Summary of Changes

Forum-wide

• Updated font hierarchy across the forum to standardize font size
  • Most visible impact: Post text size reduced by 1px
  • We will be adjusting this based on a few issues that have been raised on specific devices.
• Social embeds are now available for 120+ social, entertainment, and news sites

Search

• Search ranking and ordering improved to provide more relevant and recent results
• Searching in “quotes,” using search booleans (this OR that), and using +/- to include/exclude now works
• Searching for strings with “-” will no longer throw an error
• Header search dropdown will now consistently appear on click

Alerts and Notices

• Updated alert background colors and font-weight to distinguish between unread and read notifications

Nodes / Threads / Posts

• Updated and unified post actions
  • All views now display the same post actions and order (reply, quote, like, save, share)
  • Actions are accessible to guests with a prompt for login
• Updated thread and node layout to improve wrapping issues
• Page counter will now display thousands and millions with a comma (1000 -> 1,000)
• Relative timestamps will display up to “7D” ago (up from 1D).

Forum Administration

• Account merge and post recalculation
  • Merging accounts will now correctly recalculate the post-count
  • Created a new tool to allow post recounting on demand in the admin panel when editing a user.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• The issue where warnings resulted in an error code being displayed has been resolved.
• Styling changes were made to the News Feed tab to keep it consistent with other tabs, such as What’s New.
• The issue where members saw an error message on the plan and payment page after reactivating the business has been resolved.
• The showcase filter resetting after leaving the first page has been resolved. 
• The issue of users not receiving alerts for followed threads has been resolved.
• Images in listings now appear when viewing threads in Tapatalk.
• The issue where guests were unable to sign up using the guest reply sign-up methods has been resolved. 
• The issue where forum footers were misconfigured to include the join now prompt has been resolved. 

• When viewing the homepage on mobile devices, the CSS issues related to a user’s avatar have been resolved.
• The inability of members to save changes in their account preferences unless they scrolled to the bottom of the page on a mobile device has been resolved.

• The additional border display issue around the reply box has been resolved.
• A member’s reaction scores have been aligned on their avatar.
• The issue where members would create listings or deals with attachments that did not display after being posted has been resolved.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes:

Profile Posts 

• The issue where authors or users clicked on the alert for “new profile posts” and were redirected to the business or article tab instead of the new profile post has been resolved. 

Postbit Display

• The issue where a user’s postbit was hidden behind the navigation bar has been resolved. 

Tapatalk

• The issue where posts had extra spacing when browsing on Android devices was fixed.
• The issue where threads with multiple images weren’t loading was resolved. 

Images

• The issue where additional padding was seen when viewing images taken from a phone on a large monitor has been resolved

Marketplace

• The issue where the wrong modal was displayed for Administrators and Moderators when clicking the “Mark as Sold” button on a listing was resolved. 

Vendor Subscriptions

• The issue where a Business Logo was not being set during Business Registration was resolved.
• The issue where a vendor could not add a keyword on a “Keyword Alerts” page using a Firefox browser was resolved.
• Previously, if a business clicked on a page within profile posts they would be incorrectly redirected to the business tab of their profile. This issue has been resolved. 

Other

• Resolved an issue where liking somebody else’s post resulted in an error.

• Added a “News Feed” link to the “What’s New” page where users can see posts from followed members.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes:

Helpful Reaction

• A new reaction called “Helpful” has been added to all sites. Members can use this reaction on posts they deem helpful. 

Notifications

• The issue where members were not receiving push notifications even after their account preferences are set to receive notifications has been resolved. 

Marketplace

• The issue where members were unable to enter a location when trying to create a Marketplace listing has been resolved.

Media Gallery

• The issue where members were unable to post replies within the Media Gallery has been resolved. 

Moderate Images

• The issue where admins/mods were unable to moderate images using the moderator tools has been resolved. 

Formatting

• Minor formatting changes have been made to align the Apple and Facebook login buttons.
• The issue where mobile preview of articles was off due to spacing inconsistencies has been resolved.
• The issue where the forum logo image was not centered when viewing on mobile devices has been resolved. 

Spoilers

• The issue where spoilers did not display correctly on certain sites has been resolved. 

Censor Word List

• The issue where members were unable to modify the censor word list for Watchuseek has been resolved. 

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• The minor CSS problems in dark mode, on homepage, or "Recommended for you" on various sites resulting in issues like ads not being displayed correctly have been resolved.
• The issue where pagination did not load the next page under the “Profile posts” tab in the “User Profile” has been resolved.
• The style issue in the Dark Mode where the “Post Options” menu icon disappears after being clicked on has been resolved.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Vendors will no longer receive Keyword Alerts for threads they cannot access.
• Resolved the issue where members’ replies were being duplicated when posting.
• Resolved the issue where members were unable to reply to specific posts by using the reply quote button.
• Resolved the issue where Tapatalk app users could not view classifieds sections. 
• Resolved the issue where Tapatalk app users encountered an error on the “Timeline” and “Unread” tabs.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes: 

• Visual update
  • We have added content moderators to display in the Forum Staff section sidebar.

• Marketplace
  • When a user marks a listing as completed, you can now indicate where you completed the transaction.
  • Advanced filters for price, currency, etc., are now available within Marketplace nodes.

• Bug fixes
  • We have resolved the issue where a member was unable to delete an uploaded photo as part of a new post.
  • The bug where the member's avatar was being partially hidden by the top navigation bar has been resolved.
  • The inconsistent number of threads per page bug has been resolved.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes:

Marketplace

• Preview options for Marketplace listings will now reflect what is being displayed when the listing is created.
• We added a ‘started by’ filter on Marketplace Home to allow members to find listings by the same member.
• Price field is now optional when creating a WTB listing.

Performance

• Recommended Reading at the bottom of each thread is now lazy-loaded to help increase the loading speed for the thread content.

