Hey Imajica,

Don't forget to assign you players privileges to the 'AFTER Player' role.  Or if you're crunched for time send me the list and I can set up the privileges for you.  Also unassign the 'After Lurker' roles that I assigned to people, please.

Thank ya.  That should get all of the game specific views working for your players.  If there are any issues, just holler.

China

Thanks for reminding me, that would've caused problems later tonight when the players couldn't access their prologue pages!

How am I running out of November already?

Glad to help.  Usually I do all that privilege assigning stuff, but with you being an admin, you can bypass me.

Hopefully there won't be any issues with posting, but if there are, it's likely that I didn't do something right in the Tac-Lite module.  But if there are issues they should be easy to iron out.

Could I remain a lurker please, Imajica?

I'm leaving the lurkers as lurkers - I may be calling on them from time to time to justify their lurker status by stopping lurking for a while and starting playing.  Before they go back to lurking.  In the shadows.  Like lurkers.  It's a good word, lurker.  I like it.

I haven't had enough coffee today.  Can you tell?

Lurk lurk lurk...

Heck, "lurker" sounds like a great name to give those shadowy things out there making all that threatening noise outside the walls.

I'm calling dibs right now on using the term in my prologue.

Have at it. 

We have some first time users that will be joining us in this game, and I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself.  My name is China (Chairman), and I'm sort of the welcome wagon around here.  I know that it can be pretty intimidating getting involved in a new community, sometimes, and I want to make sure that you guys feel welcome and know that we're happy to help if you have questions.

1.  If you have questions about how this place works, please let us know.  We're a friendly bunch and are happy to help.  You can drop a note in your game forum, in the help desk forum or send a PM to your GM or an Admin.  I usually suggest the Help Desk forum, because then anyone can hop in and help you and you won't have to wait. 

2.  We invite you to make this place a comfortable home for you and your characters.  If we don't have something that you need, please let us know what that is.  Our site is striving to evolve and player suggestions and comments are exactly what we need to make sure that happens. 

3.  Navigation can be a trick around here.  Finding what you want, and avoiding what you don't want.  There is no right or wrong way to navigate the site, but here are a few options that might help you find what works best for you.  The 'My Games' page, will give you information specific to your games (those that you play in and that you request lurker status), the blocks there are disappearing, so when there is no new content in one of your games, it will appear mostly blank.  At the bottom of this page, is a table that will allow easy searches for all of the games.

Additional methods can be found at this link, http://www.nextgenrpg.com/content/my-tools-0#Navigation.

4.  As you create character related content for your games, please remember to select the correct 'Story' tag from the list (In this game it will be 'AFTER').  Selecting this will ensure that it is dropped into the game queue so that it shows up in the 'My Games' page.  The 'Story' tag will be found in blogs, galleries, polls, forums and the game moves.

5.  Select an author name.  A lot of people use their handle and that's absolutely fine.  You can use whatever you want, but please be consistent across all of your games and handles at NextGen RPG.  This allows people to search for just your stories and contributions by using the drop down boxes at the top of the site.  Some people have more than one handle on the site, but we ask them to use the same 'author' name in both handles.  The Author field is a required field when creating blog related content.  (Example: My handles are Chairman and Mayhem - but I use China for my author name in all handles.)

6.  Assign blogs to your game books.  This isn't likely to come up immediately, but it will be important that you assign your solo and joint fiction pieces to your game books, to help your GM keep them all in one piece.  Directions on how to create content and assign them to your games, can be found here - http://www.nextgenrpg.com/content/how-play#CC_Games.

Looks like your first assignment from Imajica is to find a bodycast and post it in the City After image gallery.  Here is a quick tutorial on images at our site, both uploading them to the gallery and using them later in your blog or game moves.

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This is information on how to upload an image to your Game's Gallery and then insert it into a forum post, Blog Entry or Game Move.  More information of this nature can be found in the FAQ...but it isn't the easiest thing to navigate.

How do I upload a picture to my Games Gallery?

1. Locate the Create Content link, in the left hand Navigation Column, under My Tools
2. Click on Image & this will open your image entry screen
3. Required:  Title of your image
4. Click on the Image Gallery drop down box and select the gallery most suited for your image. (The City After, in this case)
5. Click on the Story drop down box and select the game that the piece is for. (AFTER, in this case)
6. Unless your image is adult in nature, you do not need to mess with Rating.
7. Select Browse in the Image Field to Locate the image that you would like to upload.
8. Body - This is where you add any notes or body cast information that you would like to share about your image.
9. Click Save

How do I upload a picture into a game move or blog?

