Okay, so nowadays; what makes a good roleplay site? Many think that layouts, colors, and a bunch of fancy images make these sites great. However, these most often necessities (although nice and braggable) can be confusing to those who don't know your site as well as you. Take for example those wonderful arrays of HTML... give it to someone who's starting off as a role player and you get arguments up the rear end. Make sure links are very noticeable when creating and rearranging your site. For advanced site layout makers; try not to confuse people with big words; trying to make yourselves sound genius. I don't know, but the majority of us aren't walking dictionaries. Settle with simple words like 'Guest Login' instead of 'Espionage'. It makes our lives easier, and will make yours, too. As for images, I know sites look a whole lot better with wonderful images, showing off the site owners (or someone else's) talent. These are excellent additions to a site, but with too much of them the site becomes cluttered. [ A little side note: If you do have wonderful images, it's best to copyright them to yourselves so n00b's or others *coughevilpatheticloserlikepeople* don't steal them. Trust me, I've had this happen and it isn't too fun.] Oh boy.. now for colors. A lot of sites now like dark and creepy colors, which aren't bad, but try and be creative. While in your stroke of genius, beware of colors that don't go and very extensively bright backgrounds/links/font etc. Staring at the computer screen to read something isn't too comfortable for your eyes. Please let people with 20/20 vision keep it, please.

As for all those little inside details, there are a few good things and not-so good things existent. Take for example (yes, again) advanced roleplay sites. I'm an advanced role player and have seen many things in my 4 or so years of roleplaying. People seem to think all those big and fancy words make the site good. This just proves you can use a Thesaurus. Advanced roleplaying is where you're very descriptive and include much detail (usually 8 lines or so of 'action text'). This, for some, is not so hard to do. Others believe they could put big words in there just to extend their post length or excuses along that line. If you sit down to those kind of posts, you'll be there half the night trying to figure out what any of those words mean. Yeah, kind of annoying. If you try a paragraph or so without that fancy tidbits, I bet you can write a lot more if you took 5 minutes out of your day. Excessive use of apostrophes is also annoying to the average role player and is absolutely senseless. Dazzle us with your brilliance, and if you aren't that good of a speller, might I suggest spell check?

Content. This is absolutely a biggie for RPG sites. If you give people something to work with, they'll be able to work along the plot and produce wonderful posts; I almost guarantee it. A good set of rules is a good thing to have along with this content. Try typing a plot as if it was a story without ending. Eventually the members will start to get used to it and move along with it. While posting, try to keep the entries to at *least* 3 paragraphs of action (no dialogue). How can people work with, for example: *The female wolf stood there with beautiful blue eyes staring into the horizon.* Give people something to work with! Make your character interesting instead of just... making them existent. Trust me, a lot more people would like to roleplay with you once you start making posts interesting.

Whatever your level, whatever your roleplaying style, a happy roleplay site is a good roleplay site. These are just a few suggestions to help you create a satisfactory, even great, site with little effort put in by you. Others will learn to respect you and roleplaying will become quite more interesting to you as skills improve and you get accustom to these 'toils'. I hope these suggestions help you on your journey of a great RP time!