Community Update #2 - September 30, 2023

[wolfpaw]

COMMUNITY UPDATE #2 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2023

 

BLEGH! Hey ParkCrafters community and happy Halloween! We got our next major community update here with loads of new and exciting features- some of which you may have already noticed. We are now roughly 4 months since the launch of the community and people are still sharing their work, commenting on others, starting discussions, and being active on both the forum and Discord. I'm so happy to see a thriving community for theme park sims, especially since the community was so scattered before. Thanks to everyone on here for keeping this place active and a joy to browse and be a part of! As the community continues to expand, so do our features and improvements - check out the new features, now available!

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Come with us and you will see this, our town of Halloween!

ParkCrafters and our Discord server have been redesigned for the spooky season! Our Halloween skin features both a light and dark theme like the normal look and feel of our community. Our light theme features more of an Autumn/Fall look while our dark theme features more of a scary/Halloween theme. You can change between the light and dark theme at the top right corner by clicking on the paint bucket icon.

Looking to revert to the normal look? You can always swap back to our normal default theme by clicking on 'Theme' on the bottom left corner of the page and clicking on 'ParkCrafters Theme'. Our Halloween skin will be available until November 1st, 2023.

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Reactions Get 

Our reactions system is widely used across the entire site. Users can leave a like, laugh at a post, be confused, cry, and.. that's about it. We've expanded on our list of reactions to include over 10 new reactions! If you aren't aware yet, every time you gain a 'positive' reaction, your reputation on the community will increase. If your content receives a negative reaction, your reputation will decrease. Some of our reactions do include negative reactions, the infamous dislike button has also been added to our site since we believe in the freedom of expressing your opinion. Please use these reactions responsibly, they should not be used as tools to inflict toxicity on others. We're all mature here, so I expect everyone to use the tools at their disposal as a form of constructive criticism only.

If you're curious, here's a breakdown of the new reactions added along with their point change:

• Like (+1)
• Love (+1)
• Haha (+1)
• Thanks (+1)
• Care (+0)
• Thinking (+0)
• Wow (+0)
• Confused (+0)
• Sad (+0)
• Angry (-1)
• Dislike (-1)

Depending on your reputation number, you are also given a rank! You can view your rank on your profile page by hovering over your reputation number or clicking on your reputation number. Here's a rundown of reputation ranks if you're curious!

• Honorable (5,000)
• Popular (1,000)
• Excellent (500)
• Good (100)
• Neutral (0)
• Poor (-100)
• Bad (-500)
• Unpopular (-1,000)
• Dishonorable (-5,000)

You can also view the leaderboard for who has the highest reputation score and more by visiting our leaderboard page, under the Activity Tab!

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Leveling Up Our Achievements!

On top of our reactions being expanded, our achievements system has also been expanded! Based on how active you are across the community, you will earn points and your achievement rank will increase! Like the reactions rank, you can view your achievement rank on your profile page and you can see your number of points on the user drop-down menu on the top right corner of the screen when you click on your username. There are currently 15 achievements you can earn, I wonder who will get to the fabled ultra-rare #1 achievement? For those curious, here is a list of achievement ranks:

• ParkCrafters Guest (0 points)
• ParkCrafters Custodian (100 points)
• ParkCrafters Ride Operator (250 points)
• ParkCrafters Mascot (500 points)
• ParkCrafters Pyro Operator (750 points)
• ParkCrafters Animal Trainer (1,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Coaster Designer (5,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Pyro Designer (10,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Designer (15,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Contributor (25,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Enthusiast (35,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Veteran (50,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Mentor (75,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Master (100,000 points)
• ParkCrafters Tycoon + ULTRA RARE BADGE (500,000 points)

As you can see, our achievement rank names have also been rebranded to fit our theme of park sims more appropriately. You can also view who has ranked up recently on our homepage under our Latest Activity block on the right sidebar! You may also notice our badges system has been removed. We are currently working on a new feature regarding badges for a future update, so stay tuned for that!

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Express Yourself!

