IT LIVES! New Otherkin Directory!

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Edit: Yes, for real this time. 😉

After a great deal of struggling, I’m pleased to announce that Dreamhart.org now has a searchable directory listing for otherkin up and running. To add your information to it, first you have to register for the website. Then, edit your profile: you’ll find all of the Directory information in its own section, so you can choose exactly what you want to display. You’ll also find a radio box that lets you decide whether or not you want to display your information in the directory. I’ve made very very certain that if you check “Do Not Display”, your information will never show up in the directory by any means; not as part of regular display, not as part of search results, and not even if you type the user-id in by hand in the url for individual profiles.

I believe I’ve tested everything fairly thoroughly in the course of implementing this new system, but as always if you run into any bugs please let me know. Also, if you think any fields should be included that aren’t, let me know. I can’t guarantee that everything people want will be included (I don’t actually know how to program in PHP, I know just enough to be able to read and edit someone else’s code), but I may be able to work something out.

Edit: One other small thing, I’ve now added another option for people who want to be slightly more private about their data.  You can now set it to display only to logged-in users of this website.  I will warn that registration is open, and anyone can register, though.  It should prevent indexing by google and other search engines/bots, however.

Please note as well, privacy settings for the directory do not affect visibility of your profile on the forums.

#Dreamhart (IRC)

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Continuing the surge of new features for the site, I’m pleased to introduce our dedicated IRC channel, #dreamhart on Mibbit.net. There’s a web-based IRC client available on the site here, and of course you can connect to it using any IRC client. I’ve also added a widget to the site, on the top of the right hand sidebar, which lets you know how many people are currently in the IRC channel. The count is not live, but updates once every five minutes so should provide a reasonable estimate of how active the channel is. I’m going to try to be in it as much as possible. If people want, I may even work towards setting a dedicated time (perhaps once a week?) that can be set aside for chatting.

Edit: We’ve had to move from Dalnet to Mibbit.net due to restrictions Dalnet places on the number of users who can connect through Mibbit clients. Anyone using the webclient should notice no real changes, anyone using their own IRC client should now direct themselves to irc.mibbit.net.

Edit: So, the widget for counting how many people were on the channel in IRC turned out to be unreliable. So far, I haven’t found a direct replacement for it, the best I can do at the moment is a count of how many people are using the mibbit widget to chat in the channel, rather than how many users are in the channel itself. I’m not sure that’s really useful, so my recommendation at the moment is if you care about how many people there are to chat with, sign onto the channel and check.

Again, with Style!

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So, after a lot of trial and error (and swearing), I believe I have successfully managed to implement user-selectable styles for the site, even including the forums. So far, there are only two, but I may make more in the future if there are requests for specific changes. To select a style, go to the main page of the site and use the widget on the top of the left-hand sidebar. Just click the link, and that should do it for you. Your selection is stored as a cookie and should persist across sessions, as long as you’re using the same browser.

As always, let me know if you encounter any bugs, especially in the forums after this change. The css interactions were complex, and annoying. I think I’ve worked around all the major issues that came up, but I can’t be sure I’ve found everything just yet.