Elma

WOW! They are ACTUALLY doing it with all the site-issues? Well, I hope they can keep the AC running straight at least! I wonder how it, and the Staff tournament will be run this year? That being said, I worked my rear off last year and still didn't earn enough points for either of the most expensive prizes, that Display Cabinet Background looks rather spiffy. I know a number of TDNF members did amazingly well, LOTS better than I did. It'd be nice if All-Star rank came with at least enough points for 1 of the 'top prize', and any points earned after by playing more, that would be "gravy" as the saying goes. LOL Oh well, I can dream. ;) Thanks for the info and for posting a link to the prize shop, I still have to redeem my prizes apparently! lol I hope I'll have the time and endurance to play as hard as I did last year!
 
GO MARAQUA! :D

I actually redeemed my prizes this week.
 
Not sure how much efforts I will put in this year, but go Maraqua anyway!

The AC is my favourite event on Neo!! SO beyond excited :D :D :D GO Maraqua GO!

Oh whoops, sorry about that then! Tried to look into it from old news and when I couldn't find anything I resorted to the boards. I think I saw a maternity leave mention, but I thought it was presumed that it would be continued by someone else?
 
But man, that's sad, the NT were what interested me into writing as a kid.

Good idea! Im going to send this to their facebook!

I'm curious, does Jumpstart read on DailyNeo? If they do, this list is very good. Have the contests ready for a new round, make sure the front page marquees are up-to-date and not months behind (Looking at you, Chomby Day,) make absolutely SURE that the paintbrush colors are ready and don't just hint at them. Make sure the news articles contains enough information, more than just three little paragraphs of barely anything. Pictures are important after all, it really helps to attract the eye!
 
I don't think I've experienced an event during the Jumpstart era, or if I did I didn't really notice anything off about it. But the above are always good to remember, and I think another feature they should do is make it so player total actually accounts to something, and not just have it set up to where one thing wins over another immediately (Remembering the Sun and Moon challenge and how the totals were always the same, I dunno if that was Jumpstart or not though.)
 
And also, maybe I'm just writing from nostalgia, but the Neopian Times isn't something to just quit like that. I'm really sad to click into it and see it hasn't updated since Valentine's Day, and apparently according to the boards this was done without announcement. Ceasing the actions of certain things REALLY needs to be announced, even if it is a temporary hold. Because without it, it feels like you flat out abandoned it. I get if right now you're a bit constricted to update stuff, but seriously make an update about it, and at least once every two to four weeks give a refresh so new people will still know what's up, or to tell if there's any progress of returning.
 
I have quite a bit more complaints, but for now that's my main concerns. The site feels basically dead right now due to how inactive everything feels, how everything seems to have stagnated due to the lay-offs. I don't get why they did that, but I do understand that doing this means employment and updates are gonna be an issue. But if that's the case, it really needs to be addressed and not just happen.
 
I'm still optimistic that this Jumpstart Era is gonna be a good one for the site, especially since they introduced possibly my favorite Neopet ever in the form of Vandagyre. But right now things seem shaky, and it's not really doing much to keep me interested for long.

In the past on pet days we've been swarmed with new items, usually an NC Mall game, mystery capsule or other things from there that require mass amounts of work. It seems like everything like that is released on the same day. A way to make it easier for them would be to release things in more moderation. Like say if it's a pet day, don't release a new NC Mall game update as well, do that the day before or the next day.
 
Guaranteed if our Custo team is swamped with the mass amount of updates on a single day, so is their content and art departments. Make things a little easier for yourself, but don't slack off.
 
Have information in the mall accurate the first time, so you don't have to go back and change everything and create more work for your staff. This includes retire dates and other important information we need to know. :)

Here's a checklist to help the new Jumpstaff since they seem to be struggling with adding some finishing touches on news posts and events that happen on the site. To their credit, they are starting to become more comfortable and they have gotten better but there are still a few things that could be spruced up:
 
News
News is very important as it adds new content on the website on an (almost) regular basis. It is also very important to have the news page look as fancy and eye catching as possible. The news typically has scheduled releases for each day of the week... so here we go.
 
