Posted by Kim on March 9, 2024, 2:05pm
Here's an overview of the questions and answers at this month's office hours.
You PUMPED for Epic Week ???
BOY AM I EVER. Work is already well underway for this year's Epic Week! I think the concept will make a lot of folks happy.
will there maybe be any new additions to the epic week contests 👀
The contests haven't been finalized quite yet, so if you have suggestions for new ones you'd like to see, please let me know!
Suggestion: A way to have characters only show up to people you have friended.
This has been on the want list for a long time, and I keep getting held up by a reasonable way to keep anon characters from just being fully invisible. If you can only see the profile if you're friends with the person, but that character is anon... Okay, so they could friend you, and you could friend them back, that's easy enough. But what happens if *both* profiles are set to anonymous and friends only? They're basically just locked.
What if it didn't stack. Like it can be ANON OR Friends only, not both.
That's potentially a temporary solution, though probably a bit annoying to users in terms of UI expectations. You know that day one people will be asking when they can do it with anon characters, though
Maybe what it could be is that there's like... a stump page that just says "send friend request"? So you could send a link to the profile to people you wanted to see it?Regardless; it's an entirely solvable problem and something I want to do. TBH SO much of my creative juices have been being strained and poured into the staggeringly huge maps project for quite awhile now that it's sometimes a bit hard to think creatively about other things. Especially in the first quarter when EW is imminent. So I guess the good news is that that suggestion will almost certainly happen at some point in future, I just don't *quite* know when.
You must have some manic energy Kim
Golly, I had so much more a decade ago
But I definitely seem to like to go at a big project like a husky likes to pull a heavy sled.Discourage search engines, but show on the community character page. A way to hide characters from search engines, but let it still show on the community character page.
For this one, there's no particular reason why not; it's definitely been asked about before. It's just been a bit low priority so far.
As certain folks have proved; asking me about things I've said I want to add but haven't yet during office hours has produced a hastening effect in the past.
Suggestion: A way to swap between multiple character pfps (limit 2-3 pictures), for when RPing as an AU version of that character, or maybe for masterlist character profiles that have more than one OC included.
This is the first one that is a bigger ask. We just have no plumbing right now that would make this practical. We'd need some re-writing of the forum and private message code and database, as well as some potentially complex UI additions.
That said, something similar is planned for avatars, with characters able to have a couple of avatars (think casual vs formal versions, or human vs werebear versions), so maybe we could look at it again then.
about fixing things... a few office hours ago you fixed the journal edit screen to go back to the main page edit screen after an edited entry was saved.... could that be done for new journal entries as well?
Wellllll. As much as I like letting people immediately edit, possibly consistency in behavior would be better. *Scribbles notes*
Could we possibly get a hot bar for bold, italics, and underlining and linking in the status editor? Because I know you can do all those things in your status, but you have to type it in manually to do it. I say specifically those things, because I can imagine why we might not want the status editor to have every single text option available.
Hmmmn. Maybe? My knee jerk reaction is yes, but there is a part of me that is afraid there is a ramification I haven't thought of yet, possibly just that it will remind people BBCode works there and I don't have to disable it right now because no one has abused that
Is there a way to not include a hot bar but make it so hot keys work for BBCode in status?
Oh now that's an interesting solution! *scribble scribbles*
Suggestion: An RPR rewards system where you do tasks to collect points to redeem for shop items or just shop items. Which is helpful for those who don't have the money to spend on items.
For this ask, I'd like to start by directing people to the upcoming Epic Week contests, where a whole lot of epicness and other shop items are available as prizes! You don't need any money to enter those, many of them don't need any particular talents, and many of them are very sparsely entered to the point that most years there's at least one contest where every single person who posted an entry got a prize. It is the most direct version of "do a little task and get shop items" that we already have.
Epic Week happens towards the end of April, and a lot of the contests last many weeks beyond the main event, so there's plenty of opportunity to enter.
We also do have some collector's items that can be obtained by participating in events (Summer soiree, trick or treat the forums, welcoming new members each month) and then trading the resulting accolade(s) to Moa when she comes into town. I would like to expand on this a bit in future.
But when it comes to the majority of shop items... I super duper feel for people who are young or underemployed or on a strict budget or simply don't feel comfortable entering their CC info online. I wish that money were not a necessity to keep the site running. Alas, it is. Servers can be pricey, running events can be pricey. I suspect a lot of newer players don't realize that the RPR doesn't make enough money to pay for any full time employees at all, and that includes me -- I have to work other jobs most of the year to keep the roof over my head. So some, perhaps the majority, of shop items, need to stay as obtainable through money-only to keep the lights on, so to speak.
the 'Random' widget.... is there a limit on how many *** lines can be made?
Oooh, what an interesting question! I don't believe there is. Certainly I didn't code one.
So I know we can copy a widget from one character to another character, but what about copying an entire page from one character to another character.
I think it's a really good idea. I have no objections. When will I do it? These are the questions.
I know folks also want to be able to copy an entire character setup to a new character, and/or to save a favorite template that is added to every new character
omg RPR post it notes??!! / serious suggestion
*head explodes*
*faints*
IT'S NOT A WANT IT'S A NEED
Was wondering if there was an option or place to put like different pictures of your characters and like outfits and whatnot!
It sounds like what you're wanting is to add a gallery widget to your character profile!
So it looks like you have one character profile right now. It looks like it was set up by the character creationn wizard, which is a great place to start. But now you can go in and add all kinds of additional widgets and customize, including with galleries Here's more info on editing an already existing character profile: https://www.rprepository.com/help/creating-characters#237
Are we allowed to use pics from Picrew or Gacha Club/Gacha Club edits?
If you are using a doll maker of some kind to make your images, just be sure to read their terms. They'll tell you whether they allow uploading elsewhere or not.
There's so many of them out there I don't have all of their individual terms memorized, sorry 
They can be a great option though. I was wondering about if there was an option to put something like voice claims or theme songs for ocs?
This is usually done via Youtube embed
https://www.rprepository.com/help/bbcode#72Also, Spotify embed?
Spotify embed is on the planned features list, though the last time I tried to tackle it it proved pretty gosh darn difficult to do in ways that Youtube and Vimeo and other services weren't. I've been meaning to circle back and see if they've improved their process since.
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Comments
I AGREE
Quote:
omg RPR post it notes??!! / serious suggestion
*head explodes*
*faints*
IT'S NOT A WANT IT'S A NEED
*head explodes*
*faints*
IT'S NOT A WANT IT'S A NEED
Has to be in the shape of the RPR shield or it doesn't count!
Quote:
omg RPR post it notes??!! / serious suggestion
*head explodes*
*faints*
IT'S NOT A WANT IT'S A NEED
*head explodes*
*faints*
IT'S NOT A WANT IT'S A NEED
This is now my favorite Office Hour Highlight LOL
Shinyrainbowlithogra
March 14, 2024
12:18am
Also, as for items, I know we don't have a perfect trading system... But I've traded goods for services before (items for fanart), and participated in user- and admin-run contests and gotten items 🥰 So even if you don't have time, something as grind-y as frequently welcoming people and helping direct them around the site can get you accolades to trade for items (and get you friends, to boot), and you can trade those for other items if you have a trusted ally or merchant 😂 That's not an official suggestion, obviously!!!! I'm just a fellow player who has taken a risk or two before!!!
Thanks for the office hours, Kim, and thank you to everyone who asked cool questions 🥰🥰