Hello everyone and welcome to the new Nine Lives Fanfiction Archive! We’re finally here! Months and months of planning have come to fruition at long last. It doesn’t seem real yet to the admin team; and yet, it finally is. So much has changed, but hopefully it’s familiar enough to still feel like home.

We have a lot to show you all, but first, we wanted to reaffirm what makes up the core of Nine Lives.

The Nine Lives Archive initially was created as a place to store all the treasures of Caryl fanfiction. It has since grown into a safe haven for all Caryl fans, new and old, free from the trolls and harassment prominent on other fanfiction websites. We strive to show support for our fellow writers and readers in every way: through chats and challenges, through providing a list of willing betas and a moderated service that helps all to improve their work and thus improve the reading experience of all Carylers searching for quality fanfiction. We are a community created by Caryl fans for Caryl fans. We are, in so many ways, a family.

So welcome, our dear and beloved Nine Lives family, to your new home! Here’s a few things you’ll want to check out:

• We’ve updated our FAQ page, as well as our Submission Rules. Please take a few minutes to review both.

• By popular demand, we now have 13 layouts! 8 fabulous new skins, thanks to the incredible talents of our coder, meeshie, plus the original skins that have been carried over from the old site. We’ve also got about 4 more skins that weren’t quite ready for today’s reveal, but they’ll be up soon. With so much to choose from, there should be something for just about everyone! The headers for the new skins were created by our fantastically talented members PixieGrunger, untapdtreasure, Equuleus86, Stephtron312 and meeshie. Thank you so much to everyone who helped make our new home look amazing!

• How to Change The Site Skin: Go to the left sidebar, just under the icons for our Twitter, tumblr, etc. There is a little drop down box. Pick which skin you want to see! Your choices are Mobile, Simple, Night and skins Nine01 - Nine10

• If you had your favorite skin preset on the old Nine Lives, you will need to reset it, as the skin names have changed from what we had before. You can pick your favorite skin by going to Account Info > Edit Preferences and picking from the drop down box labeled Skin.

• To go along with the new looks, we’ve reorganized the top menu. You should find everything you need to get along on Nine Lives, but if for some reason you’re struggling finding something, please don’t hesitate to shout for help! There are two great new additions to the site that can be found in the revised top menu:

• About Us, which holds a brief summary of Nine Lives’ history, its mission statement and the full list of archive staff.

• The new Writing Resources section, full of helpful links and articles gleaned from months of writer’s chats and pooled from the resources of some of our most prolific authors. It’ll be a constant work in progress as more sections are added, so always keep checking back to see what’s new there!

Of course your old favorites are here as well - the ShoutBox, Members of the Month, Featured Stories and challenges galore to inspire your creativity and feed your fic needs.

And keep your eyes peeled for new features to get rolled out over the coming days - not everything ended up ready in time for The Move. We might be live, but the work is not finished! As always, let us know if there’s something you’d like to see on Nine Lives. We got a lot of great suggestions before The Move that are on our list, but we're always open to more! We can’t promise, but we’re happy to look into the possibilities and make things happen if we can!

Now, it's a whole new system behind the scenes as well, which means you need to update one more thing. Your update notification emails, PM notices, all of that will be coming from a new email: ninelives@ninelivesarchive.com. Make sure you update your email permissions so we don't end up in yor spam/junk folders! 

We tested everything pretty thoroughly before going live, but sometimes things might slip through the cracks. If you don't get an email when you should, or you find something else hinky and not working properly, please send a PM to Fairies Masquerade. 

Before we close out, the 'we' of this announcement becomes i - as in Fairies Masquerade - because I have something personal I wanted to add. The big push to become our own identity was a group thing but none of this would have been possible without the combined talents, individual patience and support of Ikkleosu, Subversivegrrl and meeshie. I can't even begin to describe the countless hours they have stayed up with me to discuss and plot all things Nine Lives. I am indebted to them forever for all they've done to help make this possible. They are the truest of friends and all of them hugely devoted to this archive's success. They have given their time, their talents, their resources for this place, and all of it unquestioningly, unhesitatingly. 

We on the admin team love Nine Lives - the community this place has become, the love, the overwhelming support from all of you. You are the other reason this Move (forever a proper pronoun in my head) became possible. Thank you for being here. Thank you for creating the most positive, vibrant, energetic community in the fandom. Not even 2 years and it's already come so far. I can't wait to see where we go next.

[/sentimental moment]

That's it! Feel free to explore your new home and don't forget about the Pleasure and Pain challenge. Submissions are due September 30!