Posted by Kim on March 27, 2016, 2:47pm
Thank you to everyone who joined me for this month's office hours. I love seeing all your smiling faces! Here's the questions that came up during this month's office hours, and the answers they received:How many events are planned for Epic Week? Is it gonna be the biggest and bestest one evers?
Aha! Why yes, it will be the biggest and bestest one yet!
We have five confirmed contests so far, in addition to the week-long overarching plot, which itself will consist of between 3 and 5 games (depending on how you count them!)
Epic week games of course involve a great deal of teamwork and community involvement -- each game moves the plot forward in related but different ways, and we'll need everyone pulling together to get through safely to the other end!
What are the plans for this Epic Week? Is it going to be similar to last year, with riddles and stuff, or be another theme entirely?
You will see many strong similarities between this year's epic week and last year's. There will be some combat. There will be some riddles. But the portals have been sealed for good.
what sort of contests can we expect from Epic Week?
Epic Week has two contests that are always dependable: The Genre Jumble Art Contest, in which artists choose a genre of RP and then invent and draw a mascot character for that genre. It's how we get the new jumble of characters for our homepage every year. You can see some examples here: http://www.rprepository.com/community/newspost.php?post=340
We also have the Spread the Love raffle, where to enter, you just have to post to social media something about why you play on the RPR.
There's also always at least one writing based contest, and we'll definitely be having one this year too! The topic for essays has been selected, but you'll have to wait for it to be announced.
There's at least two more, but you'll have to wait for the others to be announced.
Will there ever be a feature to ignore a thread even if you have friends that post in it?
Let's say someone uses forums for roleplay rather than PMs. Would there be an option to ignore the updates from that thread without unfriending the person?
Actually, you can already ignore RP threads that you aren't involved in.
Go to the homepage, and then in the sidebar, look for the heading "filters" Click the pencil next to the filter "All"
You can then uncheck "IC Forum Posts (That I'm not subscribed to) Show posts on IC forums by my friend's characters, even if I'm not involved in the RP"
RP threads can generate a crapton of responses in a short period of time, which can really clog up your notifications. I definitely recommend turning that option off if you're having trouble with seeing too many RPs you aren't involved in.
With the Birthday message you send people using one of our own characters, how do you do it and how do you choose? The character, I mean.
I am soooo glad you asked that. I love the birthday messages. Basically, the Server makes a sincere attempt to figure out which of your characters has been your favorite over the past year. It goes through and looks at everything you've done with your characters, and gives each one a score. A character can get points for things such as having an icon, points for each of the images in its gallery, points for how many RP posts you've made with it this year, and more. At the end, the character with the highest tally will be the one who sends you your birthday message.
Kim, will RPR ever be on the moon?
Our moderator Darth_Angelus produces a sci-fi web series called Chronicles Of Humanity, set in the future. In that web series it is clearly possible to see in the background, billboards and shipping crates all labeled with the RPR logo and various mascot characters. So I think we have clear documentary evidence from the future that we will be all over the galaxy.
Will you consider adding a poll feature to the site?
I would be very happy for the site to get polls as a feature. I think it's one of those things that would be very useful, but is just far enough away from the core mission of the site that it gets lower priority than other projects such as revamping the character wizard.
I think groups especially would benefit from polling, though.
whereabouts is the PO box address again?
http://www.rprepository.com/help/faq#12 Behold!
Kim, any chance of writing-based contests only on the epic-week? Was thinking about writing 'challenges' or 'games' too. (Like those in the Halloween and meet-cutes.)
There's always a writing contest. It's been some time since we did a RP prompt as part of epic week, though, as epic week tends to focus on OOC bonds and celebrations, and honestly, the mods are usually super duper busy with making sure those parts are running well. We've got lots of other events for stirring up RP, though.
Will the many headed cyborg dragon make a grand return?
I've recently sent a message to the dragon ranch where the Many Headed Cyborg Dragon has been convalescing since last epic week, asking if they think it'll be well enough to join us this year, and maybe have some birthday cake and meet the community in a less confrontational fashion. I'm still waiting for a response, but I'll make sure you guys are the first to know as soon as I hear from them!
