1. Veterans now have purple names to match their banners. (I'm honestly envious of the purple. ) 2. Now, only your highest-ranked banner displays under your avatar. Mine says Webmaster; Will's and Fcg's will say Moderator. Otherwise, Veteran's banner trumps Regular's, and Regular's trumps Newcomer's. 3. A newly-registered member will now automatically be a Newcomer, and have the appropriate banner. I'm not sure why this wasn't the case before. 4. You can now click on the circular Library button up top to see the new Library in the works. The previous page that button lead to is (temporarily) still visible at: hyrulecastle.org/library_previous 5. Linked text is now slightly darker, to help it stand out a bit from normal text. (The text color is shared with things like the clickable forum names, so I was hesitant to make it much darker than it is now.) 6. All three subforums of Treasure Creation were merged into Treasure Creation itself; the forum was renamed to Treasure Ideas; Treasure Ideas was made a subforum of Suggestions & Ideas. I intend to go through everything in there while building the new Library. 7. The threads previously categorized in "Completed X" or "Dead X" subforums have been locked, and moved to their respective parent forums. It was agreed that the Completed/Dead subforums cluttered the site. Despite that, moving the threads to a separate Archive would cause the parents' displayed discussion/thread count to plummet. So, I felt this was the best solution. The respective Completed/Dead subforums were deleted. 8. The forums have been slightly reorganized, several forums and categories have seen minor renaming for more uniform nomenclature and to sound more professional. Video Game Discussion was merged into General Discussion; Role-Play Discussion has moved into the Community category; RP Regulars' Discussion has been removed; Official Hyrule Castle Contests was merged into Announcements; the Current Events subforum of the Quest Bureau was removed; Small Updates was made separate from Announcements, rather than a subforum of it; etc. While HH is still in place, HH characters have been moved in with other Accepted Characters instead of having their own subforum. (Unlike my original suggestion, I didn't delete the Zelda Discussion forum... as it didn't feel quite right not having Zelda discussion on a Zelda RP site.) tl;dr - None of the above significantly affects anything you're doing.
9. I've edited the banner-links. The text (and the appropriate links) for Home, Forums, About, Contact, Affiliation, and Community (aka cbox) were removed. Most of the links were outdated, and several were redundant. Of the six circle buttons, the three leftmost have remained the same. The three rightmost have changed. "Enroll" has become the new "Community" (aka Shoutbox); "Timeline" has become the new "Affiliates"; "Tutorial" has become the new "About." The giant blue Midna's "Community Forums" link is still there as our main forum link, accessible from any page. What was on the Timeline page (still viewable at http://hyrulecastle.org/timeline/) will be incorporated into the Lore pages. The Tutorial link has always been a blank page, with the only two words on it being "Character Creation"; I intend to write a separate guide within the forums. Considering there's a big "Register Here" to the right of the forum index when you're not signed in, the Enroll button seemed silly. Admittedly, the reddish-brown bar below Midna and the circular buttons feels a little empty, now that everyone's accustomed to seeing text there. Does anyone have recommendations for what should replace the old links? 10. hyrulecastle.org now redirects to forums.hyrulecastle.org 11. Sub-accounts have been disabled, due to the majority vote against their inclusion. They can be toggled back on later, if the need arises. tl;dr - Sub-accounts are gone. Click on Midna to go back to the forum index.
12. The About page is finally filled out, thanks to Quill. The appropriately-labeled circle button up top leads to it. His draft was put up, crediting him as the author, with a small afterword listing my email address, letting anyone know who to contact (for things like legal issues, which hopefully won't happen).
13. The site's software has been updated from PHP3 to PHP5, increasing the functionality of MediaWiki and letting xenForo run more smoothly. This upgrade strangled caused one small graphical glitch only visible to Admins, but I managed to fix that easily enough. 14. Not that this is a "fix," but we have a new emoticon: : thumbsup:, : up:, or : oncie:, minus the space. Side-note: Your browser's cache might not display and link the banner appropriately. This should be fixed by your browser overtime, or can be overcome with a simple hard-refresh (ctrl+F5 in the typical browser).
I believe new members were supposed to create a character (and have it approved) before they could get the Newcomer banner (and therefore be allowed to participate in the main Rps.
Yes, I believe you're correct. Despite that, moving a member to Newcomer requires an admin's action. It's an extra step that doesn't seem necessary, as I doubt anyone will start trying to RP before he or she even has an accepted character.
The reason people weren't immediately in "Newcomer" was because I was attempting to take the site into duality with Discussion and RP, as there would have been two separate groups. Now that the focus is solely RP, having the default as Newcomer is excellent and appropriate. Also, I just wanted to note that the "Enroll" button was supposed to be filled out with Character Creation information, and not simply to register on the forums. I had pretty big plans for it, including links to pages for each race etc... But that never happened, so it is appropriate that it was removed.
