ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING ADVICE. The basics for what makes a great RPG ad that grabs people's attention and keeps them hooked. Also includes an advertising plan of attack, way to test your ads, and some techniques for making your ad stand out.

ADVERTISING SCHEDULER AND TIPS. HTML for you to set up an RP scheduler (with a section for notes) as well as tips on how to divide communities up into it.

BANNERS. Tips for creating a great banner including how to find, clean, and crop an image as well as add text and color in an aesthetically pleasing way.

BASIC RPG AD. HTML basics for the creation of a simple and easily customizable RPG ad.

HOLLOW ART ADS. Hollow Art features an RPG directory for advertisements and features a random game each time you click on a new page or refresh in the sidebar. This tutorial explains what it is in detail and how to advertise there. You can also sign up for your game to be interviewed here.

MINI-BANNERS. Small images that link your game on user infos. splott's profile features some really gorgeous ones.

Where to Advertise on... INSANEJOURNAL | LJ | INKSOME | SCRIBBLD.

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CDJS

CDJS 101. The Whys, Whats, and Hows of character development journals.

CDJ EXAMPLES. Everyone learns better by example, right? And who doesn't want a bit of shameless self-promotion. You can leave a post here linking to your CDJ, if you have one, or browse through to get a feel for what they look like.

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COLOR

QUICK AND DIRTY COLOR TUTORIAL. Amazing color tutorial that explains which colors work best on which backgrounds.

LIST OF COLOR TOOLS. An incredibly thorough list althought the best tools (in my opinion) are listed below.

COLOR SCHEME DESIGNER. The best color resource in existence - and it's free! It allows you to do everything: lighten your scheme, darken it, add more contrast, see different text colors on top of your colors, points out warm and cool colors. Hell, it even has a page preview with multiple color options and an option for site schemes for those who are colorblind. Alternatively, you can use colordb (although it has a lot less options) or (if you find this all a bit complicated), try the resource below.

4069 COLOR WHEEL. One of the best and easiest ways to create a color scheme. Hover over the color wheel to view colors. When you pick one, click on it to choose a web-safe color. This color will be added to your color scheme near the bottom on the left side. When you select it, the square next to the color will also change. All the colors on this square will match the color you picked, allowing you to easily create a color scheme at the bottom.

COLOR PALETTE GENERATOR. Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. While helpful, it doesn't always bring up the best colors and you'll have to play with them. A good alternative can be found at Color Hunter.

COLOR SCHEMER ONLINE. Shows you which colors best match certain hex colors (that's the codes for colors -- you can find a list here. Say the Color Palette Generator didn't quite give you the right colors for what you're doing. What you can do is pick a color from your image (click where the green star indicates below and a box will pop up. The red arrow points to where the hex color is).

HEX COLOR LIST. A huge list of hex colors.

Color schemers can be found at... COLR | COLOURLOVERS | KULER

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COMMUNITY LISTS

INSANEJOURNAL. RP-related insanejournal communities for RP advice, non-game advertising, reuniting with old RPers, graphics and design, icons, critiques, layouts, vents and praise, and usernames.

NON-IJ. RP-related livejournal, Inksome, and SCRIBBLD communities for RP advice, non-game advertising, reuniting with old RPers, graphics and design, icons, critiques, layouts, vents and praise, and usernames.

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ETIQUETTE

GENERAL. General RP Etiquette. While written for IRC/chat-based games, much of it applies.

SPECIFICS. Much of this involves more debated RP issues like what counts as stealing and when it's appropriate to do certain things.

GODMODDING. Goes into detail about what counts as godmodding, power playing, and puppeting.

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FANDOM SPECIFIC

HARRY POTTER

HP REFERENCE POST. HP resources and advice specifically for Harry Potter games.

HP PROFILE TEMPLATE. A blank profile template for Harry Potter players.

HPJOURNALSWAP. A community devoted to swapping Harry Potter themed journals.


