Site news? What?

Well gosh. It sure has been a while.

Yooooo... If you don't know me, it's probably because I haven't been on this site in a dog's age. So hi there, I'm Winter Dragon. People call me Winter or WD, usually.

Man, this place... It's been the source of so many memories for me. And I gotta say, I've been feeling very nostalgic lately. I took a look at this site, and I thought about how much it's done for me over the years. So then I considered, "Hey, why not try to restore some of its former glory? Fix it up, tweak a few things. It could be nice."

This isn't just for me, either. I realize there are a couple of you who do actively use this place, and I think that's really cool. Props to you for keeping the flame alive, friends c: And in my opinion, it's all the more reason to do something with this site. Because this isn't a dead board, even if most of us have left it over time.

I've talked with some other staff, and they're into the idea. First off, we want to optimize the site more. That said, you can reasonably expect some site changes in the near future. Nothing too drastic, so don't worry! We're going to make this a transparent operation, and as such will list off the proposed changes before they're put into effect. By the way, feel free to post suggestions in this thread. We value everyone's input here ^^

Okay, I think that's all for now. See ya!

Hey, just giving an update on what we're looking at changing. The proposed changes are:

--Tightening up the rules to make them more clear and to cover more areas
--Slightly modifying/rearranging the different topics to be more intuitive
--Changing the color scheme. We're looking at mainly the old site colors right now, actually
--Looking into adding the ability to pick different skins (this may or may not work)
--Looking into adding some kind of header or sidebar (also may not work)
--Once that's finished, affiliating with other sites to gain members

Just so you know what we're up to ^^ I'll post the specifics here as they're confirmed.

Back again with another update. At the moment, we're mainly working on tightening up/redefining the rules and changing the site colors. The rules are near final, but not quite. I think I'll post them here once we're closer to a finished version so you can check them out (if anyone's reading this, anyway. I'm not certain).

The site color change is going to be far more drastic. We're still discussing a few things, but I believe the ideas are mostly cemented. In terms of adding multiple site skins, it's seeming less possible. We'll see what we can do, but it isn't looking good in that department.

I've made some templates so you can get a good idea of what the site will look like. Please ignore any wonkiness in the text; I did my best for a short-ish timeframe v_v Here they are:

Nostalgia Mode
Alternate Colors

*sniff* ...Eheh, sorry, I just had some nostalgia in my eye.

Anyway, some things are still being played around with, but that's pretty much what we're looking at. Just so you won't be totally surprised when we implement the changes. Okay, that's all for this update ^^

Okay, here are the new rules we're looking at. Guides will be made/linked to where mentioned:


-No godmoding (GMing). A guide to what this is and how to avoid it can be found here

-No powerplaying (PPing). A guide concerning this can be found here

-Use some form of OOC (out of character). This means differentiating your out of character text somehow, such as putting it between double-parentheses

-Posts should not be entirely OOC (take it to PMs or make an OOC topic in the appropriate section)

-Listen to the OP (original poster). If they've made certain specifications and/or set their own special rules for the chat/RP, follow them

-Strive for spelling and grammar. This also means no text talk in IC (in character) posts, unless the characters are typing/texting

-Don't spam. As an extension of this, don't go into other peoples' chats/RPs just to advertise yours

-Treat all members with respect. Try to be accepting of everyone

-Don't exclude specific people from chats/RPs. Having a thread open initially and closing it after a while is fine. Private chats/RPs are also allowed, but they must specifically state that they are private right from the beginning

-Avoid instigating drama


(We're still working out how to elaborate on that last one.)

Anyway, if you have any suggestions or other comments about these rules, feel free to put them in this thread ^^

Oh, something else I should mention is that I enabled the ability for users to change their own email addresses. We in the staff aren't certain why that wasn't enabled before, but we apologize for any inconveniences it may have caused.

Other site changes we're discussing and will almost certainly implement are:
--Setting the official site time to EST*. We're not sure why, but it's currently set to UTC +7, which is on the other side of the world. I suppose only the original founder has the reason for that
--Lowering the minimum character limit in topic titles from 10
--Making the "Online" ribbon vanish after 10 minutes of inactivity rather than 5

Okay, that's all for this update!

*The reasoning is that on top of most of us being East Coast residents, we have at least one user in England and a few on the West Coast, so EST seemed as close to the middle as we could get. Not that it particularly matters, since you can set your own site time in your profile anyway. Still, we wanted an official time that represented us more accurately.

You know how I said that the different topics would be slightly rearranged/added to? That's what we've moved to now. This is what we're looking at now:

--Making a new forum for Guides as a subsection of Help
--Adding a Characters board to the Info Center. It'll be a place for individual members to have topics (one per member) to hold all their character profiles. That way, you can link people to a specific character's sheet when you want to show who you're using
--Adding a Writing Discussion forum to the Writing category, switching the current Your Work description to it, and making a new description for Your Work to show that it's a place for you to post your writing

There may be more minor changes, but these are the ones that everyone seems to be in favor of, and you can reasonably expect them to be implemented tomorrow if not later tonight.

Okay, that's all for now ^^

Eeeeoops.

Sorry, I realize that last post said we were going to implement changes the next day or even later that night, but then we all sort of got busy and didn't get around to it. Well, the only change from that list that hasn't been implemented now is the Characters section. We need to talk a little more about that. Oh, but we didn't quite move the Your Work description to Writing Discussion; we updated the text instead.

The new descriptions for sections aren't final yet, but this is what we have for now. If you have any suggestions, feel free to put them forward ^^

Okay, in addition to the proposed Characters section, we're also looking at doing these:

--Getting rid of the Promotion section. It made much more sense when Inkpop was still around
--Making Era for historical chats specifically. We feel having a futuristic section in it is redundant, seeing as there's already a sci-fi section
--Modifying Deviations so that it's for private chats, since that's what we use it for anyway
--Putting subsections into the archives for Era, Paranormal, and Media, since there are already subsections in the boards themselves

The last one is being put into effect right away, since we feel that should've been done a long time ago. As it's not always clear which Paranormal chats are specifically horror-themed and which aren't, we'd love it if you could help us out there. If you know for certain which chats were in which sections, could you let us know? We don't want to put them in the wrong places. Okay, that's it for this update c:

Hey, we're changing the Media section around a bit. You can check it out to see how it looks. This may not be the final setup for the categories, but it seems like we're sticking with this for now.

We're still working out how Era is going to be organized. As always, if you have suggestions, feel free to put them forward ^^

We've been bad staff members. We're sorry. We've just been really busy lately! Unfortunately, we let this project fall to the wayside. However, we want to get back into it, and hopefully finish it. Just thought I'd let you know.

OKAY. We know we've been dropping the ball on this project a bit. We'll admit that. But now that everyone is out of school for the summer, we've picked everything back up and we're happy to say that we're nearly finished! In fact, we don't have any new changes planned aside from the ones we've already mentioned (though if you have any other ideas in mind, feel free to put them forward). This is the final stretch, guys! Check this post for everything we've done today.

Only one thing left! We just have to finalize the site skin, and then that's it! Get excited!

WOO-HOO! WE CHANGED THE SITE SKIN FINALLY!

That was the part most of us were waiting for, hehe. It may sound silly, but this is actually pretty emotional for a lot of us here. This site means so much to us, and having these old colors back is fantastic. And hey, don't they look great? :D

Well, those are all the updates we have planned. We're done! At least for now. Oh man, oh man, I'm so excited. SO EXCITED. This is great.

So I guess that's all for now. This will probably be the last update in this news thread. If we have more news coming up at a later date, we'll post a new thread in this section. Until next time!