Showcase

• The message that is displayed on a member's profile with no showcase (xa_sc_x_has_not_posted_any_items_yet) has been changed to show that the member has not yet created any items.

Section Moderators

• The issue where the forum Section Moderator widget within sub-forums and categories incorrectly displayed random forum moderators instead of section moderators has been resolved.

Thank you for your continued support. Please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

Marketplace

• New Features
  • Marketplace sellers can now leave reviews for all buyers when selling multiple items in a post. 
  • We have now included HKD as a new currency option where applicable.
  • Efforts have been made to make the price input field feel more intuitive when creating a listing or deal.
• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed an issue where the location field would not load when editing a deal posting.
  • Fixed an issue to sort threads by latest activity by default.
  • Fixed an issue with required fields for Want to Buy listings.
  • Fixed an issue where the Mileage field did not display properly in listing preview.
  • Fixed an issue where listing price color was changing based on read/unread status.
  • Fixed an issue where “For Trade” form fields were displayed when selecting the “Want to Buy” form

Vendor Subscription Product

• The business registration form has been updated to include options to show/hide a Business Email and a Business Phone number on the Business Profile page.
• Vendor members will now receive a notification when a ban is issued to their account, and when the ban is lifted.
• The Free Business section on the Business Directory page now has a link that takes users to the FAQ to explain why Free Businesses are not listed here.
• Vendor members who are reported or require manual approval will have their Business plan listed in the report or approval queue.

Cali Core

• The issue where the reply button appeared on closed threads has been resolved. You will no longer see this button on threads where participation has been closed.

Edit Posts 

• The issue where moderators and admins were unable to edit posts with a Pinterest link has been resolved.

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Marketplace
  • We are aware of an issue that occurs when filtering threads in the Marketplace. Currently threads are only able to be sorted by date created, not by most recent comment. We will be rolling out a fix for this with the next release.
  • Marketplace prefixes are now clickable and filters on selection.
    • Prefixes are labels/tags that denote if a listing is Want to Sell, Want to Buy, or For Trade. 
  • You will now receive a notification alert when someone leaves a review on your Marketplace listing.
  • Admins can now set default settings for the post types in Marketplace listing in the admin panel under the node’s setting.
  • When closing Marketplace threads, you will now see a list of suggested members to allow you to leave a review. 
• Only Show This User 
  • The issue where a guest was unable to see the Only Show this User option on posts has been resolved. Guests will now be able to filter posts by users. 
• Discussions
  • Previously, sorting a user's discussions by relevancy or recency would result in a different number of results showing up. This issue has been resolved.
• Vendor Subscription Product
  • Vendors on Supporting and Premium plans will see an updated notification when a ban is issued.  The notification will include links to help them contact customer support.
  • Business users will now see a character count when adding information into the "About Business" field when registering a business and updating the business settings.
  • The issue where forum Administrators/Moderators were unable to issue a warning to the vendors on a Premium Vendor plan with a Vendor Forum created has been fixed.
  • The "Business" tab on the User Profile page is now hidden from guests and registered members until certain posting criteria is met, or if the plan is upgraded to Supporting or Premium Vendor. Forum administrators and moderators are still able to see the business details and can archive the business if needed.
  • Business users with no phrases set up in Keyword Alerts will now have their Business Name set up as the first keyword by default.

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Marketplace
  • Users can now leave a rating from a listing itself (Want to Sell/Buy) as opposed to navigating to a user profile with a listing URL.
  • When creating a listing, Marketplace Forum Nodes will now be alphabetical. 
  • When users' accounts are merged, Marketplace Ratings will carry over to the new target user as well.
  • Tapatalk users will now see a price in the listing title whenever available. 
  • Want to Trade is now available as a listing option. Users can also leave a review on trade transactions.
  • Currency has been split from the original price to show it applies to both original and deal prices.
• Featured Threads
  • A bug around manually selecting a featured thread by an Admin would cause a site crash has been resolved. 
• Search
  • The issue where clicking the “search keyword” in the search bar did not perform a search query has been resolved. Now when a user clicks the “search keyword,” a search will be performed across the entire site. 
• Article
  • Articles will now display a list of all attachments in the post at the bottom of the post if available. 
• Vendor Subscription Product
  • A phone number is now required for business registration.

