Website Upgrade

We've just finished installing some upgrades to the forums. Here's an overview of some of the new features:

Search

The old search system was rather slow, and it only showed you what you wanted part of the time. This update fixes that. Rather than bore you with the technical details of how it works, I encourage everyone to try it out. Registered members should also notice a significant speed improvement in the Unread Content page, which previously took an unacceptable 6 to 10 seconds to load, and now takes a far more reasonable 1 to 3 seconds.

Emoji

The editor now has full emoji support . This means all* the emoji available in Unicode can be used , as well as some custom images previously seen as reactions .

* New emoji are always being introduced, so "all" might not mean "all", instead meaning "most". Still significantly more emoji than we had before.

Clubs

• There's a new club type called "Read-Only" lets everyone see what goes on in your club, but requires people to be manually added before posting anything.
• You can now change the club type without having to ask us to do it. You can also change the club owner if you so desire.
• Clubs can have a custom home page, whose content is set through a WYSIWYG editor.
• Club features (topics, images, etc.) can be reordered.
• Club forums (aka topics) can be in Q&A format. Only new club forums can be set this way; if you would like an existing club forum set this way, please create a thread in the support forum.

Other

• The site theme was rewritten, offering some slight improvements and fixing some minor issues. There may still be more issues, so please leave feedback if you find any.

Previous Additions

Over the past few months, I've silently made various changes to things. You may have noticed some of these, but others are fairly recent. Here's an overview, ordered from earliest to most recent:

• There's a new testing forum that you can use to try out our WYSIWYG editor. Only you can see what you post.
• The Forums index was restructured to reduce bloat.
• Members without an avatar are given a dynamically-generated one, consisting of the first letter of their usernames as well as a random color.
• Our guides now live in the new Tutorials section.

We'll continue to work to make the site even better than it is now, but to most effectively do that, we want your opinions. If you see something you like or something you don't, please don't be shy, and let us know what you think by creating a thread in the feedback forum. Additionally, if you want to directly help make the site a better place, check out our applications page where we have some open staff positions.