November is a great month. Want to know why? Because my and Foglegs' birthdays are in November. In fact, they're only three days apart! You may all go now dine on turkey and pumpkin spice in celebration of us.
Admin
From the Desk of the Admin Team
Announcements:
It's November and it's one of the busiest times around RPG-D. We have both NaNoWriMo AND our very own creation, MeGrDeMo. This is a great time for all of you to get to meet some new people (By participating in write in's via Chatzy sponsored by RPG-D) and flash your graphic skills ALL over the place.
If you want to learn more about both of these events, please take a moment to read the Writing and the Graphic's section of the newsletter. We'd LOVE to see all of our members participating in these and if you have ANY questions, please feel free to reach out to staff to help.
We hope you all liked our Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin themed halloween skin. We pulled all our colors for it from Charlie Brown pictures and since I love snoopy - it gives me an excuse to use my snoopy gif for a while 
Multiple User-Groups - we haven't forgotten this and are still working on building that code. We have all the user groups and the people that earned them and once that code is ready, we'll award them to everyone.
On a sad note the Manager Team is nursing a sad and bit of a broken heart. Because of some real life issues, our beloved Writing Manager, Lily Lilac (or now known as Black Widow) had to step down. She is an amazing person and an even more amazing staffer. Once things settle down her, we hope to haver her right back here on staff.
On a positive note, we'd like to let everyone know that our amazing and BAD ASS Fierce Gwen has been promoted to Writing Manager. She is going to do SUCH a good job and you guys will see so much come out of the writing team. Congrats, Fierce Gwen!!!
Directory
From the Desk of the Directory Team
Announcements:
Directory is sad to say goodbye to @Desertpuma, but thanks him for all the work he did for the 'D and wishes him all the best!
The Directory Team is hiring! Come join an awesome team of purple moderators. Details here.
Members' Choice:
The Theory of... won Members Choice #63: Free for All!
Just Another Chocolate Frog Card won Members Choice #64: Open for Over 4 Years.
Graphics
From the Desk of the Graphics Team
Announcements: MeGrDeMo is here! Our version of NaNoWrMo for the graphically inclined is now under way, so check it out! <3
Likewise you may have noticed new greens in the staff list. A big welcome and congrats to @All Perspicacity and @Murderous Siren! And to @shipwrecks as well, who'll eventually be switching to green instead of blue. In case that switch in username colour, does cause any confusion particularly when it happens.
Spotlight Member: Our spotlight member this month, is CarpeCorde! We love their enthusiasm for making graphics, and they have a wonderful shop here where they've been helping others. Thank you for being a lovely presence overall basically, we can't wait to see how you improve more!
Spotlight Area: Have any graphics you've been needing? Maybe consider posting or helping out if that's more your thing, with the open requests section.
Or do you have any graphics your're needing for NaNo? Our MeGrDeMo board has it's own sub-board for requests.
Current Challenge: If you're feeling like doing some photo manipulating, or trying your hand at it, our current challenge might be worth a look. GC #215 Ghoulish Graphic, in case you're not quite ready to forget about Halloween until next year.
Challenge Winners:
Murderous Siren won GC #210: Seven Devils with this entry.
Lee Pace won GC #211: A Helping Hand with this entry.
Simi won GC #212: Doll Face with this entry.
Writing
From the Desk of the Writing Team
Spotlight Member: We want to give a shout-out to @ohnoitserin; we appreciate all our passionate writers, but ohnoitserin has been pretty active in the discussion forums lately, and that's something we love to see!
Spotlight Area: This month we're going to have a special forum for NaNoWriMo! Look out for that; we can't wait to see what you guys do with those 50,000 words!
Announcements: If you needed any incentive to try your hand at this year's NaNoWriMo, those who participate here on the 'D will be eligible for some button ad space!
Challenge Winners: We'd first like to extend a belated congrats to @DesR for winning WC #99
Congrats also to @Jeremor for winning WC #102, and @Ahkmenrah for winning WC #103! Keep it up, guys!
Support
From the Desk of the Support Team
Announcements: It's clean up time! The Support Team has been making some much needed changes to Request Station. We realized that some of the rules were outdated. In order to give the RPG-D community the best experience possible in this forum, Support has carefully started looking over Request Station and making updates. So far we've been through Requesting RPG, Roleplay Buddy Search, and Character Wanted Ads. There are more changes to come. Check out the updates to the rules for these forums here, here and here!
Support also welcomes three new members to the team: @Quoth the Raven, @Widow's Peak and @MudBug! We're very happy to have the three of you with us. On a similar note, we wish @shipwrecks good luck on her new adventures! We're not saying farewell since she's going to the Graphics team. We will miss you though!
Spotlight Member: Support would like to give a shout out to soggymuse! Along with some gorgeous skins submitted to The Skindex, we also appreciate that soggymuse has been keeping their skins updated! If you're looking for a skin for jcink, we encourage you to stop by The Skindex and check out soggymuse's skins!