X-MEN

X-MEN REFERENCE POST. X-men resources and advice specifically for X-men games.

PLAYER INTEREST. How to make the needs of the fandom work for your game.


DC

DC COMICS PB SUGGESTIONS. A list of PB suggestions for DC comic book characters. Serves to provide alternatives for those who don't like the movie casts.


TWILIGHT

TWILIGHT LEXICON. Includes clothing, a timeline, vampire and werewolf mythology, and location information.

TWILIGHT WIKI. Appears to have fairly detailed character information (even on minor characters).


MISC

THE ORACLE: A BSSM ENCYCLOPEDIA. Everything you've ever wanted to know about Sailor Moon from manga to anime to PGSM.

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FREEWARE & SOFTWARE

PHOTOSHOP, PSP, and IMAGEREADY. Yes, those programs. Uploaded by kaisermonkey. Just in case you want to go the more legal route, however, here are some cheap alternatives.

GIMP. A great easy to use and free alternative to photoshop.

FILZIP. A great alternative (or even replacement) for winzip when installing fonts and brushes or creating a zip file to upload multiple icons.

GDOCS. Fantastic for writing posts as it saves your post automatically as you write and allows two users to edit (or write in) the same document. Oh, and if you don't have gmail? What are you waiting for?


FIREFOX & ADD-ONS

FOXFIRE & ADD-ONS. Here you'll find the basics about the browser and a long list of (essential) add-ons to better your RP experience.

REMINDER FOX. An essential for mods. Great for reminders (like checking activity and holds).

FOXFIRE & ADD-ON35 ABSOLUTELY USELESS FIREFOX PLUGINS FOR WEBDESIGNERS. It's kind of like Christmas for web design geeks. Highlights include the following: window resizer (to see how it would look if you had a smaller screen), lorem ipsum generator, programs that let you see how the page looks in IE and Opera in your browser, firebug (that lets you click/highlight material and shows you what that effects) and CodeBurner (which integrates with it and gives you reference material!), an eye dropper (for selecting colors) that lets you use it in your browser, a code viewer that works like Firebug but easier (it hasn't been updated but there's another version here), a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage, and even a tool that lets you find unused CSS selectors.

10 MUST HAVE FIREFOX EXTENSIONS FOR STUDENTS. If you're an RPer this is pretty handy. If you're a student (like most RPers) as well it's essential. Researching stuff for a game/character and have a billion tabs open? Well, Taboo lets you save and close them for later. Then, you could try Wired-Marker to make notes on and highlight the text on the pages (with different colors, boxes, underlines, etc). That's not to mention that it keeps a record of all the sites you've marked on. Maybe you need more info on something? Juice is a BAMF Firefox extension that can take any text on a page and automatically call up additional research information about that text.

40 USEFUL FIREFOX ADD-ONS FOR LIBRARIANS. PermaTabs lets you turn your tabs into permanent fixtures, which will open up each time you launch Firefox. There are webmail notifiers, Morning Coffee (which automatically opens up a different set of webpages in tabs for every day of the week, and a citation management tool.

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HTML REFERENCES

LEARN HTML

FUNKY CHICKENS. The place to go if you're totally new to HTML. It teaches you all about changing text, adding graphics, and what have you in a way that anyone can understand.

QUACKIT. Quackit teaches beginners how to make HTML creations by teaching the basics such as HTML and CSS. Then, it introduces more advanced topics so that you can add more features to your layouts.

CREATING A CSS WEBSITE FROM SCRATCH. An explanation of how to create a CSS website. It's especially handy for those who learn better by doing and are interested in eventually creating an IJ layout.

CSS FOR LIVEJOURNAL. Very simple and awesome guide to divs on LJ/IJ.

W3SCHOOLS. Everything you've ever needed to know about web design. Ever. An amazing reference.


THE FUN STUFF

PROFILE LAYOUT TUTORIAL. The basics for creating a profile layout using table basics so that your profile looks pretty instead of being just a chunk of text. Rec'd by splott.

