Changes!

Hello everyone!

You may have noticed, there have been some changes happening around the site.   Let me bring you up to date.

Activity

10 days ago, I ran a behind-the-scenes activity check on the whole site.  Any character whose account hadn't been logged into since January 1 this year was made inactive.

It applied to everyone, including me (I lost half of my characters) and the other admins.

Usually when we do an activity check, we give you a warning, and we end up with a lot of characters getting saved, when they are not really active at all, and should be let go.  This leads to people having a cast of characters they can't keep track of, don't have muse for, and that are taking up claims that other members want.

I'm not gonna lie.  Right now, Potter's Army is really slow, verging on dead.  Every day I log in and the only new posts are from other sites advertising.  We need to kickstart the site's activity with characters who are actually active in order to keep this site alive and attract new members.

So I have a challenge for you.  Rather than racing over to the character creation forum right now, keep the characters you still have active for 1 month.  Then, at the end of that month, decide whether you want to add any more characters to the ones you already have.

If you had a canon made inactive, you can reserve them here.

Blood Purity

As you know by now, I'm constantly fiddling with the character app, trying to make it easier and faster for you to get a character sorted.

The most recent change has been to abolish the rule that only canons can be purebloods.

That's right, your original character can now be pure.  This rule will be retroactive, so if you have a character who you've always wanted to be pure, now they can be.

Let us know to change your character's blood purity here

Claims

The claims section has been cleared out, reworked, and updated.  The coding is much cleaner now, and pretty straightforward.

The Magical Abilities claim has been whittled down to abilities we see in canon.  So if your character had an ability, you should check to see whether it's still available.

To reflect the changing demographics of the site and the growing interest in adult characters, the Employment Claims have been expanded.  

Civil Service & Ministry Departments contains most of what used to be the Ministry for Magic employment claims.  These are claims associated with the bureaucracy of the Ministry.

Ministry for Magic - Cabinet contains the Minister for Magic and his or her ministers.  The departments of the Ministry report to these people.

The Wizengamot contains members of the Wizengamot and Barristers.

Hogwarts contains core staff members at Hogwarts

St Mungos contains St Mungos staff and healers

If your character had a job in any of the jobs claims, you should double check that they still have the right position.  Especially characters working at Hogwarts.

You will have noticed many of these jobs have a political bent.  The Ministry for Magic seems to employ most of the wizarding world.  That means many people will have political alignments.  But what would the wizarding world's political parties be like?  It'd be great if you could tell me your ideas here.

Styles

Finally, you will have noticed that the site has had some slight cosmetic changes.

You can get the big, square header style by using the h3 header style.

Code:

[h3][/h3]

And you can get the large orange text header style with h2

Code:

[h2][/h2]

We also have a cool new handwriting font, that you can use for an entire block of text with h4, or by choosing a font style and changing the name to La Belle Aurore.

Code:

[h4][/h4]
[font=La Belle Aurore][/font]

And you can use the same font as the h2 header by changing the font name to comfortaa

I also added twitter emojis to the site. Just hit the smiley face in the editor toolbar and choose the ones you want to use

Sound off in the comments

Tell me what you love and what you hate.

It's true there's been a downfall. I've been around for a year and from all places I've ever RPed on PA was the slowest. (It hasn't been that many though...) But it sure has been fun and the few people I had the chance to plot with are great!

I speak for myself now, and perhaps for many others here right now. My exams start in a week so I won't have that much time to actually be around in the next month. June is always that black hole... The dementor sucking away all energy to do more than focus on the handful of finals I'm about to do. I believe that at this time of the year that is the reality for most of people around here.

Still, I do understand the changes and accept the challenge of keeping Cass and Stephen. I became very fond of this place and these two. Couldn't let them go. But only July, that will be...

Also I'm in love with this handwriting font!!! You have no idea what it has been to try to have Stephen writing letters...

Thanks for the feedback Charlotte.

I live in Australia, and our education system works almost completely opposite to much of the rest of the world, so I never know when exam times are overseas. So that information is helpful.

I definitely don't take making characters inactive lightly. The characters I made inactive hadn't even been logged into since the beginning of the year. There were a lot of characters who haven't posted in threads, but weren't made inactive because they had been logged into. To me, logging into a character account says that you at least intend to RP with them.

This was also most likely a once off check. Because PA is such an old site, some of us - including me - had characters that we've held onto out of sentiment rather than because we use them. This check was designed to clear out those kinds of characters.

You post consistently with Cass and Stephen, so you're not at risk of losing them.

At least that is how it works in Europe. Generally. It may depend from country to country and even within them but from what I gather evaluations use to happen around these few months (May to July more or less). So that may be one of the reasons. Also, at least in my case, second semester is usually harder due to lack of breaks so that is why it is harder to come here during that period.

And yes, that is understandable. And I value your work for wanting to change things. That is really great. Some sites I have been on admins were this god-like creatures who wanted to control everything but then had no time to actually make the experience better for players so that usually didn't work nicely for anyone and it really sucked. As I said I am only around for one year. But I understand that. We tend to get attached to first characters even though we can't find a way to use them. That is also experience talking...

I just wanted to sound off, as you said. And you're welcome.