Spotlight Area: Do you have that perfect roleplay planned out for your board, but no one to play the characters? If so, check out Character Wanted Ads! In this section, people can place ads for characters that are needed. Character Wanted Ads is divided up into two forums: Site Wide Characters (for board staff) and Personal Characters (for everyone).
Current Challenge: SC #74 - CFS is the New Black and Super Spooky Halloween CSS!
Challenge Winners:
Chief Hiccup CSS #11 - Stripes
Bonbon. SC #72 - Pixelated
Desi! SC #73 - This is Halloween
Community
From the Desk of the Community Team
Spotlight Member: This month we are highlighted @Mara! Mara is really on ball with making posts and participating in discussions, and that's something we on the community team like to see.
Spotlight Area: Check out the Community Whispers forum for some fun discussion. The holiday season tends to bring up lots of fun stuff to talk about, so go at it!
Announcements: Have a Happy Halloween, from the community team to you! @Xalcen is stepping down from the Community Staff - thank you for your service, you will be missed. <3
Tech
From the Desk of the Tech Team
Stability Survey: The technical team is continuing to keep an eye on the back end of RPG-Directory's new server. You may have noticed some server is busy try again later. This is the server trying to save itself from crashing in high traffic load times. We'd like people to please take a moment and take our stability survey so we have an idea how we're doing: http://goo.gl/forms/yPgPJ74aCU
Anchor Tags: Long requested by documentation writers. RPG-Directory now has anchor tag support to allow you to create jumps to other sections of your post without causing a new link to open up or making several individual posts for a Table of Contents. First, drop an anchor:
Code:
[anchor=rawr]Blab blab blab[/anchor]
Then add a jump to the anchor:
Code:
[jump=rawr]Text text text[/jump]
Just replace rawr with what you'd like the jump #rawr to be.
Private Message Overhaul: We are in the process of overhauling the Private Message system. Unfortunately once we make the jump, private messages will be lost, so back up what you want to save just to be safe. We are doing this in favor of new Private Message system similar to how we had it on XenForo... You may use the new system by clicking here. We will be making the swap once we get the alerts for the new system up and working. The switch over will happen when we move to MyBB 1.8.1; this is still a few months out. We're hoping to complete this transition within the next six months.
MyBB 1.8: MyBB 1.8 and 1.8.1 is out. We are still planning on moving forward as we test stability, our server with it, and critical features. We do fully intend on having this done within the first half of 2015.
Awards
Awards
Be sure to check out The Challenge Center for upcoming Member's Choice awards, Graphics Challenges, Support Center Challenges, Writing Challenges,and Community Challenges.
Congratulations to the following people and sites who won challenges and the Member's Choice award in the last month!
The Theory Of... won Members Choice #63: Free for All!
Just Another Chocolate Frog Card won Members Choice #64: Open for Over 4 Years.
@Murderous Siren won GC #210: Seven Devils with this entry.
@Lee Pace won GC #211: A Helping Hand with this entry.
@Simi won GC #212: Doll Face with this entry.
@DesR won WC #99.
@Jeremor won WC #102.
@Ahkmenrah won WC #103.
@Chief Hiccup won CSS #11 - Stripes
@Bonbon won SC #72 - Pixelated
@Desi! won This is Halloween.
Badges
Badges and Promotions
Here at the RPG-D, we like to recognize members who make valuable contributions to the community. One of the ways we do this is through the Badges & Promotions system. In our monthly newsletter, we highlight the people who have earned an award during the previous month. To see the list of everyone who has ever won a badge, see the medals page. To see the list of all promoted members, look at this list kept updated by Sassy Peter.
Congratulations to the following members who earned badges or Promotions in previous month!
Badge Winners for October:
@Ahkmenrah - Red Writing Challenger
@Bonbon - Orange Support Challenger
@Desi! - Orange Support Challenger
@The Frigg - Silver Innovative Interest, Silver Rapid Reviewer
@Jeremor - Red Writing Challenger
@Lady Hyde - Bronze Wilful Writer
@Mara - Bronze Innovative Interest
@Murderous Siren - Bronze Community Chatter, Bronze Challenge Contender, Orange Graphics Challenger
Credits
Credits
It is only good, right, and proper to give credit where credit is due! To further prove this, I would like to take this time to give snaps, claps, and what have you to the people who make the newsletter possible.
@Nevertale - See that pretty header at the top of this lovely newsletter? Doctor Lector took the time to make that and 11 others for GC#173 and won, earning this prized place for up to a year. Check out her portfolio and say hi to her out on the board!
@The Mad Hattress, @The Domster - These lovely Co-Admins give us all the updates you see and need in the newsletter monthly. They are great!
@Misha, @Hero Prinny, @Black Widow, @Firelord Kesra - To these staff managers and their teams, of course, for getting me updates from their areas that you see in every newsletter.
I'm kidding, all of the credit goes to me, because I'm fantastic.