Monday: Monday usually holds a random new item, poem winner, a new Storytelling winner, pet spotlight winner and Customization contest winners. These three to four things are VERY easy to add into the news. As each contest (should) start anew on Monday, it is also very easy to advertise the winners/start of the new contests and have a complete news release for Monday.

If you are understaffed and cannot pick new winners for spotlights/storytelling/poems, at least announce the new Customization contest and their winners.

Tuesday: Tuesday usually announces either two new petpets, two new plushies or two new morphing potions. As you guess it, you also release the spotlight winners for Userlookup of the Week and possibly the Art gallery. Again, another easy day to have a full news release with minimal effort.

Wednesday: Shocker - two new items are usually released on Wednesdays (plushies, petpets, mps, stamps) and of course it's time to announce a brand new Better Than You competition as well as Site Spotlight, Caption Contest and PPL winner. Again. Easy.

Thursday: I believe Thursdays usually have a new mystery pic and new petpet spotlight. Possibly announce two new items if a pet day hasn't bumped them to another day of the week.

Friday: Again, usually two random items, announce the new beauty contest.

PET DAYS: I cannot begin to stress to you how important these are. Users literally wait 364 days for their favourite species day. DO. NOT. MESS. AROUND. WITH. THIS. The new colours MUST be ready. Don't tease a paint brush. Don't say they are coming and then announce it 5 days later. HAVE THEM READY ON THEIR PET DAY. Don't even begin to think otherwise. Have the preview images be 150 x 150. Not any bigger, not any smaller. Have them activated in the Rainbow Pool as soon as the news releases - not days, weeks or months later. Immediately. Remember, people wait an entire year for this specific day. Make it count because a lot of people are counting on you.

DO NOT PRIORITIZE ANNOUNCING THINGS ON FACEBOOK OVER ANNOUNCING THEM ON NEOPETS.COM. EVER. STOP DOING THAT.
 
EVENTS
When it comes to events, it will be very beneficial to put up a FAQ section somewhere. We understand the help/ticket system might not work at all times, but for the love of Neocola, put up a dang FAQ some place on the website, even your specific Neoboard. It will greatly cut down the amount of tickets you receive and event spam on your Facebook page.
 
Include things like:
how long the event will last (start and end dates) if there are bonus prizes for daily participation what we are required to do when prizes will be available and for how long after the event ends we are able to claim them Don't forget to change the marquees on the front page on the website. These are the first things that people will see when they visit and will want to check out. Make sure it is as up to date as possible because who wants to click on something thinking that it's new, only to find out it's 4 weeks old and no longer exists.
 
NC Mall events
The above still applies. Include retire dates and if there will be bonus prizes.
 
 
The new staff members are almost there... what do you think is missing? Let's give them a helping hand.
 

I think it would be good if they split the closet in two, one section for paintbrush clothes and another for everything else (applying the limit to this section only). That way the clothes would still be in your 'closet' but not taking up too much useable space.
 
Also I would like to be able to search by type in my SDB. I'm a beginner plushie collector and hate having to trawl through the toy category or search for 'plushie'. (This is particularly annoying when I am trying to update my gallery.) I know it's minor, but I have a problem with things being classifed by type when you can't search by type in the SDB.

When I first joined, galleries didn't exist, and shops doubled as galleries. You could separate your shop from your gallery by placing gallery items over the limit.
 
I'd like to see better sorting/searching features in the SDB and especially the closet, and a way to remove paint clothes from the closet. Seriously, it's got to be filling up over half my closet by now, for species I will never ever own...

I'd personally like it if they add a search bar in SHOPS because some shops are simply huge ~ or rather, malls xD
 
 
I think increasing Shop Limits would be good too! Maybe like 250k or so? That would do for me haha.

I'd love to see a section of the site where they show all Notable Neopets for the previous 7 days.
 
If they did that, you'd never miss out on any of your pets being Notable because no one who takes screenshots for people saw them. Even if it was only 2-3 days, as long as you checked frequently, you wouldn't miss them.

OH! I'd like it if you could set shops to display by price i.e. cheapest first. For packrat/rubbish avatar collecting.