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Search UI Improvement Global Rollout
  • As part of user feedback, we’ve heard users complain about how difficult it can be to use the Search functionality. To address these concerns, we’ve made changes to improve user experience.
  • Merging advanced search tabs with the search results page so users can sort results by categories without having to leave the page
  • Integrating advanced search filters directly into the search results page
• Marketplace
  • Users can now edit and delete a review they left for another user. 
    • Users can edit/delete a review within a specified time. 
      • The timeframe allowed to edit is displayed beside the option. (30 days by default)
• Homepage
  • Resolved the issue where the Recommended Reading feed is missing after backing to homepage 
  • Resolved the issue where the page content would shift up or stutter while loading.
• Thread Listing
  • Fixed an alignment issue on some android devices
• Misc. performance improvement. 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Homepage
  • Previously, a thread would only display a thumbnail if there was an uploaded image. Now if a thread does not have an uploaded image but does have a linked image, that linked image will display as the thread thumbnail on the homepage. 
  • The issue where the homepage logo appeared smaller on Safari compared to other browsers has been resolved. 
  • We have been made aware of an issue where user experience on the Homepage may be interrupted from the expected behavior. This is being worked on.
• Images
  • The issue when hovering over an image would display a duplicated automatically generated description of the image, for tools such as accessibility assistance, has been resolved.
• Forum View
  • The issue where the date on a forum would break and display in 2 lines on a mobile device has been resolved.
• Vendor Subscription Product 
  • The issue where businesses located outside of Canada or USA were unable to register their business has been resolved. 
• Marketplace
  • The issue where the “For Trade” prefix color was not appearing correctly has been resolved. 
    • For Trade listing type coming to all communities shortly.
  • We fixed an error message that displayed when users attempted to upload an image that exceeded the allowed limit (20MB). This also fixes a similar issue raised when a listing would not post due to the image size being too large.
• Search
  • Previously, if an album was moved into a different category, it could not be found through search in this category. This issue has now been resolved. 
• Terms of Use 
  • We have updated our Term of Use to include “Supplemental Terms” where appropriate for the site. Please take time to review these additional terms. 
• Dark Mode
  • Minor enhancements have been made to thread details (ex: thread creator, posted date, etc.) so they stand out more in dark mode. 
• Extended Maintenance Cycle
  • We would like to take a moment to address recent service times after some user feedback. We are continuing to work on improving our systems for everyone on the forum. This will occasionally result in extended down times for some members. We hope these interruptions will be minor and pass quickly; however in the instance where service may be significantly interrupted we will aim to provide advanced warning. 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Password Policy
  • A password policy has been implemented to enforce stronger security measures. New passwords will be required to have a minimum length of 8 characters.
• Mobile - Forum Navigation 
  • When viewing threads on a mobile device, users will now be able to view the breadcrumb navigation at the bottom of the page in addition to the top of the page. This will allow users easier navigation to go back to the parent forum. 
• Prefix
  • Users will now be able to access a variety of colored prefixes for threads and articles in dark mode.
• Marketplace
  • Edit for image gallery within deals thread types is now functional.
  • Location field for listings is now optional to ensure that it is only provided when users feel comfortable doing so. 
  • Users will now be able to filter by For Sale and Want to Buy in the Marketplace.
• Post Timestamps
  • After 24 hours, timestamps on posts will convert from relative time (ex: 1 day ago) to the date of post (ex: February 15, 2022). Hovering over the date will show the date and time of the post.
• Homepage
  • Previously, users who had the Homepage opened on one tab and a forum opened on another tab to create a thread would see duplicate threads on the Homepage when they clicked the load more button. This issue has been resolved. 
  • The formatting issue where long forum names would wrap to a second line has been resolved.
• User Replies
  • The issue where the posted date in forum view would not display exact times but would act as a link instead, has been resolved.
•  User Profile
  • Moderators and Admins will now be able to hover over User Profile information in the Approval Queue to help them better investigate newly registered members. 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• Vendor Self-Serve
  • [New Feature] Business Team Management for Vendor Subscription Product
    • Businesses on a Premium Vendor plan can now add up to two additional team members to their business profile.
  • [New Feature] Keyword Alerts for Vendor Subscription Product
    • The Keyword Alerts feature allows Business users on Supporting and Premium Vendor plans to receive notifications based on a custom list of words and phrases they can create and manage.
  • The issue where the Business Directory contained the businesses of users with only deleted posts has been resolved. 
• Marketplace
  • The issue where the “Message Buyer” button was not working on the Want to Buy listings has been resolved.
  • Some modifications have been made to expiry date behavior on deals to ensure users are only seeing active deals. This includes:
    • If a user has not specified an expiry date, a default expiry date of 60 days after deal creation will be applied. Users will be able to edit this expiry date.
    • When creating or editing a deal, users cannot set an expiry date more than 120 days into the future. 
  • Changes have been made to how many ratings buyers and sellers can leave on a listing. This includes:
    • Buyers will now only be able to leave 1 review for each unique listing by a seller.
    • Sellers will only be able to leave 1 review for each buyer of a listing.
    • Users may only leave a review within 3 months of the listing creation regardless of that listing’s status
    • If a user’s review of a listing was deleted, they will be able to leave another rating
  • An issue where special characters caused an error in marketplace searches has been fixed. 
  • The image upload button has been relocated to make it more visually clear on the listing creation form. 
  • When users mark a “want to sell” listing as sold, a list of recommended users will be provided to leave a review. This is based on recent activity of conversations and replies in the listing thread. 
  • Users can now filter within the marketplace landing page for location based on a radius on top of other filters. 
• What’s New
  • Private forums, or forums not displayed to the general public will no longer display in the What’s New Section.  
• Images
  • The extra spacing and padding issues that occurred when a linked image was added to a post has been resolved.
• Album
  • Previously, if an album name was changed, a search for albums would still show you the album under the old name. This issue has been fixed.

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Summary of Changes 

• Show Only This User Feature 
  • We have released a new option to Only Show this User per thread. In a thread you can now filter any thread to only display responses by a single member.
• Google One Tap
  • Previously users who would ignore the One Tap pop-up would still continue to see the pop-up. This has now been resolved. 
  • You can now disassociate the Google account that is linked to your One Tap account registration through their “Connected Accounts” page.
• Signature
  • Space reserve issues within signatures such as images being cut-off or text being cut-off have been resolved. 

• Mobile Sub-forum View 
  • Users will now be able to see an indicator which shows how many descendent sub-forums are within a parent forum from the forum directory. 
• Search
  • When a user completes a search based on a keyword, the search results page has been updated to reflect that keyword. 
• Moderator Tools
  • We expanded the moderator tools with a chart of useful guidelines in helping them make more challenging decisions. 
  • Along with this we have standardized Warning Actions based off of the actions on the chart. 
  • Custom Warning options have been carried over and respected, and can still be created or edited.  

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes 

• Quick Thread
  • Users will now be able to create discussions and articles without leaving the forum they were in by creating a quick thread! 
  • Users will see a “Create Post” input field at the top of the forum which, when clicked, will expand and give users the ability to create a post like normal. 
  • Quick threads are not available in Marketplace or Designated Deals Nodes. 

