CONTENT NAVIGATION UPDATE (Patreon)

Hail and well met!

Ivan from ManyRealms here to provide a quick update about Patreon's content navigation. We've recently received some requests to consolidate and simplify how you navigate the content available on patreon, and I have good news!

After have discussions with some of the team over at Patreon, we've confirmed that there are some things in the works. I can't tell you specifics but I can say that accessing Ed's content is soon going to become much simpler and you will no longer have to suffer through the unoptimized tag system that is currently employed. There is no official launch date for this yet, but in the meantime I thought I would give a brief explanation of how to find some of the content you're looking for.

Currently, you are able to search by media type, month released, tier, and using the search function. In my experience, the search function is relatively effective at accessing content in the title and the body of the posts, so when in doubt, I would default to using that. 

Our current tagging convention is to tag anything related to the realms with #Realmslore, and Forgotten Realms. We then tag the content with the media type as well as any especially key phrases, characters, or locations that may appear in the post (e.g., an article about the chosen might be tagged with "Mystra" and "Chosen," an article about a Volo's Guide might be tagged "Volo" and similarly "Chosen," etc.). We then add a singular tag that we try to make generally applicable so that folks can chunk out wide swaths of content (e.g., "People," "Places," "Magic Items," "Culture," "Dwarves," etc.). 

There are currently some outdated or redundant tags such as "Video," "Audio," "Podcast," and a few others that I am going to begin cleaning up and consolidating soon. In the meantime (before the navigation overhaul) I plan to pare down the tag list to only those most necessary, and generally clean up the categorization process to make things easier until we can implement a significant navigational improvement. Unfortunately, outside of creating our own link repository and developing a unique and separate-from-Patreon navigation system, this is the paradigm that we're stuck using (at least temporarily). I'll continue to evaluate improvements to the user experience and keep everyone apprised of any changes before they happen. 

I hope this helps, and I hope that this is encouraging to folks that have reached out to convey their concern for the current navigation on Patreon. You've all been heard, and we're going to do our best to make sure that getting access to Ed's work is as seamless and enjoyable as possible.

Thanks so much, and long live the Realms!

Hugs,
Ivan