12 June '16 Update - Check the bottom of the post!

A bit of re-cap first.  In my last blog post here, I explained how the Uni-sites are officially down and why.  This makes this DA group a bit obsolete, but if anyone makes art to be nostalgic or has old art they want to share, feel free to submit to the group still!

The loss of our sites we loved so much is saddening, yet you can see that so many of us have gotten together here or on other sites (Facebook, DragonCave, Aywas, etc) to prove that we are still a close family!

Also stated on the last post, respected admins of the Uni-verses (including Weezee and Seidh) are building a brand new home for us!  Even though it will be a brand new site (and so not really relevant to this DA group...), it probably will be made up firstly of us members from UF and UC (and so actually kind of relevant to this DA group).

Finally, I want apologize for taking so long in-between updates; I wanted to wait until the new site was up.  However this is going to take a long time since they were caught almost as off-guard as we were, and they do not want to deliver us a half-baked product!
(If you go back to that last blog post, you can see Weezee and others talking about the new site in the comments.  I actually featured Weezee's posts, since they had updates I hadn't posted yet. (again, sorry!) )



Now.  Picking up from my last post, we have a name for the new site!  It is: Lorendria~! _{^{oooh fancy sounding}}
A server and domain is already secured for a year thanks to an awesome donor, but it isn't open yet.

The Facebook group I'm a part of and getting this news from  (an invite only one... but there is a public one too!) is understandably slowing since we now are just waiting. Some people have been talking off topic about life, some have been talking about how they got some of their recent donations to the old sites back with paypal, and some have been sharing their avatar collections for people to go through.
The latest news from Scott (Seidh) has been talk about how the framework for such a large product is taking a while, and that when they are closer to getting it finished they will give us a real estimation on the date for opening.

This is all very fair, since I'm sure with all the horror stories of code you hear that it's got to be really tough with their small group.  They have to create a new site from scratch! That means designing how they want it to look (what layout what colors what font what size what background all down to the last tiny pixel), making graphics for it like buttons and borders and headers and smilies, possibly writing a lore for the new universe, so many forum topics and sub topics to set up(think about how many we had in comparison to some other sites), creating an avatar system similar to the last (which btw was probably super complex, do you know any other that amazing) all over again (with ENTIRELY NEW images like bruh), all the witchcraft background scripts we take for granted like the ability to sign up and have an account and personal things for each user like profiles and signatures and passwords and having none of those get mixed or shared between users, the ability to send private messages that will actually send correctly and be saved or forwarded or deleted, plus probably more like holy crap there's so much stuff to do are site builders masochists



As before, when I learn more info I'll share it here.

Feel free to chat in the comments about your hopes and dreams for the new place, or anything else!  In the last blog post, some people commented with their UF user names... if you guys want to try to find friends you had only though Unifaction, feel free to ask about them and we can try to connect you guys again!

12 June '16 Update - Site progress and a temp home!

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't made much updates, but I'm afraid there wasn't ever really much news getting to me and what little did I was hoping to compile into a big update at some point.  Or maybe I was just telling myself that to procrastinate.  In any case, with a post of big news from Weezee on our facebook group, I've decided to drag myself out of bed to write you an update on all I know!

So far, an official site is still in the works.  Our lovely coder Pegasus is putting all she can into this project, but of course real life problems like health, family, school, and work all must come first.  I'm not sure what is happening since I do not know Pegasus personally, but we must all have faith and respect for her work as we anxiously await the magic.
It's been questioned on the Facebook why we simply cannot get more help from other coders, so I'm sure some people here may be wondering to.  Frankly, anything but waiting for Pegasus to get it done herself simply isn't realistic.  Coding is an incredibly complicated (and somewhat personal, in it's own creative way) process.  First of all, to find someone with the skill to do what needs to be done would be a huge task in itself (and then there's no guarantee that we'd find someone who will get into it with their heart and actually ends up a trustworthy person. Just grabbing anyone might land us with someone more interested in building themselves then they are building our site). Second, even if we did find someone magical, Pegasus would then STILL have to find time away from her life to teach that person her way of coding, show how much she's done, and assign things for them to do. and at that point, she may as well have been doing the coding herself!

This doesn't mean significant progress HASN'T been made, however! In fact, some time ago (again, sorry for not telling you all sooner), Weezee shared screenshots of the new forum on facebook, and some of the working features of it already! Including:
~ Full bbcode including smilies and tables (something a lot of us missed)
~ Edit function including the suggestion by Gigglers to allow others to edit your post if you wish them to be able to
~ Preview Post ability
~ New notification, since the last page refresh, updates once a minute. You'll get a pop-up, showing the new notif, it will stay for 30 seconds then close on it's own if you don't close it before then.
~ The green pop-up is telling you that you've subscribed to the thread, the page doesn't refresh.
~ The notification icon floats on the right bottom hand side as you scroll, where as the rest of the footer bar does not.

HERE is what the over-all forums look like, HERE is what making or editing a post looks like (including a preview of all the current smilies), HERE is that post as everyone else will see it, including a preview of the header bars and their dropdown menus, the green notification of your thread subscription status (as mentioned) and the notification popup in blue under it (also as mentioned above), and finally HERE is all of the current text edits we will be permitted to make on the forum.

Exciting, right?  I wasn't sure at first how much I liked the script for the header as it may be difficult to read for some, but I do like the calm blues of the site.  It's sensible to assume, however, that some of the looks of the site may change before opening to us.

Further behind the scenes, Scott has told us how they are "currently working to establish the site economy; coins/premium currency; CD rates; rate at which these are earned etc etc etc (it's a lot to consider!)" as well as poses for the avatars. He admitted they have determined most of the formulas to put in place for the site's money, but I can tell you as someone who actually LIKES math that it's got to be difficult.  Then once they do get that figured, they have to weave it into the site's code and make sure it works the way it's supposed to and not accidentally give someone a million or not give someone anything at all... building a digital economy seems so hard, I'm kind of glad I haven't been able to look behind the curtain for fear of going mad.


Ah, but I still haven't delivered the BIG NEWS that Weezee gave just a few hours ago, that kick-started me into writing this!
She has made us a temporary home on a host forum for us to all get together, rather than being spread out across many sites!

Now remember - the new site isn't greenlit yet.  This is NOT Lorendria... it's more of a hotel for us all to wait at across the street from the construction site of our home.  Nothing we make here is going to carry over when Lorendria opens, making an account here doesn't hold a name or give you a head start in currency.
Some People have already made accounts on there (like me), and started posting!  I haven't had a look about yet or posted anything (I just came straight here to tell you the news), but I'll be headed there soon after publishing this.
I hope I see you there!