• Homepage 
  • The issue when reading a thread off of the home page not reflecting the “read” status has been resolved.
• Search - Context UI Update 
  • Visual improvements have been made to the search functionality in the forum to simplify it. These changes were made based on user feedback. 
• Layout Improvements 
  • Visual improvements have been made to spoilers, snippets and attachments in dark mode. They will now be more visible with a different colored background behind them (similar to how they appear in light mode). 
• Custom User Field
  • The issue when users were unable to save changes to custom user fields has been resolved.  Users will now be able to edit and successfully save changes as part of their profile. 
• Signature 
  • The issue where images in a signature appeared to be cut off when viewing posts on a mobile device has been fixed. 
• Article
  • The issue where the first reply to an article caused formatting discrepancies has been resolved. 
• Maintenance Page 
  • The wording on the maintenance page has been updated to provide more information about the location of Release Notes under the Help section. 
• Marketplace 
  • We are working on rolling-out a Marketplace feature that is regularly receiving updates based on your feedback. 
  • This is a tool-set that will enhance our current Classifieds sections. We are working to add features, such as a feedback / rating system which should increase buyer / seller confidence and safety.
  • Classifieds sections will have a new Marketplace thread type to create Buy/Sell listings. This listing will have special custom fields to help provide more information, and to aid in searching through the listings.

• There will be a Marketplace homepage shortcut in the navigation drop-down that will populate once new listings are created using the Buy/Sell Marketplace post type.

This will be our last release of 2021, and we want to thank you all for the patience and feedback that has been provided to help fuel our decisions. The team is still actively working on trying to get as many bug fixes and new features out there as possible, and we hope to provide many more exciting things for 2022.

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes 

• Homepage - Ignore User
  • If you ignored another user, then any content created by the ignored user will not appear on your homepage anymore. 
• Media Advanced Search Result Page Layout Improvements 
  • Visual layout improvements have been made to the Media Advanced Search results. This is part of an ongoing effort to improve user experience with search result pages.
• Business Directory
  •  We are happy to introduce a new feature for prospective businesses in our Business Directory.  This is a self-serve product that allows Vendors to sign-up as a business on the forum where they are able to purchase a vendor subscription.
  • Note: Vendors on Supporting or Premium Vendor plans can only start threads to advertise their products in the Vendor Deals or Business Forums located in the Vendor Member Section. However, these Vendors can offer their products or services to the community members by replying to the conversations if their reply is contributing to the conversation and is relevant.
  • Recently we have begun to release additional features on this, such as a new Business Dashboard to help Vendors view and understand the performance of their Vendor Subscription efforts. The new dashboard features performance stats specific to Vendors' engagement and exposure on the site.
  • We also will be tooling the Free Businesses  page in the coming week to ensure only recent, active, and relevant businesses are listed here.
• View a Particular User's Replies in a Thread 
  • Users will now be able to filter and only see a selected user’s replies by using the new Only Show This User feature on the 3 vertical dots to the far right of the time stamp on a menu. This feature will be incredibly useful when looking for a specific user’s comments in mega threads.
  • 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes 

• Images
  • The increase in empty space around inserted images has been corrected. We have also worked to fix the formatting issues such as images breaking into two lines and the inability to center an image. 
  • A shimmer solution has been implemented when images are loading in a thread. We are continuing to work on the image loading issue, and will provide more information as we resolve things. 
• Conversation 
  • The issue where users had an indicator notifying them of unread conversations despite checking all locations and marking all conversations read has been resolved. If you notice this still happening please reach out to us in the community support section.
• Accessibility  Improvements
  • Follow Tag
    • Visual improvements have been made to the Follow Tag so it is more noticeable on threads.
      • This is based on the feedback we received from our user survey.
  • Dark Mode
    • Visual improvements have been made to links in Alerts so they are more noticeable. 
• Help Page 
  • Moderators will now see Mod FAQ in the Help section. 
• Forum Icons
  • The issue where icons were missing or not aligned for link type and page type forum has been resolved. 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes 

• Icon and Number Alignment 
  • When viewing a forum in the main forum listing, we corrected a misalignment issue that would happen if the view count was in the triple digits. 
• Unread Threads 
  • When marking threads as read from the What’s New section, all threads across the site would be marked as read. This issue has been resolved and the Mark All as Read function should now only mark threads loaded on that page. 
  • New font color is being used to help logged-in users better distinguish between read and unread threads in Dark Mode. 
    • This change is based on the feedback we received from our user survey.
• Images & Gallery   
  • The issue where image uploads failed if the extension (ex: jpeg, png) was capitalized has been resolved.
  • The issue where a user’s media upload does not appear in their profile’s media or gallery has been resolved. 
• Embedded YouTube Videos
  • The embedded YouTube player within threads has been enlarged to provide a better viewing experience for users. 
• Homepage 
  • When viewing a thread on the Homepage, the thread would sometimes not load the option to “follow” the thread. This has now been resolved. 
• Custom User Fields 
  • Custom user fields such as vehicle details and social media links have been restored so users can add and edit these fields and view them on their profile. 
• Mod Warning System Update
  • Mods have their FAQs and tools expanded. This includes the ability to set Warning Point Actions based on the amount of Warning Points a member accrues. 
  • Warning Point Actions include Temporary of permanent bans, as well as other helpful suggestions in addition to the existing tools at their disposal.
• Google One Tap 
  • One Tap will no longer bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) for users who have it enabled on their accounts.
  • The issue where users receive an ambiguous error message when registering an already existing username has been resolved. Users will now be clearly notified that the username has been taken. 
  • Users with an email address that’s 25 characters or longer will be able to successfully register with the first 20 characters of their email address auto-populating as a potential username. 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

• Multi-Image Upload
  • Improved Users ability to upload multiple images at once as attachments instead of having to upload each image one by one. Further to image improvements, we are testing uploading methods. As of now please work to upload files with standard all lowercase formatting (E.G. .jpg instead of .JPG or .png instead of .PNG)
• Admin Panel 
  • Volunteers using the administrator’s panel will notice that the issue where the Node Description field was missing when creating or editing nodes has been resolved. 
• Necro Post Warning 
  • Users will see a warning when replying to threads that have not received new responses in at least 6 months.

