I wanted to take an opportunity to get some feedback from members regarding the site functionality and design at NextGen RPG.  Last year, we threw together a site, super quick and throughout the year added to it and improved it so that it was easier for our members to use.  The speed with which we built her, serviced our needs very well at the time, because we needed a functioning site as soon as we could, so that we could resume game play.

I'd like to take a moment to welcome the most recent additions to Next Gen RPG.  Some are Nanowrimo-ers and others are here for the newest Desolation game.

I don't want to take up much of your time, but want to sticky this post for a day or two.  Please check out the My Games page, for anyone that is in the City After cast.  You can access the link from the upper right of your browser or from the navigation column on the left.

I've got good news and bad news and apologies to hand out.

First, my sincere apologies regarding the performance of late on the website.  It has been slow and painful and my attempts to get support to pay attention to the problem, were relatively unsuccessful.  I really appreciate your patience and minimal complaints through this.  Thank you.

The good news is that I finally got someone on the phone tonight, to stay with me and look into the issues that we're having.  He was able to tell just how much trouble we've had today and offered to move us to another server.  

During our recent site maintenance where we rolled out a new permissions scheme for the site, there was a critical conflict in the module that we were using to handle Joint Posts.  We were forced to decide between changing the way we did our Joint Posts or compramising site security by allowing people to edit more things than they should, or privacy and allowing people to view Joint Posts.  In the end we decided to change the method in which we handle Joint Posts.

Site Maintenance

Alright, we're finally digging into a long standing permissions issue, today.  It's difficult to impossible to find a time with no one on the site to fix our permissions issue.  So, we've decided to just hop in and do it today, because KL has the time and we're both at our wits end with the god level access that the current site modules are granting to players.

I would like to invite everyone to scour the games that they play in and lurk in, and make suggestions for the new Notable Quotables forum thread.

Why?

Here's the thing.  We're working on a bookmark to hand out at Gen Con this year, and since our site is about story telling, we want to showcase some of the excellent writing so far on the site.  We have several ideas, but much of it depends on finding the content to put into our bookmark, and getting the permission of the authors once we have them.

I am SO sorry for our troubles today and late last night.  They were server related, and I don't have the complete details yet, but I do have an idea of what happened.

According to my call with support, late last night the server that hosts our site was attacked by IP addresses from China.  They had to turn off the server, and throughout the day worked to restore everything.  The last thing they worked on was viewing and reassigning bandwidth.

They said they're almost done, I sure hope that they are!

I'm really sorry for the down time and will offer complete details once they get them to me.

There has been increased lurker activity in the games.  Which is great and a very welcome addition to the site.  If someone is lurking in a game and wants notifications of new game related content to show up on their my games page, please send a PM to Chairman, requesting lurker status and a list of games that you would like included.

The site is experiencing difficulties. We're aware of this and are working to fix it. We aren't sure if it's on our side or the server side, but we'll get her up as soon as we can!

Edit:  Removed from Front Page & Unstickied

Uh oh!

We're having site issues, we're aware of this and are working to get them remedied.

You can still find your stuff, but the formatting of the site isn't very friendly.  Please bear with us while we get the kinks out of her.