Christmas time! (late edition)
It's that time of the year again. A time for people to give and receive presents.
Sorry for the delay in posting an update. There is not a super huge amount to go over this month, although since its me i'm sure I can find stuff to write about lol.
New Logo
For most of our first year, for our favicon and Progressive Web App (PWA), the sheep icon we were using were a temporary random image. The new icon was sketched by a friend and digitized by me. I hope it is still appealing like the old one!
The PWA has been updated to reflect this change, but if you already have it set up it will keep the old icon.
Emote Reactions
A new feature to the forum is emote reactions.
I'm not entirely happy with how it looks, so expect tweaks over the next few weeks to it.
There is a thread for discussion of emote reactions, suggestions for new ones and such.
I was thinking in future if the feature was utilized and liked, I would commission custom images for us to use, for now there are just some images that seemed to be good.
Signatures
There has been a major version release for the extension that provides signature support. To be safe they have set it to blank all signatures made prior to its release. So at the release of this blogpost, it is likely that yours may be reset.
There is a new UI for creating the signature too so dont be surprised if it looks different.
From what I can see, they did a good job with the update and shouldnt have to reset any signatures in future versions (hopefully)
XMPP
I have made an informational thread on XMPP, its features and some information on some of the clients you can use. I'd like to someday have it integrated into the site somehow but I think that may have to wait until the forums software gets its next major release next year.
Feel free to read the XMPP overview thread Here. If you'd like to speak to me on it, My address is Lumeinshin@chat.skyshanty.xyz
Spam Spam Spam
Earlier this month we had some thread spam by an older user. Annoyingly it was during a few hours where I was not on the site so I did not catch him and put a stop to it. I can only apologize and do what I can to avoid it in future. The user has been banned and files removed from the server. Apologies again for those who saw the content being uploaded.
We have been on and off receiving fraudulent sign-ups to the site. This is being done via a script from what I can see. In order to mitigate any damage to thread quality I have re-enabled email authentication for new signups. This should not cause any issues to users that have signed up prior to this change, however it may dissuade some new users. In this case I may do a writeup on email accounts for people new to semi-anon online accounts, if that helps.
Friend of the site: Wapchan
We added Wapchan to the Friends of the sitepage a few months ago, and i'd been a lurker and rare poster there before that. Wapchan had been undergoing an upgrade to a newer/different software, however Figamin was having issues with getting the old content working on the new engine, as well as its lack of features that he had sorted out for wapchan. That coupled with getting busier IRL meant he had not been able to work on it as much as he'd wanted and in my opinion, was getting frustrated. The admin floated the idea of reverting the site to its prior software. At time of writing the site was down for two days and now 404's. I had a brief email exchange with the admin of the site and I believe he is currently working on reverting the site. I hope to see the site back up relatively soon. The site had some relatively active areas and was the "bunker" site for /kind/, which was the namesake of kind.moe, another small imageboard with a generally very pleasant demeanor.
If the site has more issues/does not come back up, I am more than happy to create a /kind/ tag for any users who wish to use the site as a bunker of sorts or even just engage in that boards topics here. I do understand that the site not being anonymous may dis-insensitivise users from using this site were it to become a bunker. So I am open to discussions on the topic should the need arise. Any other boards from wapchan already have equivalent tags on here (games/manga/anime etc).
I have told the admin that I am happy to assist in moderation if he requires assistance, which should be helpful given my timezone differences to his. Otherwise, I think I can speak for us all in wishing him the best in working to restore wapchan to a good state and once that is done I will adjust the 'friends of the site' page to put it back properly.
Friends of the site: General
A general addendum about that page. I have added information about the other services which people are able to use there.
If there are any other sites that users would like to suggest, please let me know.
The only other site that comes to mind for me would be SushiChan, which I still browse. Although I havent had any contact with staff there, I may put it on a little 'other neat sites' section.
Christmas
I hope that you all have a Merry Christmas and get so spend time with your loved ones.
Feel free to make any christmas themed threads, but if you do pop them in the 'seasonal' tag!
Please let me know if you have any ideas or comments and as always, thank you for taking the time to read this update post. We've had a good 2022, lets enjoy this last month of the year!
Track Forum Progress
Forum page archive (old ToS and PP)
Donation information, donations are greatly appreciated
If you somehow missed it, the 1 year anniversary blog post is available here