• Image Viewing
  • Space is reserved for images before thread content is fully loaded to prevent content shifting. This will improve the overall reading experience. 

Google One Tap Review 

• Since the global release of Google One Tap Oct 13, 2021 we’ve seen great results with a significant increase in new users and engagement! We’ll continue to monitor results. 

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

• OneTap 
  • We have rolled out new integration with Google OneTap, a sign in option which will help make it easier for new users to join the site. You can still register as normal, and all existing users can sign in as they always have.
• Home Page
  • The issue where a user loses their scroll position on the home page after viewing a thread and returning back to the home page 
    • This is based on the feedback we received from our NPS survey.
  • Users can now hover on the thread starting date and last activity date (e.g. 3 months ago) to see the actual time (e.g. June 2, 2021 at 2:42 PM). 
  • The problem where "Mark All Read" was causing issues with the read/unread status of threads on the homepage has been fixed.
• Usability Improvements
  • Desktop
    • Users can now hover on any abbreviated number with thread views or other instances(e.g. 12,3K, 1.42M) and see the unabbreviated number. (e.g. 123456)
  • Mobile
    • Mobile users can now hold down on the abbreviated number(e.g. 12,3K, 1.42M)  to see the unabbreviated number. 
    • Mobile users can now hold down on the relative time(e.g. 3 month ago) to see the actual time.(e.g. June 2, 2021 at 2:42 PM).
  • This is based on the feedback we received from our NPS survey.
• Conversation
  • Improved the design for the mobile view of conversations.
• Business Directory: 
  • We are excited to announce an upcoming new tool that will help our communities further grow, while enhancing the onboarding process for new vendors and site sponsors. The Vendor Self-Serve is a tool that will help prospective sponsors become official vendors in the community, by streamlining the process and putting the setup (from start to finish) in the hands of our business partners.  The program will help set up an option for all tiers of service, including a free option. 
  • Note: Vendors on Supporting or Premium Vendor plans can only start threads to advertise their products in the Vendor Deals or Business Forums located in the Vendor Member Section. However, these Vendors can offer their products or services to the community members by replying to the conversations if their reply is contributing to the conversation and is relevant.
  • The Vendor Self Serve tool can be found in the footer of the website as “Business” or in your Account Details page as “Register as a Business”

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Changes and Bug fixes

• Two Factor Authentication Log in
  • You should no longer redirect to the home page when logging in, you are not redirected back to where they came from.
• Performance
  • Improved the loading speed of the Gallery listing page.
  • Extended the pre-lazy load range to pre-load more images before they are scrolled up into the screen, improving the reading experience.
• New Username Self Serve Options
  • We have provided an option to the hard working mods and admins on the site where new users who have registered in the past 90 days will be able to change their username once to adjust for any errors in creation.
  • This is an option to assist the mods, and may not be available if the team here opts out of it
• Contact Us
  • Added a new “Ban Appeal” category for contact reasons. 

Upcoming features being Developed

• Google One Tap
  • We will start testing the new Google OneTap feature which should improve user login and sign-up experience.
  • If you have an account, you will be able to log in with 1 tap.
  • If you don't, you will be able to easily create one from Google.
• Marketplace 
  • We are starting to test a Marketplace feature set that we are currently working on.
  • This will be a tool-set that will enhance our current Classifieds sections and increase buyer / seller confidence and safety.
  • We are currently working on the following features

• Listing on Forum listing with Listing Tags
  • Preview only (not finalized)
• Multi-Image Upload / Image Gallery
• Marking a listing as Sold
  • Changing the prefixes from Selling to Sold etc.
• Dedicated Marketplace Nodes
• iTrader Rating Integration Discovery
• Buyer/Seller Rating & Reputation
  • We thank you for your patience as we work to improve the classifieds section, and hope we can provide more updates as we get closer to launching the feature

Thank you for your continued support, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

New Feature: Image Search (Showcase/Gallery)
Users should be able to search for images within the Gallery and Showcase from the “Advanced Search” menu. The following options are now present:

• Search Showcase
• Search Albums
• Search Media
• Search Media Comments

When the User searches within these advanced search options they will be taken to a results page:

While this project is still not completed we did want to share and release the work we have done so far. Further attention will focus on design/styling changes and retention or reset of parameters of search results. 

New Mod Guidelines Page
The FAQ section has been updated to include a help page for Moderators and Admins. 

Reactions in Showcase
Reactions are now fully integrated into the showcase section.

The What’s New Page
There is now a separate tab for News & Articles. These will primarily help show off new Articles published in the community and help navigate to that content with ease.

Search Results: View Count 
If a thread or page had more than 4 symbols in the count, the thread was displaced. We have since corrected this to ensure it all remains in the same line.

Before Fix

After Fix

Thank you for your continued support and feedback, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

What We’ve Been Up To?

Accessibility
We are making continuous improvements to our forums so more people can access them in an easy-to-use manner. Recent updates focus on adding better compatibility with screen readers and descriptive text.

Reactions
You are now able to react to posts, threads, articles, comments and images with Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, Angry:

​

Content Tag Search Update
Users now have the ability to search for multiple tags by going to: Advanced Search, Tag Search, and typing in the tags they want to search for. 

Unfurling Update
Unfurl links for Amazon, Best Buy, and eBay to make it easier for our users to understand the links that they will potentially interact with. Below is an example of an Amazon.ca link:

Media permissions
Registered users will now be able to delete their own gallery media items.  

Inactive checkboxes
Have been removed from the “My Discussions” & “Participated Discussions” areas.

What Are We Planning To Do?

Accessibility
We are continuing to make accessibility a priority so all of our users have an awesome experience. Including improving color contrast and making links more prominent with an underline in notices and alerts. We also are working to make links readable by the screen reading software.