Kim, what plans do you have for the site infrastructure, if any? I recall you saying that there were many (planned) upgrades to the site - such as the character template update - did that necessitate any major changes behind the scenes? I ask only from a developer and pc geek standpoint out of curiosity, not to assess security flaws or anything like that.
The character template update mostly uses the same infrastructure as before, though the code and the CSS has all obviously been rewritten. I did access a website screenshotting API as well, in order to provide thumbnail previews of custom templates that members had made, which delighted me.
In terms of future infrastructure changes -- I think the biggest one on the horizon is that I'd like to bring the RPR into the era of cloud computing. Our membership and the demands on Server grow every month, and we definitely experience some growing pains. Having certain behaviors handled by a team of computers rather than just one dedicated workhorse machine would make us better able to handle sudden spikes in usage, as well as the steady growth of the community in general. Notifications are a prime candidate for this kind of handling.
I also see more changes to how we handle emails on the back end in the near future, though I doubt many people will notice that other than me and Server.
Really, most of these types of changes will be invisible to most members save for the site will just be less laggy, bit by bit.
When will the default CSS for custom mobile templates come out?
About two weeks ago! But very quietly. The starter CSS for custom template creators who want to make their templates more mobile friendly is here: http://www.rprepository.com/help/custom-templates#384
I'm really excited to see what custom template creators do with it. Some members have really been pushing the bounds of technical and artistic possibility when it comes to custom character templates, and I hope this sparks even more innovation, and allows for those masterpieces to be enjoyed on mobile too.
Kim, is RPR self sustainable for the most part? Our community, dear as it is, seems like it is forever expanding. Have you thought about adding incentives besides epic membership members could get? LIKE MEMBER TITLES CAUSE I'D DISH OUT SWEET LOADS OF CASH FOR THAT
This is a great question, and I am so thankful to be asked.
The RPR pays its own hosting expenses, and has a small budget for hiring artists and template designers, running events, and the like. At present, our income has kept pace with our growth juuust enough that I'm not living in fear of how I'm going to keep Server on, and I am able to put a little money away to save for the next set of upgrades we'll undoubtedly need.
It isn't self-sustainable in terms of labor, however. By that I mean that although I often put in 20+ hours of work on the RPR around my day job, I don't make a cent back. I'm also not able to offer any kind of stipend to the mods, who also frequently put in huge amounts of time and effort on a volunteer basis. Both they and I are laboring out of love for the community.
Members who have been around for awhile have probably heard me fantasizing about the RPR getting to the point where it can be my day job on a semi-regular basis! Think about all the cool stuff we could have and do if the RPR were my full time job, instead of the thing I did on evening and weekends when I wasn't too exhausted. Ooooh the amazingness!
In regards to other stuff we could offer for cash money aside from Epicness, we certainly offer a number of à la carte perks for those who don't want a monthly bill, including permanent extra characters slots, more pages, name change tokens, etc.
We've also of late started selling more decorative/collectible/gift items, like flowers or butterflies trapped in enchanted orbs, that can look great on a profile. These things help to shore up our monthly budget.
I've considered offering other perks such as special frames for user icons that people could use on forums. I might also mull over titles now, though obviously we'd have to have some restrictions, like no changing your title to "moderator"
I would be very happy to hear other ideas that people have for things they'd like to spend their money on on the RPR!
That'd be great if you got to that point, though I'm not entirely sure how we as the users could help with that, besides making a purchase here and there and tell likeminded friends about RPR. But besides that, is there anything we could do to help as members?
Also a fantastic question! If you're not able to support the site by becoming an Epic member, you can help us grow by telling your friends about us. Post about why you like us on your blog, facebook, twitter, whatever! If you make those posts public, you may even help us rank higher on Google when someone just does a search for "forum RP" or whathave you.
Another thing you can do to help the site: Welcome new members on the introductions board. I track what makes people more likely to become long-term community members, and getting a warm welcome from lots of people is one of the single most important factors in turning someone from a drive-by lookieloo registration into a diehard fan.
Comments
Arianrhod
March 26, 2016
6:44pm
Wait, there are art contest on this site? 
Kim
March 27, 2016
8:43am