was my husband’s suggestion when I told him that people are annoyed and confused at seeing so many page links in a row. I think it looks better his way.
- I spent some time revamping the page-category icon system. I moved the icons to the left of the page names so they line up in a vertical row. I gave each page only one category icon, and I changed some of the icon assignments and added some more categories. I think the icons will be more helpful now, though you can still turn them off (in Project administration).
- I added some filler words to some of the page names for better readability. For example, in the Planning section, “Build privacy policy” has become “Build your privacy policy.” When it comes to readability, more can be less.
- I added some lines to the home page to make a clearer distinction between the menu of sections (the PNI phases diagram) and the “Quick links” for the current project. This was my son’s idea. I said to him, “People are confused by this main page. They say it’s too busy, and they are overwhelmed by it.” So he was like, “You should divide it up like this.” And he drew those lines for me. So I implemented them, and he was right, it looks much better now. He also helped me to improve my PNI-phases diagram in WWS4 (and now in NF). He has a great sense of design.
- I took the tips off the bottom of the home page. They are useful on other pages, but they are too much of a distraction on the home page.
- I squeezed down the top-of-page header a bit, to keep it more out of your way.
- I removed the trademark symbol from the word “NarraFirma” at the top left (it was distracting) and made the word into a link to the home page (for the current project).
- I changed the colors of the arrow buttons at the bottom of each NF page. For a while I had thought they created too much of a distraction from the body of the page, so I had changed them to blue. But this time through I realized that the blue buttons were confusing. So now they are orange again.
As always, if you find any bugs – or find anything in NF confusing or hard to use – please tell me on the GitHub issues page.