Yume 99 Share Posted January 17, 2019 How do you organize your site's lore/documentation - and if you've done it multiple different ways which way has been your favorite / seemingly most successful? Personally I tend to split between 2 forums: a "required reading" forum that has things like the rules/plot/getting started guide and then some sort of lore encyclopedia for expanded reading (with races, factions, world info, etc). I also like to alphabetize the required reading section if it's topics in a forum, or use like a sidebar nav with sections if it's pages. But yeah, how do you guys do it? Do you feel like the way you're using works, or does it seem like no one ever reads it no matter what you do? Some must be warriors that others may live in peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordan 23 Share Posted January 17, 2019 I like to have required reading, rules and plot in one area. Then i sub-forum out canon groups and species in the same area. Breaking down required reading of species I tend to group them. "Shifters, Fae," and put each sub species (werewolf, or elves) in their main grouping so that it makes for less threads and over all something easier for people to find. If you know you want a Fae, you go into the far things and look at the options, if you want an undead character, you go into that section and look it over. Or even a demon type character. I find it easier to locate races, and for coding purposes, only having a handful of member groups to code for is AMAZING. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huskerdust 625 Share Posted January 17, 2019 I just toss it all together in Simple Portal pages. I'm lazy. If I'm working with other admins on more lore intensive things, I leave the documentation up to them. Documents are one of my least favorite parts of starting a site, tbh. I have ideas, I'm just not good at organizing them. 1 Reality is an illusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kazetatsu 263 Share Posted January 18, 2019 for location lore, a brief need to know intro thread in the related rp board, which links to any relevant supplementary reading in the library board. that way the quick guide is on hand for rpers looking to post. for extra lore, advanced reading or whatever else, a single thread per entry, and all those lumped into a library which can be sorted into subboards based on need. categories such as species, magic, groups/factions, etc. 1 My Characters can be Found on Toyhouse Of Being Human, Modern Small Town Supernatural rp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StormWolfe 556 Share Posted January 18, 2019 @Yume Funny you should ask as I am about to embark on redoing my lore-heavy swords and sorcery site's documentation! My two IPS sites do not require much Lore and I am trying to move what there is off of WordPress and onto Pages. Like others have mentioned, I try to separate the documents into simple / intuitive categories such as Required OOC Info, People, Places, etc. Organizing the lore-massive swords and sorcery site has my brain twitching. Obviously, I will create a category of Required Reading / Getting started information. I might even add a sub-category of How-To articles. One category for "Common IC Knowledge", i.e. what every character will know about the world. Finally, World Knowledge. This one will contain information on the playable races and species, details on the countries/nations, histories, etc. Sadly, our swords n' sorcery world was created mostly from scratch so we cannot link to an established canon wiki to fill in gaps. For this reason, we're trying to add easy nav links within the documents like Suggested Reading sections. Our documents will have a table of contents in the sidebar for easy document navigation. The lore site itself will have an Index organized by category and the documents organized alphabetically. So - bottom line, my goal is to keep organization clean, simple, easy to navigate! 2 Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive. Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive. We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear. And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here. ~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~ *your one-stop RPG resource site! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bekah Share Posted January 19, 2019 We have a 'need to know' board, which is pretty self-explanatory. Then we have an encyclopaedia with a number of breakdowns from titles, culture and general information, just to name a few. I am also considering starting up a wiki site. Has anyone else made use of a wiki site for their forum? Do your members use it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kazetatsu 263 Share Posted January 19, 2019 I am generally against wiki's because I don't like things to link off site. I take an out of sight out of mind stance with such things, and believe that folks are more likely to stay interested, and use information if they can find exactly what they need quickly. that said I have seen wiki's and info pages work well for sites that have a large amount of unchanging lore, as long as those pages are easy to find from links on the forum or host site. 1 My Characters can be Found on Toyhouse Of Being Human, Modern Small Town Supernatural rp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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