At the end of last month, our tiny-but-feisty team at World Anvil released several new features to make worldbuilding easier, including a notebooks upgrade, improvement to the images management interface, and ALL THE FOLDERS for the ultimate worldbuilding organization. And we promised there would be more…

Well, now there is more! I’m delighted to announce another two MASSIVE feature upgrades that will make your worldbuilding life infinitely easier: a new articles and categories manager (which also makes editing the homepage even easier) and a brand new world dashboard. The new interface is immeasurably improved (see below – our community told us so!) but will still look and feel familiar to seasoned World Anvil users. This blog goes through the new features you can enjoy.

Check the guide to the new Articles & World Manager

A brand new dashboard

When you first log onto World Anvil, you’ll see a brand new dashboard! You can also reach this by clicking the monogram in the top left.

Dashboards are the perfect jumping off point for a worldbuilding session. From here you can continue worldbuilding from the recently edited list, review your world’s stats (comments, likes, followers and articles), or create something brand new with an inspirational worldbuilding prompt.

If you’ve got Community Features enabled, you’ll also see the latest featured articles, and a stream where you can explore the latest the community has written!

“Okay, I am loving the navigation part of the workflow!”
From: devinsxdesigns

So where is that old dashboard functionality? It’s all together – and better than ever – in our new Articles & World Manager interface.

A new and improved Articles & World Manager

Articles on World Anvil are one of the most important spots for worldbuilding. So we carefully took on board all your feedback as we redesigned this core piece of your worldbuilding experience. We’ve also included a space for managing your world homepage here (see below!) hence the renaming of this section to Articles & World Manager.

Full screen article editing

Clicking an article or category allows you to edit it fullscreen right there in the interface! This gives you even more screen real estate for your writing and worldbuilding. The modal windows can still easily be accessed from search (ctrl+k), but if you’re sitting down to write lots of articles, this will be a more comfortable interface for many.

All the great things about the modal windows (like the back and next buttons at the top right, the +Prompt buttons, etc) are now available from this interface too.

“I just want to say thank you so much devs for making the new article editor available as “not a modal” – now I can use it and still reference things in search and the new notebook without having to navigate around or closing the editor modal. I know I gave feedback about interrupted workflow there multiple times and I am thrilled to see that I can now just write and reference stuff all at once.”

From: Menatith | Dlynaeth

A tree structure for categories and articles… that persists in search!

The Categories and Articles tree structure is back! This gives you an excellent overview of your world’s table of contents, helping you grok how your world is structured.

But even better, now when you search for an article, you automatically see it IN CONTEXT of that tree! As well as a simple lists, search results  can be viewed as bold items within your world’s categories tree, with your other articles showing up as greyed out.

“Athena is a beautiful modern interface that is miles above the old interface. It’s easier to use, and I love the new prompts and socials and options menu bar.”
From: stormtroll

Advanced search filtering for ultimate content control

In the new articles and categories interface search, we’ve dialed filtering up to 11. You now have extremely advanced control over searching your world. Want to see:

  • a list of only unpublished articles above a specific word count? Check! ✅
  • all draft organization articles AND which categories they’re under? Check! ✅
  • all species with the tag #fungus under 50 words? Check! ✅

Well, you get the picture. You can combine different filters to have an indepth presentation or drill down specifically into your content to figure out what’s in your world right now, and what you should be working on next. it makes finding and organizing your worldbuilding content a cinch.

In the new article and categories interface, you can filter by:

  • draft/ published, or both
  • public/ private, or both
  • wordcount
  • template type
  • tag(s)
  • whether or not it has storyteller’s notes
  • subscriber groups(s)

AND you can present the results either in a straight list OR in the context of your world tree, seeing your search results exactly as they’re organized in your categories and table of contents.

“I am loving this. Being able to have all the articles right there on the left and accessible makes it far easier and streamlined to start mentioning other articles and getting them all linked together. Not to mention filtering my articles by private, public, short etc., it makes it much easier to see what I haven’t finished.”
From: JaxonLeeRose

More and better premade article lists

In addition to this incredibly powerful search, we also have premade lists so you can get different overviews of your articles. Click the dropdown at the top left to change which list you’re seeing, and get new insights in seconds. Our premade article list includes most liked and viewed articles, recently updated and created, only categories, and more!

