OOC:MagiJournal
From ErtverseWiki
MagiJournal, as it is used on the Erters.org Forums, is a blogging software feature provided by Invision Power Board. While it is used such as a LiveJournal may be used in the instance of a community board, here it is used as the in-character translation to the wizard gadget MagiJournal.
While the feature is just another means to, in the case of community boards, privately store thoughts, poetry and conversations with others, we use it here as the wizard gadget suggests; as easy communication with other Magicals around the globe.
If you don’t feel like dealing with narrative and post a whole thread for a casual conversation that adds to your current plot? Use the MagiJournal feature. Is your character a poetic, thoughtful type that makes you wish for a place to store this? MagiJournal! Do you have to use this feature for those specific situations? No!
MagiJournal is just a nifty aside and all players are free to simply mention doing these things in their threads. However, if you wish to add a bit of flair and have solid documentation of it being done in RP without having to fret, MagiJournal is at your disposal!
Other uses for this feature include:
- Plot Page – for those so inclined, you can use this feature specifically for that. Make one post, pin it to the top and tada! Plot Page; it will count as an OOC resource only, unless the character is just that creative.
- Major Publications – only facilitators would use MagiJournal in this fashion: The Daily Prophet, as you can see, is listed as a MagiJournal. It is not actually a MagiJournal in use by the Daily Prophet and just a convenient place to store headline articles. Feel free however, to contact the owner of Major Publication facilitators and have them put up your article.
- Current Facilitator Accounts with Major Publication Journals: Event
And that’s it! I imagine folks will find more creative uses for the feature in time, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. Anyway! Keep reading to brush up on the more technical aspects of this forum add-on.
Contents |
Creating Your MagiJournal
It’s a fairly simple process and doesn’t require you to wave your hand over anything – well, except maybe your mouse. There are two ways to activate your MagiJournal on the board and they are outlined below.
- Go to the MagiJournal link on the main board page and click “Activate MagiJournal”
- Note that you can only have one MagiJournal per account, so you will need to this for each character you have.
- Go into your Wizard Bag (User Profile), look to the left sidebar and find MagiJournal Listing
- Click the link Activate MagiJournal.
From there the process is pretty straightforward. The name of your MagiJournal is the name that your character chose for their MagiJournal. Note: If you and your character decide to name the journal The Wind Blows and Fire Burns, all MagiBuddies will have to write “Dear, The Wind Blows and Fire Burns,” to contact you. Be kind to them.
Once you have completed those steps, you will see a new link on the main board page: My MagiJournal, that link will take you directly to your MagiJournal page where you can edit all of the settings.
Using your MagiJournal
Using the blog feature is the same as creating a post on the board, however, all formatting guidelines are lifted when using this feature. It is, after all, where you and your character can express their creativity.
Just remember that there are limits to the in-character MagiJournal. No one can actually send glossy-mag pictures through it, if you use bolded text, it simply means your character is abusing their quill; having the text colour changed means that your character either has a really cool quill being abused, or has a lot of inkpots by their side.
In short and what I mean by this: any fancy formatting would be considered entirely for aesthetic purposes and, in the case of pretty photos, not actually translating properly between the Journals.
Saying that, if your character draws a picture on the MagiJournal and sends it, that will show just fine.
Customising your MagiJournal
Unfortunately, the MagiJournal uses the same skin as the board, so no other customisations on can be made on that front. However, you can edit many of the other features and I shall go through the important ones here.
I will note now that it is best to edit your MagiJournal via your Wizard Bag links; it provides more options, while the My MagiJournal link at the header of the board serves as a quick shortcut. Anyway, here we go.
Your MagiJournal
Most of the fields in Your MagiJournal settings are rather self-explanatory so I shan’t go into them all that much. Just fill out the required fields. Private Blogs are not allowed, Trackbacks and RSS feeds are entirely up to you, though, I believe them unnecessary as MagiJournal is solely for RP. Anyway, change all those options to what you’re most comfortable with (the amount of entries showing on your main MagiJournal page, etc) and then move on.
Content Block Settings
This is where you can customise your MagiJournal so we have an idea of how your in-character one may look, as well as an idea of the character. You can set the width of the content blocks easily. The default is 250pixels. I would suggest leaving it that way, especially since you’re probably going to add custom blocks. Anything less than 150pixels looks sloppy.
If you want to create a custom content block, just click that button. You will be directed to a ‘new topic’ interface. There, you can add anything you want, be it a list of books read (some people have those in their dairies) images your character may have doodled all over their MagiJournal, current Wishlist (I make those for myself in my diary) as well as their own schedule for work/school/the week.
All content blocks can be hidden and deleted. To do that, if you need, go back to your MagiJournal options in the Wizard Bag and look for the area where little arrows are pointing up and down alongside the various content blocks available.
You can shift the content blocks to different sidebars, either left or right, with the drop down menu and you’re away.
To post a new entry, just go to your main MagiJournal page and click Entries, you should get the option to do so in a dropdown box.
That’s it, easy as! Any OOC or I.C. technical questions can be posted in the MagiSupport Blog
