Posted by Kim on December 31, 2012, 7:27pm
Before we enter 2013, let's look back at how far the site has come in 2012 and relive the highlights!January
We started the year under strict orders to have a Happy 2012.
How did you all do?
There were lots of new features in January! Notifications were changed so that they automatically checked for new updates every few minutes, preventing the need for users to reload their home pages over and over again. Plus, the new page management interface was released, making it possible to have subpages and drop down menus on character profiles for the first time!
But it wasn't all fun features. A lot of January was devoted to combat malicious bot attacks that were causing us intermittent downtime. Finally, at the end of the month, our host at the time suffered a 16 hour service outage, leaving us dead in the water for a full day.
We had a town hall meeting to discuss what to do at that point. It was obvious we'd outgrown our server, but the financial state of the site meant it would have been a major stretch to leave right then.
As a community, we decided to stick with our server a few more months while we raised the money to move, but the most astonishing thing about the experience is that during the entire experience, not a single person lost their temper, pointed a finger of blame, or made demands. Instead, every message that I received during the outage had one central theme: How can we help?
It was an outpouring of support and love beyond even the high standards I have come to expect from all of you. So even though I never want it to happen again, in a way I was glad that the server was damaged and had to spend that day in repair. It put us through our first major trial together, and I felt closer to all of you because of it.
February
With the attacks and downtime behind us, we were back to fun features!
New options were introduced to the forum chat, including volume control, preventing the scroll to the bottom when new messages are received, and two options for how the chat is formatted.
We also introduced name change tokens for the first time in February 2012.
Group applications also got a tune up. Groups could bar applications based on age, approve/deny applications en masse, when a group application is accepted or rejected the applicant gets a PM about it, and completed applications that had previously been accepted or rejected were made accessible for later review.
March
Group profile layouts received a HUGE remodel!
The new design was:
- more reliable across different devices and screen sizes
- easier to maintain
- easier to navigate
- generally better organized
- eliminated the issue of sidebars being a completely different height than the page content.
April
We celebrated our 2nd birthday with a grand adventure!
Users submitted battle cries, and more than 40 volunteer RPR characters were 3D modeled and starred in our birthday video. Check out this cast photo:
From left to right: Zenthus, Viral, Ulrin, Roll, Scrii, Tige, Rikoki, Njordalfr, Grimdad, Iphis, Jihan, Gabriel, Abby Sanders, Celica, Aelin, Edward, Kyle, Raiden, Minda, Amnestria, Arlo, S'Daza, Zalia, Safiye, Lord Darth Angelus, Experience, Carmilla, Astarill, Anyanka, Breccan, Leanay, Cartier, Sitta, Liethal, Rhaetia, Shojah and Volvoreta, Gen-Rah, West and soaring above them all is Heimdall.
This video series was created by Darth_Angelus as a gift to the entire community for our second birthday, and cost him months of gruelingly hard work. We couldn't have asked for a more stupendous gift.
There were contests, prizes, celebrations, and so many templates.
Heimdall was the artist behind the elemental series of templates released during Epic Week. Kudos, Heimdall!
May
We made our move to our new server, and quickly learned that it was in fact a Server with a big personality. Within days, it showed us that it fit right in with the rest of us, and obsessively hoarded trivia. Despite a rocky start as our nerdly Server got used to playing host to so many, it's been a dream host for us all the way up to the present, and I look forward to many more years with it.
Dice rolls were updated! In May 2012, you could suddenly roll up to ten different pools of dice at once, add modifiers, and add comments.
We also got new genre mascots for our front page!
It's busy. It's overflowing with wildly disparate genres, artistic styles, subjects and color palettes. And somehow, they all still play together despite their differences. And that's the true magic of the RPR, and the whole point of a genre jumble image in the first place.
From left to right, back to front:
- RPR Dragon by Wizard
- Space Diver by m1blue
- Period Gangster by Ethelle
- Barbarian Warrior by Heimdall
- Alien Overlord by Frangod
- Fae by Copper_Dragon
- Dracat by Shenzi
- Elven Princess by Amirrora
- "Pointy Hat" Wizard by Wizard
- Corgi Robin Hood by Shenzi
- Red Panda Furre by Jello_Monsta
June
Kim became very ill for quite some time, and the site was briefly controlled by the dark moderators of the Sith.
July
We invented the holiday "Moderator Appreciation Day" and celebrated it on the RPR -- and the holiday was even picked up and celebrated by several other sites out there on the interwebs! Our moderators are SO hard working, and very rarely receive thanks for all that hard work, so we felt it was important to make sure that they got recognized.
A bunch of new features were added relating to how you control the emails you get about subscribed forum topics, what you see in your notifications, and more.
Kudos widgets on character profiles were changed to allow you to enter kudos directly into them, right then and there.
Some subtle layout changes were made to try and take better advantage of screen real estate.
The Server asked our players to help it reclaim its lost trivia collection, then wrote everyone who helped out some very, uhm... interesting personalized poems.
August
Kim moved to a new city, and the RPR's mailing address changed. Did you know you can send us real life cards, drawings and knickknacks? You totally can.
The RP Repository
P.O. Box 14233
Portland, OR 97214
If you send us something hand-written or handmade, I'm very likely to feature it in the news!
October
We saw a changing of the guards on the RPR. Dylan and Sherlock stepped down as mods so they could spend more time attending to the wonderful and exciting developments in their lives. I'm still enormously grateful for their service! In their place, Copper_Dragon and Loki stepped up to join the moderation team.
October was heavily devoted to developing new systems to help the mods be better at what they do. In the past, we had a small user base and so few problems that it was easy for mods to keep up. Now, with thousands of people using the site on a weekly basis, it can be a strain for five people to provide all the assistance, gentle reminders, and keep track of what's-what that a large site needs. So we gave them a slew of new tools to help them seek out rule breaking, users questions that need answering, and to coordinate their efforts. With the moderators better prepared for our steadily increasing population, we can look forward to keeping that lovin' feeling alive on the forums for a long time to come.
We also took a look at the history of Marie Antoinette, and added four new templates inspired by her legacy.
Finally, we had a super fun IC "trick or treat the forums" event for Halloween.
Speaking of Halloween, there were two Halloween inspired templates as well!
November
There was a major Server upgrade during November, and a lot of behind the scenes planning for December...
December
We had a chat party in our OOC chat to celebrate Kim's birthday.
We also celebrated the Festival of Being Excellent to Each other. That's the time of the year where we work to harness our holiday spirit to tune up our community, becoming closer friends and making sure those bonds stay strong and drama free for a good long time to come. This year, we acknowledged that it's impossible to spend weeks, months or years with someone and not eventually have a problem of some form, and we discussed ways to deal with those problems in ways that make us all better friends instead of ruffling feathers.
Comments
Making that anniversary video was one of the highlights of the year for me
2012 was an amazingly good year for me, one of the best I can remember, and a lot of it was thanks to RP Repository come to think of it.
TO THE FUTURE!
TO THE FUTURE!
What an exciting year this has been for the RPR! Here is to hoping that 2013 is even better than before, and that we keep up this wonderful land of RP awesomeness for a long time to come! 
Happy New Year, everyone!
Happy New Year, everyone!
Happy New Year, RPR. So many fun things happened in 2012, but I know that 2013 will be even better 
I this summary so much. So many great things happened in 2012! I hope 2013 will be just as awesome, if not more awesome.
this summary so much. So many great things happened in 2012! I hope 2013 will be just as awesome, if not more awesome.
Pirate
January 1, 2013
3:05am
Now for the first cheesy one liner of the year.
To infinity, and beyond!