Operation Audacious Phoenix

Over the course of setting up and running a group on RPR I have discovered that there are some restrictions related to the number of pages one can put in a given "slot" and the number of "slots" across the header bar just under the group name.

There's probably a reason that these things were restricted, but I know I'd appreciate the ability to increase either, or both. I'm running a group that plays system games with dice. We have half a dozen DMs running both standard and custom games spread across four systems, with each needing space to display their house rules, setting info etc. It's difficult to efficiently organize all that info when restricted to 10 pages per slot and 5 slots total. My group keeps growing and I'm going to run out of room soon. I suppose I could split things into multiple groups but that is a lot of extra admin work--keeping everything in one place would be easier.

It would also be really nice if the character count for page titles could be increased a little (or perhaps if the typeface scaled to fit the menu, if that's what the issue is?). There's been several instances where just 3-5 more characters would have been perfect...

These are small things, I know. They probably don't seem that important, but I foresee them becoming more of an issue as our group gains traction.

In addition to only have 10 pages per drop down, a group maxes out at 50. This might sound like a whole bunch but when developing a whole world, I cannot tell you how many times I've had to condense and shift stuff around.

In addition to the more characters in titles - while text widgets are supposed to max out at 65,000 characters they simply don't. I get cut off at 63 thousand some odd characters and I know that it is a character issue because once I move a couple of paragraphs into a new text widget, it fixes itself. Either more characters permitted in a text widget or the ability to have more widgets on a page would be immensely helpful!

Big groups need more room. It's kind of like the Genie:

I haven't run into the character limit on text widgets yet, but that's good to know. Thank you for pointing that one out.

It really is just a case of needing ways to organize sprawling info. If it were possible to group forums or make subforms then that info could go there instead, but as it is I already have something like 20+ forums (which are just laid out in a line) and they're difficult for new, incoming players to navigate. Putting world/setting info and such into the group pages makes it easier for new folks to find.

Perhaps some of this can be fixed by a complete CSS overhaul, but I don't know how to do that myself and I'm too swamped to learn it at any significant pace.

The reason you hit 63 thousand is because you use bbcode tags which count as characters too. so in reality you've maxed 65 thousand even if you text previewed is less than that, also each symbol(colons, asterisk and stuff like that also counts as characters)

Oh, I am totally aware that there isn't a way for the system to differentiate characters used for coding and not. However, I am pointing out that it will not reach it's 65,000 character limit in the first place and that it still would supremely lovely for a text widget to be more than 65,000 characters or to have more widgets on a single page.

I think it was mentioned somewhere that subforums are potentially on the menu for 2.0. I don't know that I'd agree that group limits should be lifted -- I have a massive group with over 1k characters and a whole butt ton of worldbuilding, and I've yet to max anything out. More page slots on actual drop menus would be nice for organizing information better, but I can't help but feel like anything more would be overkill for the vast majority of RPR users, and lifting restrictions and restructuring groups for a few would be a hindrance for development. I'd rather see energy and time put elsewhere.

The issue isn't being discussed about players in a group, but instead about vastly huge worlds built from scratch that have a ton of information for the creators to put together. My husband's group is 5 pages from maxing out entirely, all of the information already on those pages is used in roleplays and character creations for other players, and in our forums. The request is placed because there was already an outcry for groups to get some upgrades and tweaking that Kim was originally going to work on a last year but could not do so for some very serious reasons in her personal life and with how old RPR's backbone is.

Groups are a huge importance to the entire site, so putting them back again on the back burner as if they don't matter as much as other features isn't quite fair when they're really important to the community base as a whole. I would love to see improvements on so many parts of the groups themselves along with many other feautres of the site itself which Kim has already completed and I am so looking forward to getting to test out and play with when the new launch happens.

Groups are a huge huge part of this community and deserve just as much attention as everywhere else.

It's more about characters as in the characters I am using to type this message. And while your group has a lot of members, and does use, I think, half of the amount of pages available, there are other large lore groups that can use this.

