Hey guys, Marc here!
I wanted to personally welcome you all to the all-new Camp Mustelid website!! I hope you like it, this has been a labor of love and something that I've been planning for around 6 or 7 months now. I wanted this new website to suit a wider variety of functions, and offer a much more contemporary approach to Camp Mustelid. The old website was kind of my first crack at all this, and in a lot of ways it began to feel much more like a first-draft than a final product. The old website was also super limiting, which is something I've done my best to fix so that we can expand this new one into areas that previously weren't possible. I've got A LOT planned, and I'm excited to share the new Camp Mustelid with you!
While you're here, let me bring a few new features of the new website to your attention!:
The new look - I hope you like it! My biggest qualm with CM 1.0 was that it felt a little... TOO old-school. I had based it on actual websites for campgrounds that I was familiar with at the time. I felt very much that it was charming, but it got to the point where I couldn't really do anything too fancy with it. For CM 2.0 I focused more on art direction and function over realism and niche charm. The result is what you see before you! Fingers crossed that you think its nice!
The Handbook - Yay new page! The handbook is yet another labor of love. I wanted a place where I could introduce topics to consumers of CM content. I heard some feedback about my writing, occasionally people found themselves confused as to what certain things even were. A friend of mine expressed that they had no idea what a bird blind was, and even though I tried my best to illustrate them on the map page, I could see how someone would still become confused. This was happening in multiple other places with CM fiction. That's why I came up with the handbook. It's a place where I can link potentially unfamiliar terms/topics to readers, along with a place where CM fiction/lore can be expanded upon and become that much more immersive.
Clickables - You'll no doubt notice that, especially with the introduction of the handbook, there's loads of what I'm calling "clickables", which are links attached to words/phrases around the website that lead either to another page or an outgoing link. This is another way I wanted to avoid potential confusion and expand CM stories. Now, if you don't know who Groundskeeper Huck is, you can just click and find out!
Missing pages - Unfortunately you may have also noticed that some pages have been cut from the lineup. Specifically the "Album" and "Our Campers" pages. The reason for cutting these pages was purely because they took up tremendous amounts of memory and were exceptionally difficult to manage. The Album page may come back in some form when we work out the kinks, but the "Our Campers" page was unfortunately something that became way too much to handle. We underestimated the magnitude of its management and time consumption, with HUNDREDS of submissions and subsequent editing/organizing/modifying of those submissions. We were so humbled and overjoyed at the response and excitement towards the Our Campers page, and we still encourage people to continue to post their camper designs on social media so that we can share them! But, for the sake of our sanity, we HAD to do away with it. That said - we do have an idea for a similar page in the making, and as soon as we finalize the concept, we are super excited to bring it to you!
Bugs and errors - I wanted to cap this list off by saying that, with the new programming of this website, I'm anticipating some bugs. If you notice any, please let us know through the contact page! I want to catch them early! Likewise, if you notice things like typo's, even though it brings great embarrassment, please let me know so that I can end the embarrassment as soon as possible lol.
Well if you've read this far down then thank you for your enthusiasm (...and commitment)! I hope you enjoy the new Camp Mustelid! With the introduction of this new website, we have some cool things in the works, so stick around because we're gonna make it a real fun time!
Stay safe and Happy Camping!
Marc
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