TABLE CHEAT SHEET. Explains the different tags used in tables to help users edit and design layouts.

TEXT TRICKS. Explains opacity, alphabet blocks, how to start a section with a big letter, magazine style drop caps, and brilliant looking pullquotes.

TEXTAREAS & SYMBOLS. How to customize textareas, use symbols to give your text character or create an awesome directory, and apply checkboxes.

IMAGE MAP. Helps you add multiple links to a picture.

IMAGE COORDINATOR TOOL. Helps you cordinate where to add multiple links to a picture. A green plus sign means add an area, red minus means remove the area. You can choose rectangle, circle, or polygon, and paste the links for each in. While it doesn't do everything (you need to rename, add titles if you want hover-text, etc.), it's incredibly helpful. Recommended by igpayatinlay. It does assign a random number for the map's ID/name, and you have to add titles for the links manually, but it saves you time time rather than if you were doing it in paint or Image Ready.

HIDDEN TABLES. "The magic click". Shows you how to hide tables with CSS so that when you click a link a table pops up.

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ICONS & IMAGE EDITING

ADVERTISING

GAINING POPULARITY AS AN ICON MAKER. Tips and tricks for increasing the number of people watching your community as well as information on where to advertise.


FINDING ICONS

WIKICON. Categorizes icons by celebrity name much like find_icons's tags on top of allowing you to friend all the journals associated with the community.

PB ICON MAKER LIST. A more or less complete list of all the icon makers on IJ as well as a number of other sites. There's a friending button (although no longer updated to my knowledge) to add all the makers to your f-list here.

PB_UPDATES. The best place to advertise PB icons (and most widely used) as well as a great place for finding a PB because of its elaborate tagging system. This community sorts PBs by fandoms, sex, race, eye color, hair color, character suggestions, age, general characteristics/features (glasses), and occupation suggestions (such as scientist).

FIND_ICONS. Here players can request icons of celebrities and stock images as well as find them through the tagging system.

FIND_A_PB. This community exists to help roleplayers find quality PBs for their characters. You can use this community in two ways: request for PB ideas based on your character needs or PB suggestions for certain characters.

ONEANDONLYPB. Suggests multiple icons for PBs.


IMAGE EDITING

GOOD TUTORIAL. Amazing information on all things image editing including how to use things like curves, removing backgrounds, etc. And it even sorts it by the program you're using.

IMAGE TYPES. What to save as and why!

ICONNING. A tutorial community like this one devoted entirely to icons.

IMAGE TYPES. Image types, what to save as and why!

TORRENTS. This is a tutorial on how to download torrents (which are useful in obtaining movies and shows so that you can make screencaps).

SCREENCAPPING WITH VLC. How to screen cap images using VLC for banners and icons.

ICONS WITH PAINT.NET. How to make icons using Paint.Net.

COLOR CORRECTION. A tutorial for color correction in photoshop through an action for anime screencaps although it's said to work just as well for any image.

IMAGE MODIFICATION TUTORIAL. A tutorial for cleaning icons.

HUE/SATURATION. A tutorial on how to use hue and saturation to change certain elements within icons or other pictures into another color.

CHANGE SKIN TONE. How to change skin tone for a vampire or a mutant.


CHANGING HAIR COLOR

CHANGING HAIR COLOR. An awesome tutorial that shows how to make blonde hair pink.

CHANGING HAIR COLOR. Explains how to blend layers in photoshop (and gimp) in order to change hair color.


UPLOADING ICONS

TRANSFER AND UPLOAD MULTIPLE ICONS. Journal Watcher is a great alternative to the icon uploader programs out there if you're having problems installing it for whatever reason and need to upload multiple icons. On top of having a Multiple Icon Uploader, there's an Icon Archiver that allows you to easily transfer icons from one account to another. Journal Watcher also allows you to track posts and build your own tool bar.

ICON UPLOADER. How to install and use a multiple icon uploader program on mac (although the instructions should work for windows). Unlike the uploader above, this works for IJ, LJ, and SCRIBBLD.

