Seventh Sanctum

Seventh Sanctum Update 12/17/2013

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Hello everyone, and here’s the latest update.

Thanks to everyone who took the poll on my plans to add some content and community to the Sanctum.  Before I get to that however I do want to address the issue of removing the option to decide how many entries to generate.  A lot of people wanted it back.

I had waffled on this because removing the option didn’t seem to make much impact and it kept things simple.  But in the poll, someone gave a me case of why they needed to modify how many entries they got.  That was the real convincer for me.  So I’ve mulled over some ways to work that into the current layout, and I think I have an idea, so I’m going to work to put the choose-your-amount option back in, though I think I’ll have it default to maximum.

That kind of feedback is really helpful.  I need to know how people use the site.  So in the future if you want a change or have a new idea, spell it out in detail, it helps a lot!

So now what the poll told me!

First of all, people are in general behind adding a content/blog/library section.  But it’s not everyone’s primary interest – more of a secondary (20% of people were neutral, 8% didn’t like it or really disliked it, 55% were for “pretty good” and 17% were really enthused).   That tells me that it’s a decent idea, and one I’ll do for various advantages, but its appeal is mostly secondary to the larger audience.  Right now I plan to add one, but I probably won’t trick it out with any bells or whistles right now – though as I’m going to be doing some really weird stuff to make it work, that may be secondary.

Secondly, I got some good suggestions from the polls period – and not just on the number selections.  So I think I’ll do some of these now and them!  Also frankly it’s kind of fun.

Third, yes, I am going to be making more generators.  Now that I got the site rewritten and have my mojo back, I plan to add new ones over time.  I’ve got about one to three I want to do now more for fun – and one silly one turned out to be a fascinating exploration of language structure I want to finish.

Fourth, I got other good ideas for the site I may give a shot, mostly usability tweaks.  Stay tuned 😉

Finally, for those asking for a mobile version of the site, the site is optimized to work across devices, though a vertical cell phone profile is a bit hinky.  I am looking into making it into an app (though the generators based on other media wouldn’t be there), but that’s more later 2014 if I try it – a friend is experimenting with such things and we may team up.

– Steven Savage

Way With Worlds: Recording Your World

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Shelves

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

So you want to build a nice detailed setting. You are ready to keep a record of everything so you review and expand your work. You’re ready to dive into this and put your world to pen, keyboard, map, and file.

This raises the question of just how you record everything.

If you’ve ever visited a fan wiki or purchased one of those “world of . . .” books that attempts to distill a novel or series of novels into a record of that universe, you know there is a lot of data. It can be a little daunting because when you want to create your setting in detail, really get into it, and you’re basically creating one of those. On your own. Along with writing your story or stories.  It’s a bit daunting

What’s the best way to do it?

Well, that’s actually several questions. So let’s get to them.

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Seventh Sanctum Update 12/11/2013: Poll Results!

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First of all thanks to everyone who participated in the poll!. I have to do these more often!

And the results? Well the results surprised me but also point in a clear direction.

First of all, only a bit over 20% of people wanted no social or content features on Seventh Sanctum – but the rest was near-evenly split over “yes” or “not sure” with a slight lean to yes. What was amazingly clear from the comments was that people were worried social media, forums, blogs, and so on would take over the site.

That at first surprised me, because the focus of the site is on generators – until I thought about it and agree, yes, social media and features can change sites and not always for the better. Buttons for social media end up everywhere. Forums can consume a site. A blog can become a giant mess of irrelevant articles.

So your voices were heard. Don’t worry I never intended the site to get like that anyway, but I now understand how people feel even better.

Now when it came to what people wanted to see content and feature-wise, it was very big on two things – tips and info, and user contributions. Message boards came in behind that and other features were more distant, with mailing lists losing out – but more on that later.

So people want information and useful stuff, and maybe some things about what’s going on with the users.

On top of this some people had other generator suggestions, so I may need to run polls like this regularly to get new ideas. Two things to get out of the way:

  • Those of you wanting a way to subscribe to generators by email or RSS feed, I’ve actually experimented with it . . . no promises, but there’s a few fun things I’ve done lately that point at interesting directions.
  • It seems people want the number options back on the generators. I’m considering some ideas (like having the HIGHEST be the default then you can choose less). The biggest challenge ironically is putting them in the new layout.

Now, this all gives me a direction. The site is fine, but more content would be great as long as it’s part of the site and doesn’t predominate, and social tools and interactions are good only in limited ways or when they don’t take over.

So here’s my plan.

  1. The site pretty much stays as is. That’s a given, though obviously I’ll tweak things and add stuff, and of course occasionally redesign it.
  2. I’ll add a subdomain like “zine.seventhsanctum.com” or “stuff.seventhsanctum.com” or something that will be sort of The Library. This will be part of the site that contains archives, information, and so forth. To do this I can probably wrap the Sanctum Bootstrap template around a blog or CMS system and make an ez-to-post archive (if I can’t then we’re back to square one – and my first goal is to keep the site stable).
  3. The “Library” (or whatever I call it) will be where updates, advice, regular columns (like Way With Worlds), and so on are posted. It will allow discussion (via Disqus of course). The feed will display on the front page where the old blog is now.
  4. The “Library” will be specifically for advice, updates, and discussing creativity in the comments. I will also invite other people to contribute so all of you can share your ideas and help each other out. We may also have “open discussions” for people to share sanctum-based works, and so on – so you can see what people are up to.
  5. I may actually implement a mailing list at some point for tighter social discussion – in a nice, unbounded, but not-on-the-site manner. The mailing list was the least popular idea, but I think it’s bounded nature may be worth it for people who want to get social, but I don’t want to radically change the sites.

So I think this fills all requests. The site stays the same. There’s a subdomain for posting advice and guides and discussing creativity – and you out there can get involved. We may have a mailing list for socializing, for people who know each other and want to chat.

What do you think?  Go take the poll!

– Steven Savage