Site Update
Welcome to Umbra's first Site Update! In lieu of doing a monthly newsletter or endlessly tagging our members in a slew of various threads, we've decided to consolidate all of our site news into a monthly post. This will give staff the opportunity to keep you informed of what has happened, what is happening, and what we hope to happen in the future. Plus! You'll get the chance to offer your valuable opinions and insights on what we could do to continue improving Umbra.
Site Updates will be posted on the first Friday of each month. Because this is our first ever Site Update, it will be a little longer than usual. Feel free to read only what you want (though we totally recommend reading the whole thing, but y'know. TL;DR, we get it).
Now that the intro is all done, let's get started!
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Voting
Simply put, you guys knocked it out of the park for the month of July. Not only did we accumulate over 800 votes in our first full month of being open, we made it onto the front page of BOTH Top RP Sites and RPGFix. We are absolutely humbled by your support and belief in our community, and we are stunned we could achieve such a lofty goal so quickly.
As a little thank you for helping to get our name out there, Nyctibius has put together a voting medal for everyone who has participated. If you'd like to snag the medal, just hit the "Winner" reaction for this post and one of our staff members will award it to you.
The Voting Rune -
Staffing
Though you may have already seen her around the site, we'd like to officially welcome @Candi Cosmo to the Umbra team as our first Global Moderator! In just a few weeks of working with us, Candi has proven herself to be extremely passionate about our community and has helped Nyco and I not be complete doofuses. Feel free to reach out to Candi with any questions you have about the site. -
Donations
For our first month open, we reached and exceeded our donations goal by 33%! Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the site, your generosity is appreciated and humbling. Your donations help Umbra pay its bills and for that we cannot thank you enough. Here's a shout out to everyone who donated through the month of July.
[fa]heart[/fa] baman begins, Candi Cosmo, Darkstar, Infinity, Ruby, Teneo Lupum [fa]heart[/fa]
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Default Theme
A few weeks ago we had a poll asking our members if we should change Umbra's default theme. Although the margin was small, the majority did vote for a revamp. The good news: Nyco and I have settled on a new theme for the site! The bad news: the colors were all wrong, so I'm currently in the process of editing the theme to make it match the "Umbra" vibe, whatever that means. Although I'm not sure when I will have completed this process, keep an eye out for a new theme popping up in your preferences in the upcoming weeks.
For all those who enjoy using the current default theme, don't worry! We're not getting rid of it, so you're welcome to continue using it as long as you like. Once our new default theme is fully in place, it will be named "Umbra" and our current default will be changed to its original name "Drift Dark".
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Event Medals & The Celestial Collection
We are in the process of adding new medals to the site! Unlike the majority of our medals which are essentially wild free-for-alls, these medals will reside in our upcoming medal shop as Event Medal Sets. Event Medals differ from regular medals in that they can only be acquired either via winning them in a site contest or event (more on that soon!) or donating to the site. Each Event Set will consist of six medals, pricing as follows:
1 Medal = $1
3 Medals = $2.50 (third medal is 50% off!)
6 Medals = $5 (the sixth is free!)
Buying medals is simple, for you or for a friend. All you have to do is head to our Donations Page and when you have the opportunity to leave a note use it to ask for whichever medal you want. Alternatively, if you forget to leave a note, simply send a PM to one of our staff and we'll get it sorted out. If you want to buy one for a friend the exact same process applies.
If you're curious about what the set will be, never fear. Once they're done and ready to show off we'll be making an announcement to show everyone exactly what you can get for your generosity.
Additionally, some of our more perceptive users have already noticed that we have a full Zodiac set up for grabs called the "Celestial Collection". This set is FREE, and if you want to represent your fishy Pisces self or hum-haw over your sun and moon signs because you're a Libra and choices are impossible paradoxes, all you have to do is ask. PM a staff member about which one or two or twelve you want and they will be yours.
There's a lot in the works for Umbra's future. Right now and most immediately, we're aiming to get our new default theme up and running once all the colors and quirks have been worked out. Next up, we want to introduce even more medal sets to the site. We want to keep striving to make Umbra the best it can be, and we encourage people to give us any suggestions they might have. From code, to themes, to site add-ons, nothing will be outright rejected, and if it does end up on that side of things we will be explicitly clear as to why.
Don't forget: if you so desire you can verify your age with the admin. Doing so is essentially showing everyone else on Umbra that you are 100% certified adult, and you get a shiny checkmark next to your name. It's by no means necessary, but we just wanted to remind everyone that the option is available.
Finally, in September we hope to start up with a series of onsite events. Primarily revolving around writing, of course, with the prizes being the Event Medal sets. We're still hammering out the details and deciding exactly how it's all going to work, but rest assured, you guys will know the minute we've got something more concrete.
Umbra/um·bra/ˈəmbrə/ : the fully shaded inner region of a shadow cast by an opaque object, especially the area on the earth or moon experiencing the total phase of an eclipse.
[fa]circle[/fa] ASTRONOMY
the dark central part of a sunspot.
[fa]circle[/fa] LITERARY
shadow or darkness.
When Nev and I started out with this idea I knew what I wanted to be. I told him outright, "I'm going to be the antisocial mod. The one everyone sees but is never heard from." Nev, to his undying credit, agreed. We didn't know what it was going to take to get Umbra off the ground, not really. We suspected, but I had zero experience running a site and Nev had only come into administrative roles after a site was already established. This whole venture was a brand new thing for us in a lot of ways and we've learned a lot from it.
What I learned was that being social wasn't going to be quite as terrifying as I thought it would be. I don't know how I come across--genuinely, I do not. I try to project what I project and whether or not it lands as intended, I have no idea. But all of you scare the wee baby piss out of me. Or, you did. Because the more who joined and the more I understood what this whole thing is really all about, the less scared I got.
Forgive me my prattling, but I just want to have it be said. Nev and I both came from somewhat toxic environments in terms of RP, with rules and restrictions that neither of us understood or thought helped the experience. Umbra's initial concept was almost entirely just that; let's build a place where we put fun ahead of rules. Yeah, we've got rules, we've got guidelines, but they don't get in the way of you having fun with us. We want Umbra to feel warm and comfortable and like home for our users. And the more people who joined and the more who responded so vibrantly well to what we were doing, the more I understood that there's nothing to really fear. You guys are like me. You're here to write and have fun with your favorite self-spun stories, or to put a twist on the ones you already love. You're here to be part of a larger community. You're here, simply put, to have a good time.
Thank you. I don't like to become so openly emotional (not out of some bizarre masculine need to seem emotionless, mind you, more that it seems unprofessional), but from the bottom of my heart, thank you all. I hope Umbra becomes your RP home for a good long time. And if it doesn't, I hope you still feel inclined to visit every now and then.
I love you.
Did that make it weird? That made it weird. One month is too soon, isn't it? I'm so sorry. I'll give this back to Nev now.
To end this novella of an announcement, all I can say is thank you. This first month has been an absolute joy thanks to you. I've never been in a position where I had so many things to be grateful for that I was actively worried about forgetting some of it, and yet here I am. So thank you. Let's keep up the good work, eh?
If you have any comments, questions, concerns, or a really funny joke, feel free to post below. But, like, really funny. Deal? Deal.
xoxo
Nev