Welcome to the brand new-look EN World! The site has finally been upgraded from its 5-year old, antiquated codebase, and now features many of the functions you'd expect in a modern online community. Hundreds of bugs have been repaired, new features are present on the forums, we have a shiny new news page, and can now offer some great new things such as blogs and the soon-to-arrive wiki!

There's still a few items that need to be added over the weekend, and there are, invitably, issues that we'll need to repair, but at this point it's safe to turn the forum and news areas back on and let community discussion continue once again. In this article we'll take a look at what has been added and what will be added in the next few days, and weeks.

Articles

Oh, so you clicked it. Very good - that means you're now in article view. From now on all EN World news items will work this way - they'll have an article page that you can bookmark to come back to and Google can search and archive against. This approach also allows for much larger news articles to be written without dominating the front page. At most a news item will take up half the front page like this one will do until June 30th. Then this article will drop to being a 'feature' article and take up only half the space it does now on the front. Before fading away entirely it will be an article.

The newshounds have full control over how quickly articles go through these phases, and some small stories may only be articles in their lifetimes. Very few articles will ever achieve the status of 'leaderboard.' Typically there will be one feature and 4 to 6 articles visible for a given day, and hopefully at least one will be new each day.

To the right you can note another feature - the picture from the front page can be clicked to reveal its full size version. Most pictures can be done this way. This is mostly useful for maps but also for other pics with lots of detail.

Submitting a scoop is easy - just click the 'submit a scoop' button and go nuts. Note that if you want to edit your submission you'll need to be logged in. The news system no longer checks log-ins, this is to reduce stress on the database.

Messageboards

OK, so the forums aren't exactly new; we have 70,000 registered members and ten times that many lurkers - but we've been using an old, old version of vBulletin for years. As the years progressed, more and more things inexplicably broke, until we got to the point where it was quicker to write a list of things that worked than it was to write a bug list. But no more! The forums are upgraded to the latest version of vBulletin, which not only works 100%, but includes a bunch of features not present in the old one. You'll find enhanced, customizable user profiles, social groups, friends lists, multiquote posting, and more.

Blogs

Another new feature for EN World 2 is the blogs system. Get to it by clicking "Blogs" in the menu at the top of the page; every EN World member is free to start their own blog. For the moment it's an independent element, but eventually it will tie into reviews and the Wiki (see below). The EN Blogs are, for the most part, RPG and related topics. The same rules apply to them as apply the EN World boards. Another planned feature is to allow a blog entry to be 'promoted' to news item so that it can get some front page treatment.

I know there are a lot of gamer blogs on live-journal and the like, and I'm hoping that at least a few will move here to an audience more focused on the topic at hand, unlike live journal which caters to pretty much any topic.

For myself I'll be running a technical blog to discuss the ongoing development of the board and also my general insights into running websites in general. Story Hours are another strong candidate for blog treatment.

Wiki

The Wiki - coming very soon! - is to be another large feature here at EN World. As with all Wikis, any EN World member can edit it, and as long as it stays roughly on-topic, you will be welcome to use it for whatever you wish. We envisage dozens of different uses for it - compilations of information, collections of house rules, shared worlds or collaborative projects.

EN World has been around so long that it actually predates the famous Wikipedia. The group that maintains Wiki, MediaWiki group, makes their software available freely under the open source, and bridges are available to vbulletin as first tested on Circvs Maximvs. EN World has over the years become a storehouse of a huge number of facts within the pages and pages of posts, and now with the Wiki there is a more effective mechanism for presenting that information.

As with the blog the rules of the Wiki are the same as the rest of the site though the editing bar is a little higher than with posts, but don't worry about this too much. Since Wiki allows multiple people to edit the same article any mistake made can be corrected by the next person down the line.

Along with the blog the plan for reviews is that product and product line information will be held in the Wikipedia format. Reviews on products will be blog entries. A cross-talk script will be written to make sure reviews stay linked to their products and vice versa. Conversion of the old D&D/d20 reviews to the new system will be considered after this but its also possible the old reviews will be made accessible only in a read only context if converting them to wiki articles proves to be too time consuming.

Opening the Code

The underlying code of EN World is the PHP Ajax Multimedia Webframework - or "Pam." The sponsors of this code have agreed to release it under an open source license although which one is being discussed at this time. When complete all non-Jelsoft code of EN World will be made available to the community for their own use and also in the hopes that the more technically inclined members of the board will be able to lend a hand once they can see exactly how the system ticks.

The Future

Once all this is in place two major features are planned and hoped for completion before year's end. First is the gamers-seeker-gamers database. This will be built on vbulletin's Calendar system - but it will add to that system the ability to search for events and persons based on latitude and longitude (or zip code if you are a US resident). You'll be able to advertise your weekly game, or search for games meeting the critieria your select in your area.

An RPG Freelancing system is also planned, possibly built from scratch though the suitability of Jelsoft's vbProject for this task is also being examined. The system will allow publishers to post jobs and freelancers to post resumes; you'll be able to actually apply for jobs with a click of your mouse, and potential employers will be able to review applications and choose one with a click of their own. The system will take its cues from eBay, with actual agreements forming legal contracts made online (the terms of which are predefined in the job advertisement), and a robust feedback system for both freelancers and publishers.

Advertising

Ah, that dreaded word! I'm sure you'll have noticed that there's a little more advertising on the now; the top banners are bigger and there's now a side banner. For advertisers this presents more opportunities than EN World has ever been able to offer before; in addition, the system is completely automated. You can purchase ad space and start your ad campaign quickly and easily, without all that cumbersome sending of emails and so forth. Simply click on the link at the top of the page!