New features have also been added to your profile page! You can now click on edit profile to add additional information such as gender, location, website, bio, and various social links. These will be displayed on your profile for everyone to see! We've also added a section to feature your own projects on your profile! Fill out the new Featured Projects section when editing your profile to proudly display what you're currently working on and your past projects for all to see. It will have its own tab for any guest to see when viewing your profile. Show off those projects!

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More Bugs Squashed!

• Added additional and stronger spam prevention support!
• Added the ability to moderate and block new registrations from specific regions if needed.
• Added email verification to Contact Us page and form to help prevent spam.
• Added the ability to moderate or block new registrations using known disposable email addresses.
• Added aliases for x.com embeds.
• Fixed an issue where disabling or removing the Twitter login handler may not remove the Twitter social promote option.
• Fixed an error in the REST API when a member has an invalid primary group.
• Fixed an issue where deleting a node via the API
• Fixed an issue where profanity filters that block words did not work on content titles.
• Fixed an issue where saving too many groups on a member can result in an error.
• Fixed an issue where having many groups can cause an error when updating a users location.
• Fixed an issue where the Who's Online and Active Users widgets will be cached by a guest and shown to everyone.
• Fixed an issue where the default value of a language string may not be correct when entities such as > and < are used.
• Fixed an issue creating new content with specific a specific tag configuration with alphabetic tags enabled.
• Fixed an issue where a profile field with the type "Date" could break the search.
• Fixed an issue with ACP notifications for PII & Deletion requests.
• Fixed an issue where passing null to a text field may cause an error with PHP > 8.1.
• Fixed an issue where lightbox meta titles were not being used.
• Fixed an issue where REST API requests may set an incorrect language.
• Fixed an issue where the move members queue offset was not being applied correctly.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to trigger a MySQL error by specifying an invalid API page parameter.
• Fixed an issue where the cookie banner may show an error when used by guests.
• Removed an orphan referrals module.
• Removed the Edited By line for anonymous content that was edited by a moderator without the ability to silently edit.
• Disabled responsiveness in the Admin CP > API.
• Fixed an issue where a redundant message may show when a closed topic is archived.
• Added the missing 'most_views' language string.
• Added post-content analysis scanning to detect spam in post content.

Known Issues:

• We're aware of the page not automatically refreshing once someone submits a comment on a status update and are currently working on a fix.
• We're aware of members not having enough local storage for images and attachments uploaded directly to our site and are currently working on a fix.

If there are any additional bugs you may encounter with the site, our Discord server, or the new theme, please submit them over at Community Support!

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More Downloads!

We are continuing to add more custom scenery and custom content from ShyGuys World onto ParkCrafters, please keep an eye on our downloads section for new content always being added! Special thanks to those who have helped move things over already!

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State of the Site Update

Lastly, here's a rundown of the latest statistics compared to our last community update of how we are doing!

• 124 Total Members (+37 new members)
• 297 Current Files on our Downloads Section (+85 new files)
• 177 Topics Created (+43 new topics)
• 2,020 Posts Created (+970 new posts)
• 1,257 Reactions Given (+693 new reactions)
• 866 Downloads (+398 new downloads)
• 1,148,554 Visits Since Launch (+794,539 visits)

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A huge thanks again to everyone making ParkCrafters the best place to be when it comes to theme park sims and theme park discussions! That's about it for this update, we continue to look forward to all the amazing content you all come up with and share! Remember, if you ever have a feature you'd like to see added, be sure to let us know! Until next time and Happy Halloween! 

[Kablary]

I LOVE ALL OF IT!

Thank you for your tireless dedication to the site, Wolfie! You've built a wonderful home for all of us theme park sim misfits. Simfits? I sincerely hope more of the old guard make their way over to ParkCrafters (you know who you are if you're reading this and you're not a member). But the group that has settled in and called this "home" is an awesome bunch of creative souls! Super great to see so much consistent activity across almost every forum. And 1M+ site visits?! That's nuts!!! 

20 minutes ago, wolfpaw said:

I wonder who will get to the fabled ultra-rare #1 achievement?

Challenge accepted.