Here's an idea!

Not sure how well attune your site programmers are, but you should get yourself a public "player" update bar. A simple, type a short sentence here about "players" current condition and shout outs. I know that there is already a forum dedicated to that. Where players will have their own thread and keep constant updates on their activity status and announce hiatus. But it would be a great convenience if you have like a twitter box on the homepage where we can type out a short sentence like, "Stuck at grandparents place. No internet D:" or "Day 3 on my travel around the world. Want to meet up if you live in New York." Those little random excerpts that people can use, without abusing, to keep your WTF friends informed of the haps with your life. I want to write down, "Guys, you gotta at least kick me around to play or I will still be hibernating," without having to have a whole thread wasted for this sentence or having it only posted in one OOC threads and ended up forgetting to post in others.

Something like a changeable status bar would be nice.