December 2014

[Diana]

Hey Winners,
Sorry for the lack of updates this month. I've been busy with finals and other real life things. Though, if you were around in early December you might recall, we released trading! Please continue to report any bugs you find so we can refine the system.

And just a reminder, some of the fall items (everything except the cardigans, leggings, and beanies) will be removed from the shops on the 20th to make room for the start of Novalia on the 21st. The items that remain will be relocated to the other shops.

On another note, Windlyn grew really fast these past couple weeks, and that's super awesome. I'd like to extend a welcome to all of the new members, if I wasn't able to visit you yet, and to those I've already said hello to. I hope you are all enjoying the site.
We were extremely surprised at, and rather unprepared for the rate that we started getting new members. Please bear with us as we work out some kinks. Emails are sending slow because hundreds of emails go out (think one per topic for every topic every user has ever subscribed to for every user. That's a lot) all at once. I'm working on a solution as fast as I can.

However, with the new members and the constant activity, we've seen lots of not-so-good interactions in the forums. I've taken time off developing and drawing to try to nip this in the bud. Some comments and conversations have gotten out of hand, in very inappropriate and borderline illegal ways. I don't appreciate this type of conduct. Windlyn is my sandbox project, so I can learn to code, shared with my good friend Lime. I'd like it to maintain a pleasant environment. Also, I'm not sure you know or realize, but I'm under 18, and I'm not even the youngest member on Windlyn. We have members who are as young as 13. Many members visit Windlyn from school or work, and I'd hate to have us flagged as inappropriate and banned from certain settings.

I realize some of the radical behaviour came from us only having a vague set of rules and regulations. We were planning to "get around to it eventually," like most user-related things, but we grew too quickly to leave the site without specific rules.

I stopped developing and drawing for the past week or so (which, I'm sorry to say, pushes the winter updates back a bit) to make fully written out rules and terms of service. Please read them. At the very least skim the rules (I added a TL;DR because I know nobody actually reads anything on the internet). There should now be no question on what is or is not allowed. The links to the Rules, Terms of Service, and standard Frequently Asked Questions (about board function) can be found under "Info" in the footer of any page.

To help us maintain these rules, we've added a new Moderator. Please lend your support to Zombiebunny, as she takes on her new position.

[Diana]

Hey Winners!

I've bet you've all been noticing... The weather's changing... The air has a nip to it now. When you exhale you see your breath, and find yourself bundling up all warm.
That's right.

It's winter!

But what's more exciting than that....

Novalia is beginning!

For those of you who weren't here last year, or maybe you just aren't the holiday sort of folk, and are sitting and wondering "what is Novalia?": It's Windlyn's last holiday of the year! A multi-day event from the 22nd to the 31st of December, a time when beautiful aurora can be seen from all over Windlyn. It's a celebration of things we're thankful of from this year combined with what we wish for the up and coming year! Each day has a different celebration, or theme, but that's basically Novalia in a nutshell.

Regretfully, there's been a bit of a delay in the event schedule. Lime is starting day 3, the day of celebrating loved ones, early and is currently away, honoring a recent loss. Although Camilia's got her Novalian outfit on already, we will all wait for Lime's return before beginning the festivities.

However, Eve and Alexander Lazarus have brought you a pretty good assortment of holiday items to start you off! From the fanciest of clothes to the coziest of sweaters. Pick up a new, feathered friend to hug and relax in your ice fortress. Have a cup of mushbean cocoa (it's really not as bad as it sounds,) while you pack up your (snowball) arsenal. Surely there's something for everyone! If not, Eve's still looking around for some more goodies to bring out....

[Diana]

Hey everyone!

It's been a big week here on Windlyn!

We sorted out email problems, and more email problems, and more emails (8937 lines of emails, to be exact...)
But we got it sorted out! Subscriptions have been re-enabled. *cheers*
What happened? You probably noticed things running extra slow, or getting duplicates of emails from Windlyn, or them coming very late. You guys talk a lot; (which is awesome! keep it up!) the way we were sending reminder emails before was that any new post on anything you're subscribed to or any new PM sends an email. Normally, this would be fine, but we grew so fast that there ended up being thousands of subscriptions every hour. Think of it this way: assume 50 people are active every day. We get 1000+ posts every day now. So after someone posts, ~50 emails go out. Then as someone else replies, more emails go out. + all the emails from PM's that are triggered from chatting, pinging, trading, donating, etc. You get the idea.

It wasn't that we couldn't handle mass email sending, but that gmail, hotmail, and other email providers were rate limiting us, (because anyone who sends that many emails is basically classified as a spammer) So the emails got stuck in a giant queue on our side. The emails sent while they could, but that resulted in them being late (which also included people's registration emails).
Earlier this week, we disabled subscriptions, hoping it would stop most of the email problems, but then we learned how much you guys actually PM each other. So I fixed it by taking out everything that sends emails-- sans activation emails, and finally re-enabled subscriptions.

Here's where you come in:
I could sit down and work out some sort of "digest" that sends out an email every however long when you have pending notifications. But would you guys really use that? Do you really need it? Would you be fine if you don't get an email when someone replies to you?






On another note:

If you haven't been on in a while, you should make sure to look around before the year is over. I released a bunch of new items this week, perfectly fit for the Novalia celebrations going on right now! We suggest you snag them while you can.

We also started up our winter event. For more information, click here. There are prizes to be won! Both feathers and items!

While you're at it, you might also want to check out the item design contest and submit an entry. Who knows? You might be the one to have your item added to Windlyn!

We wish you all a Happy Christmas (or a general happy holidays)!

[Diana]

Hey Winners!
Just sending out some quick reminders:

There are only two more days to enter the item-design contest (today and tomorrow)! Entries that are submitted later will not be accepted. So far there are only 6 applicants, so if nothing changes there will only be two prize tiers. I know some of you have been working on items, so don't miss out on your chance to submit them!

Also, as Novalia comes to a close, the items will be removed from the Lazarus. All the items in the Lazarus (sans the skates, scarves, and sweaters) will be gone on January first. Stock up while you can!

[Diana]

Hey Winners!

We just put out the results from the item design contest! Congrats to Dragonball, Maro, and Oby!
Thanks to everyone who participated!

The results and all the entries are up on the front page of the event thread (under events in the forums) if you'd like to take a look!

Just a reminder, the Novalia items will be gone from the Lazarus at the end of January First. Get your Novalia goodies while you can!


We also made up some party poppers to help you greet the new year (or celebrate its arrival if you're already in the future. )! Stop by and pick them up!

Happy new year everyone (when it comes, it's a bit early for us)! Thanks for sticking with us this year. Your support means a lot to us, and we're looking forward to working hard with you next year!