Update!

Hello Members!
The update has ended. First, I think that my fellow admins, Eli and Khaat particularly, deserve a round of applause for working on the site for over 12 hours non-stop. It’s been dreadfully dull and time consuming work, but I think in the end we’ve done quite a good job. Many things have changed this time around, so I’ll only point out the major changes.

Theme
As you can see, after almost 18 months, the theme has changed. I’d say it’s about 90% complete, and should be completed within the next couple of days (the sidebar, and some minor color and coding problems will be fixed.) I hope you like the theme. It might take a while to get used to, considering it is PA’s first non-black theme.

Forum Version
Many of the differences in the forum appearance are because I changed the forum version from phbb2 to phbb3. There are many reasons for doing this. Phbb3 is a more advanced version, which means the forum will loud slightly faster now. Additionally, it allows much more CSS and javascript options, as you can see from the accordion under the navbar.

The Accordion
By the accordion, I mean the side-scrolling box under the Welcome Username text under the navbar. This neat little thing details all the recent announcements, events and plot happenings. It also shows the house points and can be customized to show even more. I’m still working on improving it, but it has potential and I hope you like it.

Jobs, Feuding Forces and Claims
Jobs have been completely cleaned up from inactive members or people who were not doing their jobs properly. There are many open positions now, and the first one who posts there will get their position, so GO QUICKLY. We’ve now added an important/challenging jobs list. These jobs need to be filled, but also need to be held by active and responsible members who can manage them properly.

Also, the feuding forces have been edited. The aurors are no longer a faction, but are listed in the Jobs enlistment. The Death Eaters need a new head. In the coming few weeks we’ll be focusing a lot on the factions, so if you haven’t signed up to any, do so now.

Lastly, we’ve edited many of the threads at the claims section.

Hogwarts
While Hogwarts is still not back yet, we have cleaned the whole forum and its ready for when term resumes. We’ve made plans for this year at Hogwarts to be far more fun and eventful than last year. Quidditch will be coming back, and there will be more Dark Followers and Potters Army events. We’re going to be focusing a lot more on classes this year too, so make sure you go sign up for them if you haven’t. Teacher Positions need to be filled by NEXT WEEK.

Oh, and dates. We want to make use of Summer activity, so we’ll start Hogwarts early, around the 18th. Before then, we’ll have a Hogwarts Express event, starting on the 8th. If you don’t have a student character, I highly suggest you make one.


Misc.
The money system may or may not stay. Since it’s Jess’ creation, I haven’t touched it. However, we have deleted several shops that were inactive.

Much time has been spent on cleaning up things. This includes permissions, groups, inactive members, old threads and etc. We’ve also updated the tier list, outdated links and the coding in threads.

We also thought it was a good idea to have a player memorial, so have a look at that in the OOC section.


Also note, this was one of our shorter updates, they usually last nearly two days, but this was around 16 hours, as we were eager to get it up early for you guys. This does mean that we haven’t completed everything 100%, but we’re almost done, and there was no point keeping the site offline while we slept.

And one last thing… I know a couple of you have been disappointed about the decrease in activity here over the last few months. I’m equally frustrated about that, and I’m trying my best to fix it. The thing is, we need your help to make PA as good as it used to be, or even better. So, please, try to be as active as you can be. Take jobs, join classes, participate in events, make more characters, join factions etc. We’re hoping to see a major rise in the post count of August.