The Noble Pagan Forums - The Noble Pagan Official Relaunch

Merry Meet to everyone!

This is the official announcement of the official relaunch of The Noble Pagan.

As you can see we've completely redone the look and feel of the site as a whole, and are in the process of adjusting some of the navigation features to make finding the main areas of the site easier when first starting out as a new user.

In the three months since we re-opened our doors we have accomplished quite abit, we've put ourselves back onto the search engines with the help of our content providers (you guys, the members of TNP), we've initiated some fun new toys on the site (Familiars, Topic of the Week, Social awards, etc), and we've met some new and returning members and have had some great discussions so far.

With this relaunch we are hoping to accomplish a few things:

1. Gain new members and build our knowledge base and resources as a collective community of Pagans.
2. Begin work on our pagan outreach programs (to be detailed in another post near the end of the month).
3. Transition from a place to gain friends, to a place to gain friends, teachers, students, knowledge and the ability to represent the pagan community as a whole to the entire world in a positive manner.
4. Provide educational resources for both pagans and non-pagans alike so that we can accomplish our goal of Promoting Tolerance through education.

Over the last three months we have implemented some things that you may or may not know about. In an attempt to provide a better understanding, the following is a list of the higher profile additions to the site:

1. Articles System: We added a system by which we are able to accept user articles and essays and publish them efficiently and quickly to the site and the internet as a whole. On average a new essay / article submission is published, released, spidered and propogated on the major search engines and within the blogosphere within an average time of about 45 minutes.
   • Articles
2. Prayer Candles: We have a unique way of getting your thoughts and prayers across the world. In our prayer room you are able to light a candle with your prayer / intent and send it into the web. Since Google is a god ( Proof Google is God - Church of Google), these prayers are heard by all the great deities of the world.
   • Your prayer candles give no personally identifiable information in them unless you specifically place that information into your prayer text.
   • The Noble Pagan - Prayers
3. Personal Pagan Blogs: That's correct. Personal pagan blogs. If you've ever wanted to have a blog but did not understand how they work or found the interfaces too difficult to understand, then ours is perfect for you. Best of all, just for being a member of The Noble Pagan your blog is already setup and waiting for you to post, and just like everything else here, it's 100% free.
   • Your personal blog location is:
     • http://noblepagan.com/blogs/*YourUsername*/
   • You can view other member's blogs here:
     • http://noblepagan.com/blogs/
   • The blogs are fully featured and provide linkback / ping / and traceback capabilities to any other blog on the web.
   • Your blog can be set to be viewable by anyone visiting the site, just the members of TNP, or only those members on TNP that you have marked as a friend.
4. Social Groups: We've implemented a place on the site that enables your to create different social groups for people on the site. For example: a person living in New York who enjoys quilting can make a social group for other New Yorkers that enjoy quilting. Once the group is created you can invite people to join and carry on discussion that pertain to only that group's focus independant of the discussions that are happening in other areas of the site.
   • Again, this capability is 100% free for you guys to use and play with.
   • The Noble Pagan Forums - Social Groups
5. The Forums: Ah the bread and butter of our existance. We have put a lot of effort into making sure that we are able to provide as much knowledge and the capability to provide more knowledge as we grow into the site. The forums is where all this knowledge is shared. It looks big and daunting, but we've broken down the pertinent areas into their own sub groups and you are able to skim and peruse and read at your leisure, or, if you have something to add or a topic to discuss, you can do that as well. The forums is where almost everything on TNP happens with a few exceptions.
   • The Noble Pagan Forums - Promoting Tolerance Through Education
   • If you have a suggestion for something to be added to the site feel free to drop us a line and let us know what it is. All suggestions are considered for implementation, however due to coding required to implement the suggestion, we may or may not be able to accomodate.
   • The Suggestion Box - The Noble Pagan Forums
6. The Bard's Circle: Do you have a story, poem, chant, song or music that you would like to share with the community? This is the place to do it. Located in the grove just outside the house it is a place for the bards of TNP to gather folks around and share their tales.
   • The Bard's Circle - The Noble Pagan Forums
   • You have the ability to upload MP3s to this forum, maximum filesize allowed 15 megabytes. This should be more than enough space for any song. If you require more please contact Cloudrunner directly via PM.
7. TNP Links Directory: Our illustrious web crawler (Celtic Spider) hounded me for a place for her to put up links for everyone to be able to utilize as a resource. So I did. You can add your finds to the directory, find our banners to link back to us (if you would like to, we would greatly appreciate it obviously) and search for the areas of the web that we have found to be a useful resource.
   • Links Directory

But Wait! There's More! If you act now we'll give you not, one, not two, not three but FOUR new additions coming soon!

1. Ask Spooder: ETA: End of November. Some of you may have met Spooder already, some may not have. Those who have know that she just absolutely adores being able to give her input whether she's asked for it or not. So I decided to give her a job. She is our very own Dear Abby. Ask her a question, any question, and she'll find an answer for you. The questions will be chosen daily (up to 5 per day will be answered) and she will give you the best answer she possibly can.
2. TNP Herbal Directory: ETA: End of January 2010. This area will be a fully functioning herbal directory containing each know herb's materia medica, witchy and common names, and their uses both for medicinal (if applicable) as well as spiritual. This area will also have the capability for users to add to and edit the directory as well ala wikipedia.
3. TNP Shops: ETA: End of November. We're in the process of implementing a shop for TNP members to be able to sell their wares (for those crafty types). You'll have the option of selling via consignment for those that sell mostly hand crafted stuffs, or we can create and host your own fully functional web presence shop (for a nominal fee of course ... hosting ain't free ya know ). In addition to the shops we are looking at implementing a classifieds area as well as an auctioning area for pagans and their stuff. These two things are in discussion and not set in stone as to whether we will be providing them or not.
4. TNP Library: ETA: To Be Determined. We're working on being able to provide the users of The Noble Pagan a library containing all sorts of helpful books in e-book format (pdf) so that you can actually read those hard to find ancient grimoires and manuscripts. This will take time due to copyright legalities. Once this area is completed we will provide you with more information.

Now we do have other goals and objectives in the works as well, but they are in the far future (like 6 months to a year away still). We will highlight those as we near their implementation timeframe.

Yes, that's alot of stuff going on. We really hope that what we have accomplished so far and the direction we are heading is something that you can get behind and help us with because ultimately The Noble Pagan is not about me, or the staff members. It is about you, your community, your safety and most of all, your right to believe what you want and practice how you will.

If you have any problems with the new look or suggestions, please let us know.

May your path be guided by love.

Namaste'
Cloudrunner and The Noble Pagan Staff