Community Update #4 - March 9, 2024

[wolfpaw]

COMMUNITY UPDATE #4 - MARCH 9, 2024

 

Hey everyone! It's been a while since we've had our last community update and lots has happened since then! We've got some new features, new looks, and new updates regarding ParkCrafters and the future of ParkCrafters to share with you all today. Overall, we're very happy with the state of the community and pleased with how fast this community is growing! I feel like we've now become a staple name in all things Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, RCT 1 - 3, NoLimits 2, and more. Our downloads library continues to expand and more and more members are sharing their awesome projects. Our Discord server continues to see increased activity and more people continue to join our community every day. For a community built around such niche and old games, I'm very pleased with how everything is turning out so far! Big thanks to everyone for your continued support and the staff team here for helping to continue to grow ParkCrafters.

I'm sure all of you are eager to see what new features and information we have to share with this first update of 2024, so read on below to see what's new and coming to ParkCrafters!

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DOWNLOADS GETS A NEW REFRESHED LOOK

Our downloads section, while continuing to grow and seeing lots of downloads every day, was a bit confusing to navigate. You would click on a category and it would show no files were available in that category unless you clicked a small link on the sidebar to actually see the files in each category. We've streamlined this process and made it easier to both navigate and find the files that you want to find.

Our new and improved downloads layout now features all the categories for all of our hosted files on the community. It also nicely displays all recently added files, reviews, and comments for every category. Feel free to look around and check it out on our Downloads section here!

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FURTHER CHANGES TO USER PROFILES

We've added a new requested field to everyone's profile on ParkCrafters - pronouns! You can now add and share what pronouns you identify as on your ParkCrafters member profile. Just head to your profile and click on 'Edit Profile' and add your pronouns under the 'Additional Details' category. This field is optional, so if you don't want to share this information feel free to leave it blank.

We've also added a cover photo file limit size to all profiles moving forward as of this point. We were seeing some users uploading 4K+ resolution cover photos which are eating up our server's available disk space. As of now, cover photos now have a file size limit of 5MB. Current cover photos that are up will not be affected by this change.

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PARKCRAFTERS DISCORD SERVER GETS LEVELED UP!

If you frequently visit and engage in chats on our ParkCrafters Discord server, you'll notice a few new changes! We've added some new visual features and fun things on our Discord server to improve member interaction! Our Discord server now features an image of the community's current featured project, new role icons, new soundboards, and new emojis. These can all be used in our Discord server when chatting with other members both via text or on a voice/video call. We still have lots of slots for additional emojis and soundboards, so if anyone has any suggestions feel free to reach out to any staff member and we can get them added for you! If you aren't on our Discord server... what are you waiting for? Join here to start chatting with other members and to enhance your ParkCrafters experience!

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CSDEPOT MIGRATION IS COMPLETE!

This has been previously announced already but wanted to give a special shoutout since this wasn't properly announced in a community update. The migration of all the files from the now closed CSDepot from ShyGuysWorld has been fully moved over to ParkCrafters! This was a huge effort and lift from multiple members and I can't thank them all enough. If you'd like to read more about this, view the official announcement here.

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MORE BUGFIXES!

We've squished and fixed numerous bugs with this update. One of the bigger ones being registration emails not properly sending out. Feel free to read the full bugfix list below:

• Added the embed.php controller to the robots.txt file and added a noindex tag so that search engines don't index the content.
• Added the referring URL to the content of the Contact Form.
• Changed PHP version to 8.1.
• Changed MySQL version to 8.0.13.
• Improved the contact us form UX for guests.
• Improved the queued comments count handling.
• Improved the description for the similar content widget to highlight the different flow when ES is used.
• Improved the thumbImage template to add an alt tag and optimize lazy loading.
• Fixed a design issue on the error page.
• Fixed an issue in the DELETE /core/members/{id}/secgroup/{groupId} REST endpoint, where members could lose a secondary member group.
• Fixed an issue where calling the GraphQL API without a query would throw an EX0 exception.
• Fixed an issue with the x hashtag not being set.
• Fixed an issue where members with a false validation flag would be unable to login.
• Fixed an issue with reliability of logging early in the boot process.
• Fixed an issue with invalid page URL parameters.
• Fixed an issue where profile fields weren't shown on content submissions.
• Fixed an issue on the registration form, where one could submit any coppaa/birthday combination.
• Fixed an issue where tags were not showing in alphabetical order (when enabled) for search results.
• Fixed an issue where the webhook payload from Status Posts wasn't properly formatted.
• Fixed Member List Exports not properly formatting Yes / No and Checkbox profile fields.
• Fixed an issue where disabled login handlers would still be accessible in the UCP.
• Fixed an issue where the member webhook payload contained a false value for the allowAdminEmails key.
• Fixed an issue parsing <video> elements with multiple <source> elements when lazy-load is enabled.
• Fixed an issue in the follower template where it didn't cast the page as an integer.
• Fixed an issue where giving cookie consent to the IPS cookies would result in an empty page.
• Fixed an issue where web app icons may be cached by a CDN and show older versions.
• Fixed a regression when copy & pasting files in an editor by reverting a previous fix.
• Deleting a webhook will now also delete the data from core_api_webhook_fires.
• Removed the deprecated twitter_hashtag` setting.
• Removed the profile blocking from the default robots.txt file.
• Fixed an issue where Status Feeds don't update after saving statuses and replies.
• Fixed an issue where registration validation emails weren't properly sending.

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THE FUTURE OF PARKCRAFTERS

These past 9 months have just been the tip of the iceberg! We've got loads of exciting new features coming to ParkCrafters in 2024, along with our first anniversary May! Staff is currently discussing future features that we know you all will love from further improving the organization of download categories to clubs. I will say this... it might be time to put on those competing hats soon 

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STATE OF THE SITE UPDATE

As always, I'll leave you all with some of the info numbers as of today compared to when our last community update was released!

• 512 Total Members (+321 new members)
• 3,286 Current Files on our Downloads Section (+759 new files)
• 231 Topics Created (+37 new topics)
• 2,963 Posts Created (+542 new posts)
• 2,166 Reactions Given (+510 new reactions)
• 21,690 Downloads (+19,242 new downloads)
• 3,861,065 Visits Since Launch (+2,089,791 visits)

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That's it for now! Thanks again for all the continued support on ParkCrafters! We're so happy with how the community is expanding and to continue to see all your awesome projects being shared on both the site and our Discord server! Until next time!

- ParkCrafters Staff Team

[Cody]

Good update @wolfpaw and yes, the staff are in constant communication with one another plotting for our one-year anniversary. This community is probably the most active and most creative community I have seen in a long time. I am plotting decorations for my personal projects for the big celebration, and I hope everyone can get on board and decorate the parks for the big anniversary as this is a huge accomplishment. 

Defintiely check out the downloads section everyone, there are some really good projects featured on the icons that are popular amongst the community. Good work fellow staff members, I love having our fun discussions.

[Kablary]

@wolfpaw modestly uses "we" a LOT in the above update, but the reality is that he is doing all of the heavy lifting to bring the community these fabulous new features. It's a labor of love and passion and it's such a privelege to be on the staff with @Cody and @Wilhelm1407. The community has really made moderation a breeze... when are ya'll going to start acting up?! I'VE GOT CITATIONS ITCHIN' TO BE WRITTEN.

My favorite part of every Community Update is the little blurb at the bottom that shows the site stats:

A 250% increase in membership and ALMOST 4 MILLION SITE VISITS?!?!!?!?!? That's i n s a n e !  What a success ParkCrafters has become - may the site growth conitnue to skyrocket. 

Whether you're just passing through or have firmly planted your roots, thank you so much for being a part of ParkCrafters. Community engagement is definitely on our radar in 2024, and we can't wait to roll out more goodies later in the year!