Time is always a factor when it comes to coding, but when this also has the possibility of giving bigger world groups a home without, as Aine pointed out, learning CSS or learning a system somewhere (aka World Anvil), people can make a world rp group home here on the RPR. Ultimately, this can increase member base and bring in profit via new member epicness, pages being bought, character slots and group epicness, making it potentially profitable in the long run too.

After all, the RPR needs money to run. So this can also make it more feasible, and worthwhile to consider. Making titles 3-5 characters longer shouldn't be a lot to ask for, and more than 10 pages in a drop down, I should hope, would be a reasonable enough ask. Not to mention fixing the bug (at the very least) that cuts off text widgets at 63,000 characters rather than what it is supposed to be: 65,000.

I absolutely understand that not every group (not even every large group) would need such things. It's just the nature of the type of group I have going that we need more places to sub-divide info than most groups probably would (Hades/Demi's excepted of course, I've strolled through their group and it's even more complicated than mine is!)

I would be happy to see this kind of thing behind a pay-wall if needed so that Kim could recoup the effort required. I think that when things start to get this big and complex and we're talking about groups who probably maintain epic status anyway...

I don't mind chipping in for that kind of stuff. It makes the environment run more smoothly and (hopefully) lessens the amount of admin work involved for me personally (as the one who has that role).

This is entirely true! I wouldn't mind an additional paywall behind this either. We've maintained epic status for more than a year now, and we maxed out on page room quite some time ago. It's gotten to a point that we're trying to re-organize and create more room for more information by placing some information specifically on character profiles just to get that extra room for information.

Groups that are large in their forums and by member base are certainly one way about it, and they can be HUGE. Our member base isn't that vast, but the amount of information fleshed out, and still being constantly updated and added to, is growing so fast. Demi puts a lot of work into the world itself, and we're struggling to keep it squished into the living space we have. If we were to require additional paywalls to expand to some more page availability, longer drop down menus, or larger text widgets that would be understandable to us at least.

There could be two styles of epic status within groups themselves. One could be the original epic status and the second could be the upgraded epic status just to give that little bit more back to RPR for letting large worlds/groups use RPR as a hosted home for them.

We've struggled with the idea of moving to a free forum that gives us unlimited building access, unlimited forum numbers, and even allows extensive modifying with plugins and css/html backbones that we can bend and mould to our desires, but RPR is our community's home, and it's much harder to get users to want to come to another platform to continue something they already have a place to exist in. We definitely don't want to do that, especially not this early on.

I've thought for some time that the only way to fit everything in for some groups is to go almost wiki-like. I'm not totally sure how that fits in with the structure we use now is and if any adaptation can be invented to make them go together. I'm definitely thinking about it though.

Given their complexity, the group re-build is probably the last thing I'll do, in the hopes of giving myself time to crack some nuts like this.

With how complex, (I can only imagine how much so), it's something I would gladly wait for, and even help figure bugs out for. Just knowing that some of these things might be a possibility in the future and that you're willing to look at them is, honestly, a bit of a relief.

Thank you, Kim.

I have an update on group page limits:

For a lot of reasons, we're keeping the limit of 5 top level pages, with up to 20 characters in the title.

However, the limit of 9 pages per dropdown is being tentatively lifted, meaning you can have many more pages appear in the group menu via dropdown. You may find that for convenience of utilizing your group interfaces, it is still wise to not add many more than 9 pages to a dropdown at a time. But for now, unless this experiment fails epicly, that will be your business.

But perhaps better than that, I've also added a section for "additional pages" -- this is an unlimited pool of pages that exist outside the group's top level menu function. That means it will be up to you to link to them yourself, but you can have as many as you want.

Regarding the 65,000 character limit for text widgets: that MUST stay in place. It was added because above that number, some networks start dropping data, meaning that some poor souls would discover that once they'd hit "save" their 65,000+ characters of work would not make it to us intact or even arrive completely blank, resulting in their work being hugely damaged or even completely deleted. This is a safety feature sort of like requiring seat belts in cars - it might not save lives, but it saves chunks of novels, that's for sure