Hi everyone!

bcforme001

I found this site just last night and I'm already having lots of fun :)

This is my first time being DM, and my campaign starts Saturday, so I'm a little nervous. I've just got the bare-bones up on my wiki "here":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/novanic
If anyone has any advice for tidying up the page and making it look more professional, it would be much appreciated!

arsheesh

Welcome to the Portal bcforme! And welcome also to your first DM'd campaign. It's allot of work but it is so worth it. As for suggestions, that all depends on what you want to do with your site. First ask, how important site presentation is to you. If you simply want a place to store your campaign info and aren't all that concerned about presentation, then I'd say your site is fine the way it is, just keep adding info to it. If, however, you would like a more visually stimulating site, then I have some suggestions.

First, try to find some images to furnish your site (particularly the "places" section. I'd also recommend making a campaign banner. It's one of the simplest and yet most important visual improvements you can make to a site. A good banner can set the mood for your entire site (e.g. dark and foreboding vs. carefree hack & slash). You can find many sites that will allow you to create your own banner for free (though you are usually limited to a selection of background images and fonts etc). You can also create your own in Photoshop, or the "GIMP":http://www.gimp.org/, a great graphics manipulation that is fee to download.

Second, check into Chainsaw's "Helps & Tips FAQ":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1114&page=1#Item_26 if you want to get some tips on HTML and Textile formatting.

Third, if you want to do some really innovative things with your site, you can use Photoshop or the GIMP to create your own background images (e.g. parchment, navigation buttons, adventure log banners etc).

Fourth, regarding your site layout, Grunn has written a really helpful tutorial on how to make a "wiki sidebar":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1109 to be used as a site reference. Also, I use navigation buttons on my sites and have made a few of them for the community to use "here":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/tales-of-darkmoon-vale/wikis/navigation-buttons. Hope that helps.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

JonathonVolkmer

Welcome to OP, bcforme001! Congratulations on being a first-time DM, as well -- as arsheesh said, it can be a lot of work, but it can be even more fun.

As is not unusual, from what I've seen, arsheesh has already pointed you in the direction of some of the most useful sources of information on sprucing up the ol' wiki. To what he's said, I would add only this:

Study closely both his campaign wikis and some of the other awesome ones you can find here (looking through the current and previous Campaigns of the Month is a great place to start) and use the View Source option on your browser's tool bar frequently to figure out why the best wikis look so good.

Welcome again!

-Jonathon

bcforme001

Thanks! I can't wait to get started. :)

Duskreign

Welcome, Bcforme001! I hope you find as much joy and satisfaction here as I have.

sandman

Welcome bcforme001!!!

Looking at other campaigns will give you good ideas, sooner or later you'll probably find something similiar to what you want to accomplish for your site, so keep looking!