Using this site
Hieroglyfics Recs runs on a Wordpress engine, slightly modified with some plug-ins. Here are some hints on finding specific kinds of recs in this site.
Categories should be mostly self-explanatory. Clicking on any category will display all recs in that category. Some categories have subcategories; clicking on the main category will display all recs over all subcategories, but clicking on the subcategory will display only those recs. For example, choosing “Age of Sail” will return recs in both Hornblower and Master and Commander fandoms. Choosing “due South” will return due South recs over all parings, but choosing “Fraser/RayK” will return only those recs that are Fraser/RayK.
All recs are in two or more categories. At the very least they will be in a fandom plus a type (fiction, art, or vid); usually they will also be in categories showing pairing and rating, and if appropriate they will be in an additional genre category such as “AU.”
It is not possible to search on multiple categories simultaneously, if you wanted, for example, all SGA vids (recs in both “SGA” and “Type: vid” categories). If you want to do this kind of search, choose one category and then use your browser’s find function to locate the other. Note that recs which fall under a subcategory don’t necessarily have the category as a keyword; in other words, even though choosing “SGA” will return all SGA recs, recs which are “Sheppard/McKay” (a subcategory of SGA) will not display “SGA” in their keyword list, only “Sheppard/McKay”. So if you want to find all SGA vids, you’ll get more complete results if you choose the “SGA” category and then search on “vid” rather than the other way around.
Author names are actually stored in metadata rather than as keywords, since there are so many authors. If you want to search for a particular author, use the search box in the upper right corner of the header. I had to install a plug-in to enable searching on metadata in addition to the full text of the rec; it’s a little wonky, so frequently a single rec will be returned multiple times. (Sorry about that.) Searching in general is case-insensitive.
Story lengths are selectable as categories. This site uses the following length definitions, adapted from this article:
drabble: 100 words exactly
ficlet: under 1000 words
short story: 1001-7500 words
novelette: 7501-20,000 words
novella: 20,001-50,000 words
novel: 50,001-100,000 words
epic: over 100,000 words