Renya Codes

Forum designer, coder, and chronic over-builder of fantasy roleplay spaces. Specialising in JCINK personalisation, immersive interfaces, accessibility-focused design, and thematic coding for story-driven communities.

[renyacodes]

[renyacodes]

✦ Commissions Open ✦

Looking to give your JCINK forum a little more personality?

Whether you need a few small refinements, a custom page, profile styling, accessibility improvements, coding assistance, or a complete visual overhaul, I'd be happy to help bring your ideas to life.

I specialise in forum design, coding, templates, worldbuilding resources, and creating spaces that feel unique to the stories they are built to tell.

Portfolio, services, and commission information can be found here:

Support Renya

Support Renya

Questions are always welcome. ✦

[renyacodes]

✦ A Small Reminder for Site Owners ✦

Your forum does not need to be the most complex site on the internet.

The sites people remember are rarely the most technically impressive.

They're the ones where every design choice supports the atmosphere, story, and experience you're trying to create. Sometimes the best coding decision isn't adding something new. It's removing something that no longer serves a purpose.

What's one feature you've added to a site that you're particularly proud of?

[renyacodes]

[renyacodes]

Not every commission needs a complete redesign.

Sometimes a site just needs someone willing to crawl through years of code, find the problem, and leave things cleaner than they found them.

Whether it's bug fixing, responsive issues, layout repairs, accessibility concerns, or just making something work the way it was always supposed to, I'm happy to help.

✨ Small fixes. ✨ Large fixes. ✨ "I have absolutely no idea why this is happening" fixes.

☕ Commissions & coding services: https://ko-fi.com/astarterenya

[renyacodes]

✨ Less Generic. More Yours. ✨

There’s nothing wrong with starting from a stock skin.

Most forums do.

The problem is when your site still looks like every other site six months later.

A great roleplay community deserves a visual identity that feels uniquely its own. Whether that's refining an existing skin, improving readability, modernising layouts, creating custom forum structures, or adding those small details that make a site memorable, I can help bring your vision to life.

🌙 Services include:

✦ Forum and category redesigns ✦ Custom profile templates ✦ Responsive improvements ✦ Navigation and usability upgrades ✦ Accessibility refinements ✦ Custom pages and directories ✦ Aesthetic polishing and visual cohesion ✦ Troubleshooting and code clean-up ✦ Branding and identity development

Sometimes a site doesn't need a complete overhaul.

Sometimes it just needs a little care, a little refinement, and someone willing to look at it with fresh eyes.

From small tweaks to full visual transformations, the goal is always the same:

Create something that feels unmistakably yours.

☕ View commissions, resources, and template packs: https://ko-fi.com/astarterenya

[renyacodes]

✨ New Resource Available ✨

The Candlewick Post Template Package is a collection of elegant, ready-to-use posting templates created for roleplayers who want their writing to look as beautiful as the stories they're telling.

From simple scene posts to ornate image layouts, thread trackers, correspondence templates, and character-focused designs, every template has been built with flexibility, readability, and immersion in mind.

🕯️ 8 Unique Posting Templates 🖼️ Multiple Image Layouts 💌 Correspondence & Letter Design 📖 Thread Tracker Included 🎵 Music, Notes & Word Count Areas 🏷️ Character Tag Support 📱 Responsive & Mobile Friendly 🎨 Easy Colour Customisation

Perfect for fantasy, historical, supernatural, modern, and original roleplay communities. Beautiful posts. Immersive stories. Effortless customisation.

Check out here: https://ko-fi.com/s/77d2ecc858

[renyacodes]

✨ New Resource Available ✨

The Candlewick Development Pack is a complete collection of character development templates designed for roleplayers who love building rich, long-term stories.

Track relationships, timelines, milestones, plots, journals, correspondence, character growth, and more, all within one cohesive and fully customisable package.

📖 Character Chronicles 🖋️ Development Threads 🕯️ Private Journals 💌 Correspondence Templates 🕰️ Timelines & History 🌿 Relationship Ledgers ⭐ Milestone Trackers 📚 Plotting Books

Designed for fantasy, historical, supernatural, and original settings alike. Elegant. Responsive. Easy to customise. Built for storytellers.