ICON UPLOADER FOR INKSOME. You can find the windows version here and the PC version here.


MISC.

TINEYE. A handy little tool that will search the Internet for the same image in other places. So... you find that image that you must have for an icon, but it's too blurry, has text on it, too small, etc? Paste the URL into Tineye and it will find you other versions of the same image. There's also a firefox add-on here.

CHARACTER EXPRESSION MEME. This might come in handy for icon makers or those picking icons for a character to upload as it offers a diverse range of expressions to keep in mind while choosing or making icons.

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INSTANT MESSAGING

REVIEW OF IM CLIENTS. Compares AIM 6, Trillian Astra, Pidgin, MirandaIM, and Digsby.

TRILLIAN. Allows you to use however many accounts on AIM, YIM, MSN, ICQ, and IRC all at once in one program as well as has customization options that format incoming IMs according to your preferences (removing hard to read fonts and colors). It takes maybe a day to get used to but is well worth it once you do.

PORTABLE TRILLIAN. How to make Trillian portable in order to use it at school/work without having to download it.

PIDGEN. Like Trillian but with a more user-friendly interface. Would be especially helpful for those who also would like to be able to use gchat, MySpaceIM, and other programs not offered by Trillian.

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JOURNAL LAYOUTS

GENERAL

LAYOUT RESOURCES. A huge list of premade layouts and all sorts of brilliant sources for helping you great a perfect layout.

BROWSER SHOTS. Allows you to check your design's compatibility in EVERY browser since the history of ever and see how your design looks.

MINTYAPPLE. The most amazing, thorough layout resource for creating and editing layouts.

DUBIOUS.NU. Awesome information about how to customize the header of your generator layout and add a signature to your LJ entries.


BACKGROUNDS

BACKGROUND PATTERNS. A huge list of places that offer patterns and others where you can make your own as well as free image hosts as well as a tool to check whether your background is seamless.

ABSOLUTE BACKGROUND TEXTURES ARCHIVE. Huge collection of backgrounds and background textures from all over the interwebs.


ICONS

FAMFAMFAM. Loads of free icons that can be used on layouts.

ICONSPEDIA. More icons to use on layouts - submitted by a number of people.


S1

INSTALLATION. How to customize a journal with overrides. - note, not a tutorial ON overrides. Just how to install a layout.

HEADERS & NAVIGATION. On header/navigation overrides for S1 Generator Layouts.

S2

S2BLOGGISH. Awesome resource for how to create an S2Bloggish layout. Extremely straightforward and simple!

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MIGRATION & BACK-UP

MIGRATION

WINDOWS. A tutorial about how to transfer an RP or character journal on LJ to IJ on windows.

MAC. Allows you to transfer an RP or character journal on LJ to IJ on a mac.

LJ Sec. Makes a copy of your journal and moves it - much simpler than the other migration tools.

BACK-UP

BACK UP YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT. Lets you back up your followers, tweets, and DMs.

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MUSIC

FIREFOX MUSIC. Ways to listen to music in firefox.

ITUNED & UPLOADS. Where you can request or find uploads of music. You can also sometimes find software downloads there (like photoshop) or tv show episodes.

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ORIGINAL GAME RESOURCES

BRITISH

ENGLISH SCHOOL SYSTEM BASICS. The English school system has some definite differences against many countries: mainly the names of the schools, how many we go through, the ages which we go to each school and the qualifications that we gain. This provides a general summary of things which generally you would need to know, like from what type of school characters would go to and when, the qualifications they could gain, and when the terms are.


PERIOD

MHARI'S QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO OLD-FASHION ENGLISH. So you're writing a character from some vaguely medieval setting, and you want his dialogue to reflect the fact, without getting it hideously wrong? You have come to the right page: the Complete Noob's Guide to what the unwashed masses call Old English, but which is actually an early form of Modern English.