Under recently created and recently updated, you can now also see WHEN! This is great for reviewing what you were last working on.

And yes, for very large worlds (I see you, you million-word writers!), we’ve introduced list pagination to keep things speedy! You’ll see page X of Y (for example, page 2 of 9) and how many items you have in total, to give a better sense of scope for these lists.

“I am liking how easy this is to use. It does make finding stuff and organizing easier.”
From: Lady Wynter

See what your subscribers can see!

Wait, which articles did you players have access to again? Now you can check! In the articles and categories interface search, add a subscriber group to see exactly what they can see. This makes managing your content so much easier,

Mobile friendliness – check! ✅

Just click and hold an article or category to drag it around in the article tree (removing any issue with accidental reordering!) This improvement also makes the whole interface mobile friendly and easier to use on the go.

“Ok, I used this for the first time today… and I like it! Super easy to create or move articles. This, along with the new image tool, has made everything so much smoother.”
From: D3vilmade

Edit your World Homepage easier

As I mentioned, we’ve renamed this section to the Articles & World Manager because we’ve added a way to make editing your world’s homepage even easier. If you’ve already visited the new articles and categories interface, you’ll have seen a brand new visual edit interface for your  world’s homepage, front and centre! You can get back to this at any time by clicking the name of your world in the top of the left column of the interface.

We heard your feedback when you said that editing the homepage via world configuration was a bit tough. So we’ve made it even easier to find and manage.

The other benefit of this is that you get to touch base with a great overview of your world homepage whenever you return to this interface for a new worldbuilding session. Previously, it was easy to let world homepages go stale, but taht shouldn’t happen any more! We’ll be porting even more of the world configuration settings here in the next few development cycles.

“I really like the easier organisation and being able to edit an article while still in the organisation ui. It makes it nice when you’re going through and editing lots of articles all at once. I also love that it shows what the world front page + categories look like while you edit them, less switching tabs to check the homepage is always nice.”

From: IoTheSC

See and update your world word count and goal

From the homepage edit interface within the Articles & World Manager, you can now see your current world word count and your word count goal right underneath your world’s cover image. If you click it, you can update your word count goal too – so you keep smashing that creative productivity!

Update your in-world date

From the homepage edit interface, you can now reach the edit interface to update your in-world date with a single click. This makes it quicker and easier for persistent worlds (like Game Masters tend to have) where time passes as the story happens.

Get the guide to Articles & World Manager

For all our worldbuilding feature details (and the most updated information) you should always check out World Anvil’s Learn section – we work hard to keep this absolutely up-to-date! Check out the Guide to Articles & World Manager for all the specifics.

It’s all coming together

The savvy among you may have noticed that this new update works seamlessly with the updates we released in September, and the modal windows too. Here’s how one user put it:

“I like the new interface, and it is a lot easier to use than the old version of the categories manager as you can actually see where you are dragging and dropping things properly. Being able to create folders and articles inside pre-existing folders is brilliant, and I have been abusing the hell out of it! I also prefer the way the “modal” works with the new manager, as it still allows full access to the left sidebar while creating articles, and the hideable menu is super useful. I also like that opening the new manager allows you to create a new folder without leaving the article that you’re currently working on. This makes organisation so much simpler as I don’t have to navigate away from my work.”
From: AelyryaPayne

 

What does the community think?

We are so very lucky to have an amazing creative community at World Anvil. And many of them volunteer to help us test and polish our features before release, so they shine! The comments throughout this post are from our wonderful tester community. Here’s what else they had to say about the new features:

“So much cool stuff in this upgrade! I’ve only just started poking around and my notes are already full of compliments”
From: those2nerds

“The filtering within the system is an excellent addition and has made it easier to access different articles when needed. The homepage editor being a more visual representation of what you can do is excellent and (after initial bugs) has been very easy to use. Article creation is much smoother than before for me personally, creating under a category has been a game changer for how streamlined the process can be. Same feeling on category organization, it makes it much smoother. I really like that the system can be opened over any page, but can still be used for focus.”
From: Owen

Want to share your own feedback and impressions? We’d love to hear them! Click the ❓help button at the top right of the World Anvil interface, then select Got Feedback at the bottom of the widget. We read and take on board ALL your feedback. <3