Since the beginning, we’ve been using the #announcements text channel to give you guys the latest pieces of information and to keep a trace of every major change.

And this is pretty good! It allows Mods to make new announcements easily, and it enables members to find those announcements conveniently, right on the server!

But unfortunately, #announcements falls short every time an update gets multiple paragraphs long, Discord was created for short messages, the markup options are very limited for long posts and having to scroll them up is a pain. The text is small and tight, which is great for messages but terrible for lengthy updates.

And as we’re going to be expanding beyond Discord (blog post on that soon), we can’t continue to publish important updates exclusively there.

This is why I created this blog! Now, we finally have a place to post longer stories, with richer markup and better presentation.

Whenever a blog post is published, we will notify people in #announcement, so you’ll never miss anything!

Providing a delightful experience with a minimalistic interface

While deciding on the appearance of this blog, I did the following considerations:

• When people are using Discord, they aren’t in the mindset to read longer publications, I should use a theme that makes reading enjoyable by displaying the content in a clear, beautiful way.
• Having to go on another service to read something can be annoying, I should make this as smooth as possible by keeping the interface to the point and avoiding unnecessary elements that break the flow.
• Discord uses a dark theme, so I should use a dark theme by default to avoid hurting people’s eyes.

So I chose the Hello Friend theme for Hugo, I really hope you like it! It’s pretty cool!

Who can write for this blog?

Anyone! No really, while only a few people (mainly me, but possibly more in the future) have the right to actually publish anything to the blog, we may allow stories from anyone as long as they are relevant to the community!

Maybe there will also be updates from the somewhat independent Minecraft server, maybe we’ll see stories from members about the server, or maybe not, I don’t know!

How to send a story:

1. You should write your article in a markdown text editor, like StackEdit, this will make publishing much easier for me, but if you can’t, stories written from a regular office software are fine too, please send them in the .odt format.
2. Proof-read yourself, it is very important. Personally, here is how I proof-read:
   1. Read the text out loud, as it would normally be spoken, to search for very obvious mistakes and weirdly-phrased sentences.
   2. Do a slow in-depth reading to find grammatical and spelling errors.
   3. Finally, use tools such as Grammarly or LanguageTool. A lot of people are tempted to use them as the first step, but I prefer to use them last, because if you use them at the start, you’ll be too confident, and your proof-reading will be less effective.
3. Send your story to Pizzacus#2884 or to the email on my GitHub profile along with a brief description of it.
4. I’ll collaborate with you to get it published! You will be credited appropriately.

I hope this blog will be helpful! See you on the next update!