Storyteller's Circle 1 Year Anniversary!
So! One year! For some that have been here from the beginning it scarcely seems like its been that long already, and for others it no doubt comes as a surprise that Storyteller's Circle has only been up and running for one year now.
The place has definitely come a long ways from its beginnings as a ragtag group of a dozen or so people looking for a place to put down roots, and it only continues to grow day by day. When we opened our doors on November 1st of 2016, we were anticipating an uphill battle to really bring the place to life, but much to our surprise and delight the appeal of the place spread like wildfire. In a matter of weeks we had a large enough user base to take a top position on TopRPSites.com and after that... well here we are now
Much of this success must be attributed to the users who have made this place their roleplaying hot-spot. Both in doing their part to uphold the spirit of Storyteller's Circle, our rules, and our open/inviting community, as well as more personal involvement in helping to bring new users here through voting, and helping to alleviate some of the financial costs of Storyteller's Circle through generous donations.
In particular, Storyteller's Circle would like to acknowledge and extend a very special thanks to @Faithy, @Nilum, @Script, @marsbat, and @Sokka for being our top five donors throughout our opening year. It is with their help - and many others - that we have been able to provide many of the features and services that we do. While we can only offer so much in return, we would like to extend the offer of a personalized user banner to each of you - of your own design/color - as well as a specialized trophy (pending with our new trophy update soon to come). Details regarding the banners will be provided via PM.
And while it's not as easy to track individual contributions through voting and other methods of helping Storyteller's Circle grow, we will also be offering a one-time trophy to all approved accounts who registered within Storyteller's Circle first year (again with the soon to be release of our new trophy update). Just a little something to note and acknowledge those that helped to build up Storyteller's Circle's foundation.
In other news, many of you may have noticed some new faces among our staff here on Storyteller's Circle, and that's largely in preparation for making a push towards ensuring that our second year is as successful as our first. With the general growth of the site, we have been looking to expand our Warden team with @Silence as the first new addition of hopefully more yet to come, and we have also brought on our first Designers, @Griffith and @Machina Somnium, with @Lialore to head the new team. With the establishment of our Design team, we hope to soon be able to offer staff organized assistance with helping people to develop their roleplays aesthetically through character artwork, map creation, banners, and more.
We also have exciting things on the horizon with the release of the latest xenforo update that carries many new features with it. We are still waiting for all of our addon developers to get their updated versions released so that we can get everything updated at once without any compatibility issues. But it's definitely something that we will be rolling out in the months to come! Anyone wanting to help out with this venture, we're putting aside any excess donations that we receive beyond the basic server upkeep costs to get all of our licenses renewed in preparation for these updates.
And on a closing note: Great job everyone on an amazing first year, and keep up the great work at making Storyteller's Circle such a great place.