Vendor Subscriptions
​

We are working on helping communities automate the sign-up of vendors:

• Vendors will sign up online in a similar way to our premium membership program.
• Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Vendor Subscriptions introduces a new "free" business user account. This account does not provide any posting privileges. Instead it helps us identify business users in our forums. 
• Vendors will gain access to posting activity and engagement metrics in a new dashboard.

Recommended Reading
We have heard your feedback and will be working on releasing a hard filter on older content to stop any “zombie threads” or outdated content from appearing in the recommended reading section. Our new filter will be initially set to 7 months to ensure we only bring you the most relevant and freshest content available!

Thank you for your continued support and feedback, please let us know if we could further improve your experience on the forum.

Your Community Support Team

Content Tags
We are excited to announce that the tagging system is now being released to all sites. This is a feature that we have been actively working on and now you will be able to add tags to showcase items, gallery images, articles, and threads that you create. This will help organize content and make it easier for the community to find. These tags become links, allowing topics that discuss similar things to be grouped and searched.

As a user, you can add tags to the following areas on creation:

• Articles
• Threads/Discussions
• Gallery
• Showcase

If you did not add a tag when creating an article, thread, discussion, gallery or showcase you can navigate to your post and select the “tag icon”. This will open up a window where you can add a tag to your existing content. Please note: The tag has a character limit of 3 to 25 characters. 

Tags are also now searchable via the “Advanced Search” option using the “Search Tags” tab. There are two ways to search tags on this page and both options will generate results with tags applied to Articles, Threads/Discussions, Gallery and Showcase.

• Custom Search: When the page loads you will be able to enter text and search for tags on the site.
• Popular Tags: When the page loads you will see a sub-section called “Popular Tags” this feature provides suggestions for commonly used tags to click and discover within your favourite community.

Administrators will have access to the tag manager in the admin control panel and will be able to view all content associated with a particular tag, merge, add, and delete tags. New tags will respect our censored words list. 

Sorting by Most recent/Most Relevant after completing a search by Username
When a User used the “Advanced Search '' page, and conducted a search by username, and attempted to sort by “Most Relevant/Most Recent” it would redirect the User back to the “Advanced Search” page.  

This issue has been resolved with this release. The User can now sort the results page by “Most Relevant/Most Recent” without being redirected to the “Advanced Search” page. 

Dark mode Improvements
We have updated the colour scheme for the pop-up background in dark mode. This change makes the pop-up visually different and separates it from the background.

Coming Soon

Reactions:
We are continuing to work on a new “Reactions'' feature that will allow members to better express their response to a post. As of recently we have further updated some of the designs and as of now we can tease the following sneak peek:

This is still being polished and we will provide further information as this is released in the future.

If you have any feedback or questions we are happy to help as always!

Thanks,

Your Community Management Team

While we have been working on minor fixes in our weekly updates, we had figured it would be worthwhile to update you on some minor changes we have been rolling out.

• Pinterest posting edit fix:
  •  There was an issue for users that replied to a thread that included a pinterest link, if the user later tried to edit their post, the changes could not be saved. This issue has been resolved, and will be in production after the May 25th release.
• Sorting by Most recent/Most Relevant after completing a search by Username.
  • When a User navigated to the “Advanced Search '' page, conducted a search by username, and attempted to sort by “Most Relevant/Most Recent” it would redirect the User back to the “Advanced Search” page.  
  • This issue has been resolved with this release. The User can now sort the results page by “Most Relevant/Most Recent” without being redirected to the “Advanced Search” page. 
• Dark mode Improvements
  • We have updated the colour scheme for the pop-up background in dark mode. This change makes the pop-up visually different and separates it from the background.

Thank you for your feedback,

Your Community Support Team

What we’ve been up to?

Featured Threads

Featured Threads sits at the top of the homepage and showcases 5 articles or threads in a beautiful, eye-catching module. The feature displays across all screen sizes, gracefully adding or removing a tile to help the content fit naturally into the viewing area. This way we can surface content that is most interesting or helpful. Since then we've been testing “Featured Threads” across a selection of pioneering sites.

On site Administrators can manually select some or all of the threads for their site. Our algorithm will automatically select valid threads where manual threads are not provided. Manually-selected threads will expire after 28 days at which point the system will attempt to populate new threads automatically. Automatically-selected threads will refresh on a daily basis.

What threads can I showcase with Featured Threads?

A valid Featured Thread is a thread or article that:

1. Has an image in its first post
2. Whose image is “Safe for Work” according to Google
3. Threads are public and visible to non-logged in members

When will it be available in my community?

Hundreds of communities already have Featured Threads enabled. If you don’t see it on your homepage yet, you can expect it to be there soon.

BB Code Helper

The BBCode "Help Section" has been added to the FAQ page. This will assist users with troubleshooting some commonly asked questions, and offer assistance for new BB Code users with tips like how to make wrapped text bold, or changing the color or font. 

What we’re planning to do

Image Search Update & Re-design Preview

Good news, we are continuing our improvements to the image search experience! We have been testing image search, with the feedback we’ve gathered we are working towards a redesign of a few site functions.

Showcase, Albums, and Media Search Results Redesign

We are moving to a beautiful tiled view for the Showcase, Albums and Media search results pages. This view will include the image, image/album title, timestamp and username.

Discussions & Media Comments Redesign

We are making our search results pages for discussions and media comments more consistent. Changes include reducing white space, providing more focus on core content, and updating to a clean visual experience.

Content Tags [New Feature]

To help organize content and make it easier for the community to find, you will soon be able to add tags to your content. These tags become links, allowing topics that discuss similar things to be grouped and searched. These tags can be managed by the volunteers on the site.

Where do you add tags?

As a user, you can add tags to the following areas:

• Articles
• Threads/Discussions 
• Gallery
• Showcase

Will I be able to edit my post’s Tags?

