Hey All,
Welcome back to RpNation.com, I hope the wait was not too terrible!
The very first thing most of you will notice is that the site is no longer on the forum software called XenForo but instead is now on Invision Power Board. Over the last few years, most of you may have noticed that our announcements went from releasing new content/features to fixing old ones, and this is because XenForo’s third party dev environment is a pretty bad state with developers constantly leaving. This meant for us as a site that most of our features that we purchased or had developed for just us kept losing support, and as the board software pushed out new updates, things would break. That’s right, the issue that was sending the site on a fast track to breaking completely was the inability to properly spend money to have stuff updated and have new features commissioned.
So after discussing it for many months, we decided to tackle the underlying issue instead of spending money on trying to get more stuff fixed and continuing to struggle. We changed the forum software to Invision Power Board, xF’s competition (both excellent pieces of software).
This has accomplished a few things:
- More stable Third Party Dev scene (addons have more support and such).
- IPB is more feature-rich compared to xF and thus as a site we depend less on addons. We went from 50+ to about 8.
- Since the software was changing, it meant we could finally improve upon many of the basic systems that we’d never be able to with xF because they came built into the IPB software, like the editor.
So let’s talk about a few of the new things. I can’t put everything here because it’s such a big update, so expect tutorials, updates, and tips to come from us over the coming days/weeks/months. There will always be something new to write about!
By the way, we encourage all users to write new tutorials for graphics/coding and other content in the new tutorial area, where we will also be writing official site guides. https://www.rpnation.com/tutorials. (This can also be found through a button at the top of the site.)
New Editor:
One of the first, most obvious changes is the editor. The new IPB software does not include a bbcode parser, meaning that coding will NOT work by typing out the code with tags. Instead, you have to use the buttons on the editor.
- Rich Links
- Buttons
- HTML Editor (you won’t see this on the front end since we don’t allow you to use HTML directly, but it makes the editor/posting much faster in terms of site resources).
- Much More!
Visual Updates:
- RpN 5.0: Blue got a ton of tweaks and updates since it was rebuilt from scratch, making it faster to load.
- RpN Dark: This is now live! Go to the bottom of the site to switch to this theme.
- RpN Color Me: This is now live! Go to the bottom of the site to switch to this theme.
- New Favicon in Browser bookmarks/address bar by @welian!
Note: Where available, some things will have a brush icon somewhere at the top allowing you to do things like change the site’s colors.
New RP System:
- This is one of the biggest parts of the update next to changing the actual forum software.
- Users can now make forums (sections) for their RPs. All RPs start with 2 sections (except quests).
- Users can add 3 more for a total of 5.
- Invite System
- Role System (this is fun; it lets you make hidden areas for your Co-Creators and such. Also lets you make said Co-Creators and other roles).
- Logo
- Picture Cover
- Gallery Integration (Creators can enable this feature to let users make albums within the Roleplay instead of just the master site gallery at the top).
- Much much more.
The RP system is too big an update to talk about here but we will be posting tutorials and more announcements about this soon. The best way to learn more about it is to create your own RP
!Coding:
Most bbcode effects are built into the editor, like Image Floating. Those that are not, are available as buttons like sub- and superscript, sticky notes, accordions and tabs. Not every code is available right now and the above ones are only in their basic form. The RpN Code Suite will be its own update coming in the next few weeks. As this is bigger than even the RP system/forum software change, I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to some of you.
Much More:
The new software also comes with its own features/enhancements, like a better PM system, Profile Covers, Tools, etc. This can all be discovered by exploring and we will be making tutorials and tips as the days pass.
Note:
In the backend, the site is undergoing something called “Rebuilding” which will take several days to complete. While this is happening, the search system will mostly be unfunctional and if it’s anything like XenForo, that means you won’t be able to see your content in your profile. (Don’t hold me to that, I’m not a IPB master just yet.) This also means that old quotes in posts and such will not display properly until the rebuild is done. I’m not one hundred percent sure what else this affects, but the creators of the software have reached out to me and assured me we don’t need to keep the offline for the few days/week-long process of rebuilding, it just means users will have to put up with a bit of untidiness across the site in posts. I want to thank everyone for their patience, everyone who donated to make this possible, and everyone who managed to keep this a secret for the months it took to set this up.
I want to thank the admin team:
@Ghan for being our system admin and taking care of us for almost a decade now! He performed a server update for us a week or two before the update. I know this is a little late now since it was on July 29, but happy system admin day! Without you, we wouldn’t be here as a community today.
@Captain Hesperus, for all the work he does, this man, or cat, is a 1000 cats. Seriously, thank you.
And to our new Admins who got promoted during this update from mods:
@Kaerri, thank you so much for joining us and basically entering the fight immediately and learning on the go. You helped speed up this process significantly.
@Gilzar, like Kaerri, thank you for everything you did, man, I never want to see another badge again (at least until our glorious artists finish the next one
)!Seriously, thank you all.
To our Mods:
I want to also thank @Anomaly, @DemonKitten, @DrTrollinski, @Ghost, @KamiKahzy, @Kestrel, @Meredith, @RubyRose, @Sunkissed, and @welian for everything they did and will be doing in the coming weeks in getting everything back in order. Be nice to them, they will be moving your RPs to the new system!
I also wanted to welcome and thank our two new moderators, who joined after Kaerri and Gilzar ascended to Adminship.
And on an ending note I want to thank @Pine for everything he’s done during his time on The Administration. Due to IRL/School, Pine has opted to take a break from the site and will be returning at a future date.
If you have any questions/feedback/concerns please post below.
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