Check it out at my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/s/9e9c4b1774

[renyacodes]

One of my favourite projects is taking a site that already has a strong concept and helping the design better support that vision.

This particular redesign focused on atmosphere, readability, and visual identity.

Before

The original layout functioned well enough, but several elements were competing for attention:

✧ inconsistent spacing ✧ weak visual hierarchy ✧ colours lacking cohesion ✧ important information buried beneath decorative elements ✧ mobile experience requiring improvement

A common challenge is that a site can have excellent writing and worldbuilding while the presentation struggles to communicate its strengths.

After

The redesign focused on:

✧ establishing a clear visual hierarchy ✧ refining spacing and readability ✧ creating a stronger colour palette ✧ improving navigation flow ✧ increasing accessibility and contrast ✧ ensuring responsiveness across devices

The goal was not simply to make the site prettier.

The goal was to make the site feel like the world it was trying to portray.

What Changed?

✦ Rebuilt forum headers

✦ Redesigned category structure

✦ Refined membergroup styling

✦ Improved profile presentation

✦ Simplified navigation

✦ Introduced stronger thematic colours

✦ Increased readability throughout

Design should support storytelling.

When visitors arrive on a site, they should immediately understand its tone, setting, and identity.

That first impression matters. Interested in a redesign, refresh, or second opinion on your current skin; check out my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/astarterenya

[renyacodes]

Every designer has a checklist.

Mine has become longer over the years, mostly because websites have an uncanny ability to reveal entirely new ways to break themselves.

When I review a forum skin, these are usually the first things I check:

✧ Readability

Can I comfortably read a post without squinting?

Beautiful fonts are wonderful. Beautiful fonts at 12px on a dark background are less wonderful.

✧ Navigation

Can a new member find what they need within a few seconds?

If I have to hunt for the application area, rules, or lore, there is usually room for improvement.

✧ Consistency

Are the colours, spacing, borders, and typography working together?

Consistency creates polish. Inconsistency creates confusion.

✧ Mobile Experience

A layout should feel intentional on mobile, not merely survive it.

✧ Accessibility

Can users adjust font size?

Are colours readable?

Do important elements rely solely on colour to communicate information?

Small changes can make a huge difference.

✧ Personality

This is the most important one.

Does the site feel like itself?

The best forums are memorable because they have a distinct identity. Not because they use the latest trend, but because every design choice supports the story they want to tell.

The most beautiful site I've ever seen wasn't the most technically impressive.

It simply knew exactly what it wanted to be.

[renyacodes]

People often assume a good forum skin comes from complex code or expensive graphics.

Most of the time, it comes from a handful of small decisions repeated consistently throughout the site.

Here are five adjustments I make on almost every project:

✧ Improve Spacing Before Adding More Graphics

Crowded layouts are one of the most common issues I encounter.

Before adding decorative elements, increase padding, margins, and whitespace. A well-spaced layout often looks more professional than one filled with extra imagery.

✧ Create a Clear Visual Hierarchy

Your eye should know exactly where to look first.

Titles, subtitles, navigation, and content should all have distinct sizes and weights. If everything is equally important, nothing is.

✧ Check Mobile Early

Many layouts are built entirely on desktop and only tested on mobile after completion.

Responsive design is easier to maintain when considered from the start rather than repaired later.

✧ Limit Accent Colours

A site usually needs: • a primary colour • a secondary colour • a highlight colour

More than that and visual identity starts becoming difficult to maintain consistently.

✧ Prioritise Readability

Beautiful typography is wonderful.

Typography that people can comfortably read for several thousand words is even better.

Contrast, font size, line spacing, and content width matter far more than most people realise.

Good design should support storytelling, not compete with it.

What is the first thing you notice when visiting a new roleplay forum?

[renyacodes]

[renyacodes]

[renyacodes]

✦ Before & After | Forum Redesign ✦

One of my favourite kinds of projects is taking an existing forum area and refining it into something more immersive, readable, and visually cohesive without sacrificing usability.

