Introduction

Happy New Years! A year ago while XP was actively being written, James and I conspired to restart an old project of Evant's that while unannounced, most members will have seen the fruits of recently. But first, a very brief introduction since I haven't done a news post in years. Most members know me as Socks. I've been in various roles from house summit, DS, and DC, to now what I affectionately call “Evant's minion.” For this post I asked him to define what it is that I do, and while he's not wrong, it didn't exactly help :P

I work on several projects behind the scenes to varying degrees, some I just cheerlead and keep tabs on for the bosses. Evant still has a lot envisioned for his tenure and not all DC projects are tied to a single office, so it is easy to lose track of them and/or cause redundancy. Every few weeks I run a standup to give or get updates on projects relevant to them/myself to help alleviate those issues. Evant tends to do a Squirrel! from time to time so I try my best to keep him on track too.

The Meat ‘n Taters (and rly big images)

Over the course of the last year, James and I have been designing and quietly fighting in the waiting line with Bubba releasing Evant's “Email templates” project to fully change over the DB email system from text to graphics. Although much of our communication is now done on Discord, emails still serve a purpose in our particular club and Evant's proposal was to bring it up to a modern standard.

Modern, Howie.

Ahem. We decided to do this in two phases, the Welcome email and the full DB array of emails from various offices and prompts.

Welcome Email

The Join/Welcome email is received after a member registers with the website and needs to confirm their email address. A member only ever receives it once and must open it in order to sign in.

Our goals:

• Grab more attention than just text
• Easily find confirm email
• But more importantly drive a member back to the website
• Preferably have them join our Discord too
• Explain who the DB is to remind what the email is for
• Explain why they should join and not just delete the email.

Office templates

All emails are tied to a Council office in some way, so many are able to be tied to a single general template, but many are not.

Our goals:

• Reduce the amount of emails received by going over every type possible
• Update the content/text of nearly all emails
• Change the walls of text over to a graphic presentation
• Present required text in a more interesting way
• Mirror and tie email design to the website
• Design to be simple and responsive (both small and large resolution)
• At least 3-5 designs to choose from per email type (some ended up with a dozen+)
• List the perks on society/promotion/award mails
• Add clear CTA buttons to emails where it make sense

Results

Welcome & Clan Email

Large & Small Resolution

A bunch of email variations.

Wrapup

Phase 1 and 2 are designed, coded, and rolled out. Some limitations forced expected redesigns and iOS dark mode simply hates Sith Red. Some call it an issue, some call it “working as intended,” and someone calls it “salmon” (thaaanks, Atra). We have other features to go into the emails but they’re less priority, so for now XP, XP related (spoilers…), and site updates are on the menu.

Some James ~2 months hawt changelog:

• New Emails
• Show perks for next rank on society progress admin page
• Society rank changes on djb history
• Removed hard sa course entry requirements from societies, and qualification requirement from creating ACC matches
• RP snapshot creation from bot
• Behind-the-scenes updates

#AskTheP:GM

Benevolent asks: What are you doing to control the massive debt?

Atra asks: What is your answer to the Brotherhood Inflation Crisis?

Evant throws enough parties, I’m sure he can start a charity. We’re gonna need it…

Kam asks: Why did you fire me?

NGL, Those were some pretty bad dad jokes. Evant requested the cannon be used for that one.

Outro

Projects tend to be long-haul, would you like to see comics in between? I’m taking ideas for posts in between projects too. Let me know in the comments or DM me on what you’d like to see!