Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26270049-20150502104405

Yo, so for those of you who haven't noticed because you never check the main page or whatever, I updated it yesterday to a completely new format. (Seriously, go check it out, it's awesome.) With the new page, I added a few features.

Featured characters stay on the main page for longer: More additions to featured stuff: Upcoming events are in plain view on the main page, and anyone can add them Lumblr Network updates are now on the main page As far as I can remember, this is pretty much all that was changed. I hope you guys like the features (and use the two other ones) and I hope that people might spend a little bit more time on the main page as it's more frequently updated. I also also hope this encourages everyone to use Lumblr Network a little bit more frequently than it currently is.
 * Instead of just one featured character gif on the main page, I've instead updated it to also have a space for the featured characters from the previous three months. I figured that this makes it fairer for characters who get featured in a short month (including months where Mini just forgot to update the main page).
 * Given that wiki awards are coming up, I might be able to squeeze in a section for character awards if people would like that, probably along the bottom of the page, although I'll have to experiment around with that. If I do a section without pictures, we might be able to fit in all the awards, but just suggest what you want with regards to that.
 * I've also taken away the avatar of the featured user, but at times it seemed pretty useless anyway, with people changing their avatar several times in the month they're featured. I did try putting it in but it just didn't fit in the theme.
 * Obviously there's nothing new on there at the moment because nothing has been voted on, but thanks to the new layout, it is so much easier to add new featured categories, so if you've been following the featured stuff thread, I said that there was a new addition for Featured RP and Featured Lumblr Network.
 * I figured that Featured RP would be an interesting addition because it's a recommended RP to read and it obviously would lead more people to read some of the plot lines that are happening around the wiki. Conditions for this are that the RP can be written by however many people, but it just has to be completed before it's nominated and also should be reader friendly, so not an RP with a content warning.
 * Featured Lumblr Network is also designed so that people get more into developing their characters' Lumblr Networks (there's another new feature for Lumblr Networks which I'll cover in a minute, or more if you're a slow-average speed reader). The idea is that a Lumblr Network with lots of posts or funny posts or whatever, that has been recently updated within the past month (so no, Lumblr Network:Jack Knight is not eligible, sadly) get nominated and featured on the main page.
 * Does your character have a birthday party coming up and you want people to see it when they arrive at the wiki? Are you thinking of organizing a wiki-wide event and you want everyone to be able to find it even if you can't highlight threads? Good news, read the title.
 * On the main page, in the top of the right column (underneath the ad if you don't have adblocker enabled) you'll notice a new box where you can see events, and at the bottom of that list of upcoming events, is a convenient little link which will take you directly to the page you edit to add your event to it. Make sure you have a thread for it on the Roleplaying News & Events board, and then provide a link, date & title of the event for everyone to see. Click publish and it's done. It's there. Even better is you don't have to worry about accidentally stretching out the page because it'll just scroll if it gets too long.
 * When I say Lumblr Network updates, I don't mean updates to the coding which will annoy you because you have to change stuff around. I mean stuff like whether someone posted a status, left a comment on someone's wall or changed relationship status. If you look at the bottom right hand corner, you can already see an example of this working.
 * Again, at the bottom of the list, there's a link that will take you to the page to edit, where you follow the instructions (conveniently on that page) and add your updates to the top of the page. If the page gets a bit too long, just remove the oldest updates from the bottom of the page. Easy as.
 * I know it's a bit of a pain to do this manually, and you don't have to unless you want to, but the only other option I could get to work would revert to just showing regular wiki activity after a few minutes and didn't actually say what was changed on the page, so this is a whole lot better in that regard.

Any feedback, comments or compliments are greatly appreciated. 