DICTIONARY OF VICTORIAN LONDON. Everything you need to know about Victorian London from advertising, hygiene, and sex to words and expressions.

PERIOD PB LIST. PBs dressed in Georgian, Regency, Victorian & Edwardian clothing. There are very thorough lists for men, women, and even drag!

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PLAYER RESOURCES

BASICS

RP 101. RP types, lingo, and courtesy.

APPLYING. How to apply for an RPG.

LAST COMMENTS RECIEVED/POSTED. Lists the last comments you received and posted. This is very handy when you need to catch up at an RPG.

COMMON ERRORS IN ENGLISH USAGE. Great (and very easy to use!) grammar resource. Makes it very easy to quickly make sure if what you're doing is right. Even if you're great at English? This is great.


CHARACTER CREATION

BABY NAME WIZARD. Will show you the points in the past 120 or so years in which the name has been popular. It's especially helpful if you're PBing a character from a previous historical period and aren't sure if the name you have in mind for said character would have been popular during their time period. It can also even be helpful in determining if you're trying to figure out if your modern character's name is too obscure and/or old-fashioned.

AGE CALCULATOR. Allows you to calculate the number of years, months, etc. between two dates. Great for figuring out ages.

FAKE IDENTITY GENERATOR. Rolls up not only a random name and occupation, but a birthdate, fake address, (invalid) credit card number, and an email address that allegedly actually works, among other bits of info.

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RPG MANAGEMENT

SETTING UP YOUR RPG. Serves to explain the basics of how to set up an RPG. On to of explaining what each part of the RPG is for, it includes how to center lj-cuts (helpful when putting your profile behind a cut), make textareas (to put code in), and create and update a friending button.

FRIENDING BUTTON WITHOUT TEXT INPUT. Just what it says.

THE BIG LIST OF RPG PLOTS. Compiled by S. John Ross, this list takes the premises of hundreds of published premises and boils them down to their common denominators. Serves as a great beginning for plotting and plot twists. It also includes a link titled Man Versus Himself with a huge list of thirty-six dramatic situations.

COMMUNITY GIVEAWAY. Here players can give others/hand over communities they started/completed but decided not to open themselves or game ideas that have been done before (that the former mod would like to see opened again but not do themselves)

AVAILABLE. A template for available characters that includes the text and a table for names.

RULES. A template for your RPG's rules that can be edited as needed.

CONTACT LIST. Tips for making your game's contact list more accessible.

TAGS. Explains why and how you should implement tags to keep your RPG organized.

SITE MAPS. What, how, and why. Also includes an awesome bit of code you can snag to make your own.

ACCEPTANCE/REJECTION TEMPLATES. Acceptance/rejection templates as well as some tips about accepting and rejecting members.

MAKING GAMES LAST. Advice for mods on how to make a game last and ensure quality.

WRITING GOOD POSTS. Why it's necessary for the game's activity to write good posts and how to do so.

MOD COOPERATIVE. A place for players and mods alike to come together to share ideas, look for co-mods, and to pitch games.

CHECKLIST. Easy tricks and tips for making your RPG look more professional.

CRITIQUED!. Here players and moderators can post advertisements for their RPG or links to their profiles and get feedback on ads, profiles, or even games from members of the community.

AWARDS. Whether you're doing character superlatives (great for college/hs games) or Oscar type awards, this walk through should help clarify some things and give you direction.

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STOCK IMAGES

LIAM'S PICTURES FROM OLD BOOKS. A great resource for public domain photographs and artwork for use in journal layouts and game graphics. There are almost 3000 pictures, maps, and photographs to peruse. All of the images are public domain, so there are no worries about royalties or infringing, though he does request you credit the website and the original book source. It works exceptionally well for fairy tale and magical games.

STOCK IMAGES. Where users can recommend and find stock images not being used.

OSCULATIONS. Osculations has some stuff that would make for great advertising banners if the creators don't mind you using them.