Yes, if you have posted your content and wish to add or edit an existing tag, navigate to the posted content and click the “tag icon”. This will allow you to edit. 

Will I be able to search Tags?

Yes, you can search tags by navigating to our “Advanced Search” and selecting the “Search Tags” tab. There are two ways to search tags on this page. 

1. Custom Search: When the page loads you will be able to enter text and search for tags on the site.
2. Popular Tags: When the page loads you will see a sub-section called “Popular Tags” this feature provides suggestions for commonly used tags to click and discover within your favourite community.

Both options will generate results with tags applied to Articles, Threads/Discussions, Gallery and Showcase. 

Thank you for your feedback,

Your Community Support Team

Summary of Changes

• The orange loading indicator keeps loading
  • Users would sometimes see the orange loading indicator at the top of their screen. The indicator will not stop unless the user refreshes the screen. This error has been resolved.
• Stop Forum Spam Improvements
  • As part of our ongoing efforts to fight spam we have increased the tools utilized on the site to help prevent instances of spam.
  • Implemented private Conversation scam prevention rules and adjustments.

Thank you for your feedback.

Your Community Support Team

Here’s a snapshot of how we have improved our platform within the final weeks of 2020 and our initial plans for 2021!

Rounding off 2020

Retiring of Comfort View

• “Card View” has been in public for almost two months, and we are ready to move it out of beta! As of January 6th, we will be removing the “Comfort View” option from the site to reflect this change; all users will now be defaulted to “Card View.”
• Less than 0.5% of our traffic is leveraging the "Comfort View" option. This should also help expedite our rollouts as we will not have to support two formats. Both Light and Dark modes will still be available on "Card View".

Notable Mentions

• Threads Started By A User: A member can now better differentiate between threads started and by a member versus the threads that a member has participated in.
• Retain Advanced Search Parameters: Advanced search parameters have now been expanded and improved.  
• Vendor Rules: We want to make it easier for vendors to identify and navigate through the Vendor Setup/Rules.  We added these rules in the Help menu located in the FAQ section of the site.
• Update Conversation Participant Limit For Mods/Admin: In an effort to improve communication for site Moderators and Administrators, we increased the conversation participant limit for these members.
• Globally increase maximum character limits for posts from 50,000 to 100,000 for users.

Fixes

• Welcome Popup for newly registered users
  • When a new user registers, a popup will appear that is designed to guide the user while navigating through the site for the first time. The content of this popup was not visible when the popup appeared. Release 84 will resolve this issue.
• Mark All Read button in “What’s New” section error on resubmission
  • Issue: When a user navigates to the “What’s New” section of the site and hits the “mark all read” button an error message appears.

Looking to 2021

Upcoming Features and Changes

• Homepage 2.0: We have embarked on a new journey. We are currently looking at new and exciting ways to curate and display site content on the homepage. The goal is to help surface items that the community has found interesting or insightful! We are looking at ways that are unique yet feel native to the sites. This is still very early but stay tuned for updates.
• Homepage algorithm will continue to be improved. 
  • User’s own replies will no longer affect thread ranking on their personalized feed, solving the issue where if they reply a few threads, all those threads will surface onto top of their feed.
  • We are looking into solving the duplicated thread situation when the home page lazy loads.
• Tagging: We will start looking into feasibility of the tag system, potentially providing more ways to organize the site content. 
• Ability To Search For Images Within Gallery/Showcase: We are working towards introducing a search option in the Gallery/Showcase for images. Users should be able to search images by name/tags within these sections.

Thank you for your feedback,

Your Community Support Team

Card View Launch

It’s live! Our new view mode (Card View) has now rolled out in Beta form! The new look currently only covers the main pages of the site, including:

• Homepage
• Full Forum Listing
• Sub-forum
• Thread and Article
• What's New page
• Search Results

This feature is still in Beta. This means many of the features can grow and change based on your feedback to us. 

How To Remove Card View Announcement
Click on OK to permanently close the announcement (the X temporarily dismisses the notice).

How To Change View Mode
You can always toggle between Card View and Comfort View as you like. Click the 3 vertical dots in the upper right-hand corner of the site. Select View Mode

Choose the Forum View you prefer and click OK.

You can see more in the video tutorial below: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcN7BTT3ISI&feature=youtu.be

Last 30 Days

Card View Launch
It’s live! Our new view mode (card view) is beginning to roll out on multiple sites and should be live globally by the end of November!  This new view alleviates many of the whitespace issues that were previously experienced in the older “Comfort View.”

Recommender Update
We are focused on improving the Recommended Reading section by boosting the relevance and recency of the threads suggested.  We have improved the time factor to ensure that members do not  see older threads.  In this initial testing phase, we are rolling this change out to a few sites and will then plan to follow up with a global release next month.

Notable Mentions

• Articles & BBCode features have been enabled for all sites. If you want to find out how to become an Author please let us know.

Fixes

• Mods and Admins will now have the option to hide expiring redirects that leave a deleted thread link so that they can have a clear view of the thread list.  They will be able to filter out the deleted/redirected threads if they choose to do so.
  • We have added a filter that will allow Mods and Admins to Show/Hide expired redirects, and deleted threads. The filter is currently titled “Redirects” and this hides redirected and deleted threads. We will work to update the filter title in a future iteration to include the word deleted.  The new title will be “Deleted/Redirected”

• Recaptcha: Error Message on Private Conversation. Users were receiving a Captcha error message when trying to send a Private Message. Users should no longer receive this message in error.

Next 30 Days

Card View
We will continue to make minor fixes to the UI associated with card view based on user feedback.

Recommender
We will continue to make minor fixes to the Recommender based on user feedback and internal data monitoring based on user surveys.

Upcoming Fixes

• Duplicate Threads: We have seen an increase of duplicate threads appear on the homepage. We are working to rectify this.
• Threads Started By a User: This fix will allow users to differentiate between threads started and by a member, versus the threads that a member has replied in.