1. Locate and open the blog or game move that you want to insert your image into
2. Click on where you want the image to be inserted
3. Click the Mountain Icon or the Image Assist Icon in the text editor - it's located on the second row of buttons, to the right of the Anchor.  Try them both until you find which one feels easier for you.
4. Mountain Icon
   1. Click on the Browse Server button in the first line
   2. If you recently uploaded your image into a game gallery, you should see it on the first screen.
   3. If you would like to search, The Image Assist Upload is a better choice.
   4. Select your image and choose the size you would like to insert (Thumbnail, Preview or Original)
   5. Once you're back to the main screen, select the align box (very bottom), and choose left or right, depending on which way you want the text to wrap around your image
   6. Click the okay button
   7. Once you're back in the game move, click on the image and drag it to size it correctly
5. Image Assist
   1. This method will automatically take you to the screen of your uploaded Gallery Images (If the picture you want wasn't uploaded by you, you will need to find it in the gallery)
   2. Cycle through them by page or Browse Images by Gallery at the top.
   3. Select the image you want to insert into your game move or blog
   4. Select the size that you want to insert.
   5. Chose alignment for text wrapping
   6. Click Insert
   7. If the image did NOT wrap correctly, which is a common issue, right click on the image and select Image Properties.
   8. Select the align box (very bottom), and choose left or right, depending on which way you want the text to wrap around your image
   9. Click the okay button
   10. Once you're back in the game move, click on the image and drag it to size it correctly

Note on the Differences:

Hi, I'm KL (Heatwave or gypsyav on the site), I'm the pesky admin.

I'd like to add to what China posted here about the story tags. The correct story tag must be used in order for permissions to work correctly. All players in a game are only allowed to edit their blog entries and game moves for games in which they are a player. If a piece does not have the proper story tag those who are supposed to be able to edit it will not be able to do so and those who shouldn't may be able to.

Thanks, KL.  :)  or...pesky Admin.  *grin*

I'll be swiping that to add to the next game that goes live.  Assuming we eventually have another game.  Between the two of us, we'll manage to get these little helpers down to a useful and comprehensive set.

A word of note for people new to the site. We use a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor on the site and it doesn't play well with word processing programs.

If you write something in Word be sure to click the paste button with the little W on it instead of the regular paste button. This strips out the excess codes and helps to keep the page from breaking.

If you use OpenOffice.org use the same button. It doesn't strip out everything but does help.

If you use the WYSIWYG editor you can just use it like any other word processing program.

If you're one of the oddballs like me who likes to use the plain text editor; to keep the game from breaking when it's edited be sure to use <br /> at the end of each line, including blank lines. Do not use <div>, <span>, or <p> tags as these can cause problems if the piece is later edited in the WYSIWYG editor. I know using the <br /> tag is not recommended practice for separating paragraphs but due to the nature of the games here and the quirks of the WYSIWYG editor it's the solution that best keeps the page formating from breaking.

Imajica,

We're having a bit of trouble with our Spam Blocker and Top Filters, playing well with the AFTER taxonomy.  After so many attempts it blocks the IP address of the user and won't let them in the site at all.

I'd like to try changing the Role name, and possibly the taxonomy.  Not sure if both need to change or if it will help, but it seems like the best next step as we trouble shoot.

Any preferences on your new Role name?

TCA (but that's so similar to TCQ)

CITY

DESO

CA

Your ideas welcome!

China, hold off changing the role name and taxonomy. There is a problem with the Favorites Game Filter when there is no content that matches the search criteria. I just played with the table and had odd results when there was no matching content. That odd behavior is probably what was triggering the spam blocker.

Will do!

Thanks for digging into this deeper.

There is usually always content in the My Games table, unless someone is searching for something odd, like...a blog post in a game with none, or some such.

Well, not every game has content in every category. It looks like the problem is occurring if the game is changed while the category is sitting on something that doesn't have anything in it yet.

 Maybe the View needs to have some default "empty" text to stop that one throwing a spanner in the works?

This is a paste from the scheduling thread.  Just in case any of the players don't follow the rest of the boards. 

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