This redesign focused on: ✧ cleaner visual hierarchy ✧ improved readability ✧ responsive spacing ✧ atmospheric styling ✧ hover refinement ✧ accessibility considerations ✧ stronger kingdom colour identity

The goal was not simply to make the forum prettier, but to make it feel intentional. This came about because I wasn't able to find someone who could code it for me, so I went ahead and did it myself with a lot of trial and error and not a small amount of JavaScript!

One of the most common issues I encounter in forum design is beautiful concepts being buried beneath cluttered layouts, inconsistent spacing, or unreadable contrast. Small changes often create enormous improvements in how a site feels to navigate.

More previews and coding work to come ✦

[renyacodes]

✦ Commissions & Services ✦

Beautiful forums are remembered.

Whether you need a few careful refinements or an entirely rebuilt atmosphere, I offer coding, design, and worldbuilding services tailored toward immersive roleplay communities, particularly fantasy, Regency, gothic, historical, and story-driven spaces.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ FORUM & SITE CODING ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✧ Forum Template Edits — from £15 Small refinements, profile fixes, spacing corrections, responsive tweaks, visual balancing, hover improvements, and quality-of-life adjustments.

✧ Custom Page Builds — from £45 Fully themed lore pages, timelines, directories, bestiaries, codices, event hubs, and informational archives designed to feel cohesive with your world.

✧ Full Forum Section Styling — from £60 Complete visual packages for categories, forums, widgets, headers, announcements, and overall forum cohesion.

✧ Profile Templates & Membergroup Styling — from £35 Custom profile systems, overlays, faction styling, group colours, mobile responsiveness, decorative UI elements, and immersive layouts.

✧ Accessibility & UX Improvements — from £20 Accessibility-conscious adjustments, readability fixes, navigation refinement, contrast balancing, and cleaner user experience design.

✧ Troubleshooting & Bug Fixing — from £10 Because somewhere, somehow, a div has escaped containment again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ WRITING & WORLDBUILDING ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✧ Lore Writing — from £20 Realm descriptions, religions, political structures, noble houses, histories, customs, social hierarchies, and atmospheric setting work.

✧ Character or House Templates — from £10 Elegant templates crafted for immersion, readability, and aesthetic cohesion.

✧ Plot & Event Concepts — from £15 Seasonal events, political intrigue, faction tensions, narrative hooks, magical phenomena, festivals, rumours, and overarching plot structures.

✧ Naming & Aesthetic Consultation — from £10 Help refining visual identity, naming schemes, group structures, palettes, themes, and overall atmosphere.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ ONGOING SUPPORT ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✧ Monthly Coding & Maintenance Support — from £40/month Minor updates, troubleshooting, additions, polishing, seasonal adjustments, and continued support throughout the month.

✧ Beta Testing & Feedback Packages — from £25 Usability feedback, aesthetic critique, accessibility observations, functionality checks, and honest “this button is plotting against your users” commentary.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Prices may vary depending on complexity, scale, custom graphics, implementation requirements, and how fiercely the code decides to defend itself that particular evening.

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/astarterenya

Portfolio work, previews, and coding resources will be posted here regularly ✦

[renyacodes]

✦ Welcome to Renya Codes ✦

Forum designer, coder, and chronic over-builder of fantasy roleplay spaces.

This little corner of the old web exists as both portfolio and workshop; a place for coding experiments, forum resources, atmospheric templates, design archives, and commission work crafted for storytellers who want their spaces to feel alive.

I specialise primarily in: ✧ JCINK personalisation ✧ immersive layouts and interfaces ✧ responsive and accessibility-conscious design ✧ lore and guidebook pages ✧ thread templates and trackers ✧ forum restructuring and aesthetic cohesion ✧ coding repairs, refinements, and troubleshooting

You will find: ✦ previews of current projects ✦ before & after redesigns ✦ coding snippets and free resources ✦ commission openings and updates ✦ the occasional late-night descent into decorative CSS madness

My work leans heavily toward: dark archives, candlelit studies, celestial motifs, elegant typography, and the sort of fantasy atmosphere that makes people suddenly decide they need a new lore page at 1am.

Current commission status: ✧ OPEN ✧

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/astarterenya

Thank you for stopping by. Pull up a chair beside the candlelight and stay awhile.