Notable Mentions

• Vendor Rules: We want to make it easy for vendors to identify and navigate through the Vendor Setup/Rules.  We will be adding these rules in the Help menu located in the FAQ section of the site.
• Ability To Search For Images Within Gallery/Showcase: We are working towards introducing a search option in the Gallery/Showcase for images by name/tags within these sections.
• Conversation Limit Increase for Mod and Admins Mods and Admins will be able to start a private conversation with up to 20 members.

Thank you for your feedback.

Your Community Support Team

Here’s a snapshot of how we have improved our platform within the last 30 days, and what is coming up in the next 30 days!

Last 30 Days

Top Navigation Update
We want our users to have a convenient way to locate other members of the community. We added a Members link shortcut to the Kabob Menu. Here you can search for members, see the Top Contributors, contact community Admins among many other notable stats on our members. Check it out!

NEXT 30 Days

Card View - Brand New Look
In September we made great progress on a new view option called “Card View”, this will result in a better overall reading experience for the user as well as the cleaning up of general UI elements. Based on user feedback we have allowed for a clearer separation and distinctions between posts. As of now we are hoping for a late October beta launch and a full roll-out of phase one in early Fall-Winter months.

When this feature goes live you will be able to toggle between Card view and Comfort view as you like. Below is a preview for how you can do this: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcN7BTT3ISI&feature=youtu.be 

ML Recommender Update
We are looking at continuing to make improvements to the recommended reading section by prioritizing recency for recommendations on all sites, and continuing our research and identifying problematic posts. Below is a preview of what is being worked on:

• Better prioritizing a time factor to our recommendations, focusing on restricting the frequency in which older content shows up.
• Working to keep recommendations relevant and within similar subforums.
• We are working on identifying unhelpful and unwanted posts from being shared.

All of these updates and changes have been based on your feedback and we want to thank you for this. Please continue to let us know if there is more you would like to develop as we work to address concerns raised by members like you. 

Thank you for your feedback.

Your Community Support Team

Here’s a snapshot of how we have improved our platform within the last 30 days, and what is coming up in the next 30 days!

Last 30 Days

ML Recommender launched globally
We launched Machine Learning recommendations and have rolled out the Machine Learning Recommender to all sites. After this implementation, we have seen a significant increase in engagement on the improved results. We are looking at continuing to make improvements to this feature in September, such as respecting the start date of the post as recommended by the community.

Homepage 2.0 
We launched Homepage 2.0 globally in August. Our new homepage boasts a personal customized feed which is easier and faster to navigate. We are looking to continue with these improvements moving forward based on your recommendations.

UI/UX Improvements:
Adjustments to the alignment and formatting have been rolled out based on your feedback.

Next 30 Days

Updating Recommended Communities
We’ve renamed the Popular Communities to Recommended Communities, and are continuing to make improvements on how these are automatically selected. These will include “New” and growing communities that we think will be of interest to you.

Reaction System Project Introduction
Currently, in our platform we have a very basic pointing and trophy system. We are looking at expanding our pointing system across the board with different levels within our communities. By doing this we hope that we will incentivize users to complete actions and distinguish themselves within the community. 

We are currently in the discovery phase, and excited to share more with you soon!

Card View - Brand New Look
As part of our effort to respond to the feedback from the community regarding the "white space" issue on our sites, we are currently working on a brand new look for our sites, a new "Card View" aiming at

• Fixing the white spacing issue
• bringing more focus on the core content of the page
• providing a better visual experience

Have no fear today’s current view will still be available as a Classic View option if you prefer it. We are looking at a Fall-Winter Launch. 

Thank you for your continued support and feedback. We hope to continue to update you on these changes as we roll them out and any challenges we encounter in the next month with our releases.

Your Community Support Team

Here’s a snapshot of how we have improved our platform within the last 30 days, and what is coming up in the next 30 days!

Last 30: Summary of Changes (July)

Homepage - Algorithm Update
We are continuing to improve our algorithm to bring you a more personalized experience that will highlight content that is relevant to you. We are slowly rolling out this to some sites, so if you have not seen this updated yet, it will be updating shortly for you.

• Threads that you are following will now surface higher on your homepage feed when there are new replies.
• Threads posted by the user that you are following will have a boost in ranking in your feed.
• Threads posted under the sub-forums that you’re following will have a boost in ranking in your feed.
• Threads posted in forum nodes with access restriction will now be properly displayed on the homepage for those that have access to these forum nodes.

Full Forum List

• When a user follows a forum, we would like to improve the user experience by allowing them to see the forum right away. We did this by increasing the visibility of the followed forums on the main forum index. This change will also drive more traffic to the forum and help improve the new homepage algorithm.

Upgraded Signatures
We evaluated feedback from our users and are working to improve signatures. Some key updates include:

• Ability to collapse signatures after they have been expanded
• Preview of image (if first) or text (if first) when signatures minimized 
• Increased capacity for internal links in signatures

Notable Mentions
We have been gathering feedback from our community members and staff members over the last several months. During this time, our members identified several bugs that we need to fix.  Some of them improve the quality of life for our users, some address user interface issues, etc. Below we have listed the fixes for July with additional fixes slated for August.

August 2020 - Next 30: Upcoming Changes

Card View Project Introduction
In the effort to reduce the white spacing issue on our sites and provide better visual and user experience, we are currently working on a brand new look for our forum system.

Update to Popular Communities 
In an effort to provide content that is relevant to the user, we are updating our Popular Communities section to Recommended Communities. This section will be populated by an algorithm to provide recommendations for the user, based on the community the user is visiting or is a part of.

Notable Mentions
We have continued to gather feedback from our communities and staff members and have scheduled additional time to work on reported bugs this month.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback. We hope to continue to update you on these changes accomplished next month with our weekly releases.

Your Community Support Team