Site Updates! (3/20 - 3/22)

[crazier_than_most]

Major Update: 1/2/23

Took some time, but I figured out how to modify some icons that I never figured I could. May have broken the site once or twice tweaking stuff but hey, it's a learning process!

What was changed:

• Take a look at your header at the top of the page! Custom icons are now placed for your aesthetic convenience. (For desktop mode)
• Banner styling
  • Any staff member will see that a new crown has been put into place for your staff banner!
• New background picture added / changed the default type
  • For some reason, our website performance is telling me that our image is 'stretched' out too much and may cause site delays - whereas the other pictures at the same size do not affect us at all. It only reports the home page default for some odd reason.
    • **Note: I'm aware that the banner does take a bit to load, and I've been figuring out how to fix this.
    • Also, the 'fade' option you see in the background apparently hurts our site performance too but every time I try changing it, the site design just goes south very quickly.
• Better navigation
  • One thing I was noticing, the 1x1 rps and Group rps icons didn't really specify which rp category the user posted in, so I changed those icons to reflect the one listed on the home page. Hopefully this will make it easier to figure out where the user posted rather than changing the description of 1x1 Fantasy RPS etc. Just to keep things nice and short.
• About the site colors
  • Personally, I love a dark user interface. But I am aware some colors may be hard to read. If this is an issue, please don't be afraid to let me know under Site Suggestions and any other queries you have can be posted there!
• Email is finally back!
  • I am so happy that email confirmation does not go into spam anymore, but I have noticed that mass emails sent do go into 'promotion' tabs on gmail.com and I have no clue if that's avoidable or not. Needless to say, anything email related, I will try not to touch because I break a lot of stuff lol.
  • Also, new email addresses for 'contact' and 'no reply' will be made and implemented soon, so be on the lookout for that!
• Bot enforcement/cleaner
  • I've implemented a new add-on to our website that will hopefully prevent bots from signing up, but sometimes these don't work. If you see something suspicious, report it and it will be reviewed by our staff asap.

What's to come:

• There will be a site update from our cloud hosting server on January 7th 12:00 CT. I am also aware things to our website may or may not be broken afterwards and I'll definitely be on the lookout for this, so that our website continues to run semi smoothly without any further issues than it already has.
• More site styling:
  • If it's anything site related, how things look and appear, believe me, I will be on top of it. So if you notice minor tweaks here and there, it's just me messing with the admin panels.
  • Sometimes I do make the board inactive to handle these things but sometimes I forget I left it off so in case point, I'm just..going to keep the board active and if the site temporarily bugs, just know it was me! I usually revert my changes asap so don't freak lol.

With that being said, and a very long winded update, I will officially be back into the rp scene tomorrow as much as possible! Obviously I work like any other on here so my replies will be spaced but my activity will resume normally.

Thank you for reading and I'll catch you all later!

~Craze~

 

[crazier_than_most]

Update: 1/5/23

• The site has had more appearance changes! I've been meticulously seeing what works, what doesn't etc. In the future when more things are added (if) I'll obviously tweak the colors here and there but for the most part I believe everything is readable, which is nice. Also changed the font size for easier readability on the screen of computers since I know not everyone uses the mobile layout on their phones.
  • Overall I'm pretty happy with how things are looking atm, and I think I'm pretty much set in the final design of the Mansion. I hope you guys like it!
    • Again, please tell me if anything is unreadable or broken, sometimes I won't come across it until later, so I'd appreciate the help
• Cleaning up the user interface:
  • I decided that some times things get too busy and I reduced what was going on. Don't worry your posts are still here! Just moved for easier accessibility.

Update: 1/6/23

• There's a home page now!! It took too goddamn many site breaking to figure it out lol. Tbh I should have turned the board inactive for that. I think for major site adjustments and not just design elements I'll turn the site to maintenance mode from now on.
• What's New:
  • Home Page Elements:
    • Featured Thread Widget: Features threads of Admin's Choosing, Showcasing a number of threads for guests and users to take a read on! (As of right now they are our most tame threads, lol)
    • Latest Posts: Those who have posted recently will be featured here, this is also found on our Forum Page
    • Who's Online and New Members, along with Site Statistics. These are also listed on our Forum Page but I may take these away due to them being on the home page now. But I'll decide about that down the line.

With that being said, I don't think anything will be added to the home page at this moment. We'll see XD I have to keep you guys wondering if the site will look different or not within the time span of 24 hours!

 

[crazier_than_most]

Update 1/12/2023:

• Minor tweaks to user bar at the top of the page -
  • Admins/Mods get a cool little ‘tool’ icon that thankfully does away with the bar cluttering up the theme space. (*if mod controls are whack please pm me asap and I’ll fix it)
  • Background style chooser has turned from a slider icon to a pen icon!
  • Spoiler: Mobile Example

    
    (I know it looks like a lot in the mobile but it ads functionality to which I’m not complaining about lol, might get rid of the extra ‘forum’ icon but I’ll have to see how to do it first.
• What’s to come:
  • Avatar styling— Online/offline indicator: hopefully some implementation of who’s online (green) and who’s offline (red/greyed out) I’m currently figuring out how to do this so please be advised it may look weird during some refreshes of the page!
  • Few minor tweaks to widgets on the side of the forum/ some phrase editing, i.e. ‘Post Reply’ turned to ‘Send’ only in conversation view in the pms. And hopefully some better indication of read notifications rather than the default dot! So be on the look out!