TYPOGRAPHY

TYPOGRAPHY: WHAT THE HELVETICA. A TL;DR guide to all things typography. Has how to pick out a font, what websafe fonts are, creating the right tone with text, images as text, the difference between serifs and sans serifs, text effects, spacing (and how to add padding to images), and much, much more.

FINDING A FONT AND TIPS. Where to find some free-to-use fonts and tips on how to make a header font work for your community.

LOREM IPSUM GENERATOR. Generates placeholder text for your layouts as well as explains the history behind it.

EM CALCULATOR. Calculator for converting px into ems.

TEXTISM/SMARTY PANTS. Both these tools allow you to convert regular punctuate into its more professional HTML alternative.

DAFONT. One of the most widely used font resources. Allows you to preview any text in the font of your choice and has great organization to make finding a font easier.

FONTSPACE. Here fonts are hand-categorized into 3000+ categories making it easy to find a font that fits the mood of your RPG. Great for RPG banners.

KEVIN AND AMANDA. Recommended by the_body. Specializes in handwritten fonts. Especially handy for games where entries are written in character-specific fonts.

FONTSTRUCT. A free and easy font-building site.

Dirt2.com. Fontmaker site. Free and interesting fonts with great examples of their use.

Free font lists can be found at... URBAN FONTS | FONT GARDEN | 101 FREE FONTS | DEVIANTART | HEADLINE FONTS | FAWNT | 50 INCREDIBLE FONTS | FONT CUBES | DESIGNER IN ACTION | BASIC & ESSENTIAL FONTS

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USERNAMES & CUTS

LJ TOYBOX. This site generates fake LJ-cuts and usernames (so you can link up usernames on different sites but still appear to have used the lj user tag) as well as creates basic character profiles. Rec'd by damosel

FAKE LINKS AND CUTS. Shows users how to change their username color and the graphic in front it as well as create a cut. Unlike LJ Toyboy, works universally (can show you to link a username on IJ, which isn't currently supported by LJ Toybox).

WORDIE. Wordie lets you make lists of words and phrases. Great for hunting down that perfect word for a username that might not be taken.

USERNAME GIVEAWAY. Here you can give away (not trade, not sell) usernames you haven't (and don't plan to) use on this community. Created before we realized giveaways existed. Ours, however, has an option for giving away usernames anonymously.

TRADING SPACES. A community devoted to selling and trading usernames.

TRADE WARNINGS. Warns players about traders who haven't kept up their end of a deal.

GIVEAWAYS. Community devoted to the giving away of usernames. Discovered after

PURGED USERNAMES. That's right! IJ now has its own version of this handy feature. If you have money to blow, you can find some pretty awesome usernames here.

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MISC.

FAQS. The misc. updates, questions answered multiple times, and info that's short and doesn't really fit in with anything else complied into a list. Includes how to check and see if two accounts have the same e-mail address, disable other users' custom comment pages, why your comment page is broken, and why advertising images aren't showing up.

POLYVORE. Allows users to assemble and link outfits their characters are wearing such as this one. Rec'd by advertisemyrp.

WEATHER STICKER. Tells the time and weather of certain locations.

KARAKUL. A community for user info banners. Think pb_updates for banners instead of icons.

NEWSPAPER CLIPPING GENERATOR. You can enter in a newspaper title, date, and text. It's very handy for moderators who post newspaper articles as RPG prompts.

CUSTOM SIGN GENERATOR. Fake magazine covers, post-it note generators, bar code generators, monopoly card generator, warning sign, and much much more.

BLINKIES. 'nough said.

TURNING OFF AUTO-RESTART (XP and VISTA). So that you don't wake up to find your computer has automatically restarted.

ERASE YOUR ONLINE FOOTPRINT. This is great for making sure no RP stuff pops up when you're applying for jobs.

META ROUNDUP. Has some interesting information for RPres under the roleplaying tag.

IJ LAYOUT OVERRIDER. This script changes the small images around InsaneJournal to a more aesthetically pleasing set of icons. There's an example of what it does here.

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