OOC - Welcome back aboard!

OOC - Welcome back! Well... I know neither of us have gone anywhere, but I didn't really know what else to say. All the old posts have been transferred across to this OngoingWorlds group, and almost all members have signed up.

From now on can you please post to this group please, and not to the old Yahoo Group? ta!

I wanted to just let you know about some of the advantages of using OngoingWorlds. Some of these might seem trivial, but it's surprising how much Yahoo Groups was lacking!

Autosave when posting - How many times have you lost a post or pressed backspace and it's lost your post with no way to get it back? Very frustrating!

Integrated characters and posts - Before we had the character list on a separate website (www.bluedwarf.co.uk) admit it, how often did you ever go there to look at character profiles? Now you can see the character list by clicking "Characters".

Edit your own characters - Okay I'll fess up. On the Blue Dwarf.co.uk website when you edited a character all it did was send an email for me, and I had to go in and make the change in the CMS. It was annoying for me, and sometimes I'd even forget to do it (sorry!). But now you can edit your own characters, which includes adding your own image without having to wait for me.

Add secondary characters - You're able to create your own secondary characters (we usually call them NPCs). In fact, I can see that some of you still need to do that, try it now.

Tag characters - After writing your post you'll see a dropdown at the bottom where you can select the characters you've used in this post. Do this and it'll show a thumbnail image on the post so readers can quickly and easily see who this post is about.

Easier to add new members - Before, users had to subscribe to the Yahoo Group, as well as become a member on www.bluedwarf.co.uk. It was a bit confusing, but now it's easy. New members can sign up in one place and I can add them to the group with one click. Also some others of you can be in charge of doing this too if you want the responsibility. Before it was just me.

OngoingWorlds will be improved over time - This is something Yahoo weren't doing. They hadn't changed much since 2000 and gradually it would become really out of date. Modern developments like making it work on a mobile device just weren't happening, but OngoingWorlds is going to change and adapt with the times. It works fine on a mobile phone, so you can check posts when you're out and about.

Thanks everyone for us getting this far! I'm really pleased with the Blue Dwarf and I still love writing for it and reading what everyone else comes up with too!

David