 

[crazier_than_most]

Small Update 1/26/23:

• A Last Post preview was implemented, if hovered over the date of the last post. Normally it was only showing the first post if you hovered over the name of the thread. Here's an image to show:
  Spoiler: Last Post Shown Hover

  

I also will try implementing more features in the future, as well as a 'different theme' for those who do not prefer dark themes. So there will be a light theme as well coming sometime, so be on the lookout for that!

Another small update: 1/27/23

• Take a look at the logo! Originally I was going to do a major overhaul of it but I actually like this other idea I had better. Don’t worry, the orange logo still exists as it’ll be implemented in the ‘daytime’ mode of the mansion when the site gets a second color theme. So the purple one you see is exclusively for ‘Night’ mode! You’ll be able to access the different style soon located at the bottom of your page
  Spoiler: Style Chooser

  

 

[crazier_than_most]

Big update: 2/5/23

• Take a look around and notice that our colors have changed from gold to purple! This is in theme with the ‘Night’ version of the mansion.
  • The glow effects around the main forum page has changed to a violet as well!
• Our new online indicators are a glow effect around your avatar, rather than just a boring green dot. I fixed it on mobile too so it translates well.
• Some icons have been replaced for the forum page, if you took notice
• And again our logo has the official night theme to it. For the daytime theme I may make it a lighter blue? I’m not sure if I want to go back to the gold. Let me know your thoughts!

Anyways, that’s all for now! Again, any suggestions/critiques are appreciated and welcomed

 

[crazier_than_most]

Small update: 2/7/23

• Okay. Tried messing around and making a lighter theme and the colors were UGLY. Ugh, I hate light theme so much. So, instead, I opted for different colors for the website hover effects/ logo color theme and so forth. We now have two separate colors, blue and purple. I may throw in a golden one or something soon and if I do I'll post the update here and at our discord server!
  • **note: If you still haven't joined our discord server for direct communication with your fellow rp'ers and staff, I highly suggest you do so to keep in the loop!
• As always, you can change the colors down at the bottom of the page using this:
  Spoiler: Theme Chooser

  

Another Small Update: 2/15/23

So, I know a lot of people may or may not like to post their featured works (like books you've written on wattpad and such), and I know I really wanted to, so I made a separate category/forum to do so! Go check it out here!

 

[crazier_than_most]

Big Update: 3/20-3/22

So, I've been meticulously working here and there in and out of the background and here is what has happened over the course of a few days.

• New Site theme is up and running, a twist to your banner and site colors called (Rust) for now. Perhaps will change name down the line. Anyways, the new banner and colors can be found like always down in the bottom of the page far left (the paint icon). This new Rust theme will be our set default theme. But don't worry, blue and purple themes still exist! I may down the line (soon) add a gold theme so be on the lookout for that Here's what the new banner looks like:
  Spoiler

  
• New tweaks here and there to the site:
  • Icons added to your user profile card:
    Spoiler

    
  • New post views and replies to the top of your threads:
    Spoiler

    
  • When you hover over someone's user name, you can now see two new things added, all content made by user, or all threads made by user :
    Spoiler

    
    • I am trying to figure out how to make this more readable but until then it will stay this way
  • There's a new captcha thing added for new users when signing up (to prevent further bots infiltrating our Mansion) :
    Spoiler

    
  • And finally a watermark uploaded for us to put over our images (I believe it will only affect new images going forth, unless you delete other photos and reupload them. (I am trying to figure how to apply it to all current images atm but...it may take some time (*I'm not even sure it's working tbh but it's meant to look like this)
    Spoiler

    
    • Obviously it's just something crude and a filler for until i make a legit watermark (unless this works) but eh idk lol

Some more things to note:

• Still working on getting the word out there that we exist, and I've submitted our site on Top Roleplay Sites, and you can vote daily I'm assuming, and here's the link: Vote for the Mansion!
  • If by some reason the link isn't working lemme know and I'll figure it out asap.
• Working still on our subreddit to try to bring in more traffic as well and if you guys could join that subreddit it would be very appreciative! Here's that link: By the Fireplace (Subreddit)
  • All the posts are by me so far (aka jc_time) so if you guys joined, and posted and started to gain traction that would be great! I look forward to seeing you guys there!

Well, that was a long, winded update. I hope I didn't miss anything.... I'm sure I did lol. Either way, I hope you guys have a fantastic rest of your day/ or a good rest of your evening- don't forget to take mental breaks in between your rps whenever needed! We care about our members mental health ~~ And as always, any critiques/suggestions are welcomed! Let me know and I'd be happy to hear them!

(anyways I'll switch to mobile and start replying to threads!)

Small Update: 3/22/23

I replaced the art gallery with a testing lab! This forum is free range for anything and posts here do not count towards user's total message count. I replaced the art gallery because I realized when you upload a personal media album, the category did not show those. And, I don't really know how to do so, so I came up with a solution!

 

[crazier_than_most]

Small update: 3/23/23

There's a new RP Mansion (Blue) Themed Banner! Go check it out - located at the bottom of your page for the style chooser~

Spoiler

Here's what the new banner looks like! (There will be a new RP Mansion (Purple) coming soon too so be on the lookout for that!

Spoiler