COMMUNITY UPDATE #7 - FEBRUARY 15, 2025

Welcome to the first community update of 2025! As you can see, things look a bit different around here and we've got lots of additional features and events heading our way throughout 2025. Lets get onto some of the new features already live and what's coming ahead!

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NEW YEAR, NEW ME

The main community forums and website for ParkCrafters have been updated for better ease of use and performance. When ParkCrafters was originally put together, it was rushed to be released before the Shyguys World community shutdown. Now that we've been around for a bit, it was time to revisit the look and feel and to make navigating the community easier and more intuitive. Along with a new interface and experience, we also have added a lot of great new features with this change while removing some clutter from the site. Please read below to see what has been added and removed with this new update:

NEW COMMUNITY FEATURES:

• New text editor has been introduced - now creating and responding to topics will be easier than ever. We've added newer features to the text editor, making media images and videos easier to embed and resize, and new tools for you to customize your messages. Be sure to take a look at all the new features the next time you create a post!

• Live Feed - we've introduced the ability to see when someone is viewing and currently responding to your topics live without needing to refresh your pages!

• New tagging system - this feature isn't fully rolled out yet but we have changed how tagging works across the community so you can find and properly label any content throughout the site with a closed tagging system. More information on this will be revealed once we get closer to the full release of our new tagging system. This will also apply to downloads!

• Lights Out - by default ParkCrafters will now be in dark theme but can always be changed at the bottom of the page. You can also set this theme to follow your system's preferences if you'd like!

• Easier navigation - We've introduced a new sidebar so you can navigate through the site more easily instead of having to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page whenever you want to change screens. We still have the ability to navigate through breadcrumbs which can still be found at the top left corner of the screen.

• Faster, better, stronger - with this new update, the site will now load and function a lot faster than before!

• More Organized - With the release of Planet Coaster 2, both Planet Coaster games have been separated and are now under one Planet Coaster forum. We've also made this change for RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 - 3 to better organize and clean up the homepage.

REMOVED COMMUNITY FEATURES:

• Q&A Forums - we have removed the ability to create Q&A forums which were currently only being used in support categories. This made navigating and finding content in these forums troublesome and confusing. We still have the ability to mark an answer as solved so you can still find a solution to an issue quickly.

• Display name for logging in - Logging in with a display name has been removed and you must log in using your email address you signed up with instead. This was purely a security change as logging in with your email is more secure.

• Status Updates - The status updates that members could leave on their profiles were cluttering a lot of the areas around the community and have been removed.

We understand this is a big change to the look and feel of the community and we expect there to be some bugs here and there. This was a much-needed change for the future of the community so we can continue to create and release new and better features to you all. Some previously released features are still being worked on so they can function properly with this new update. These features are NOT removed and will be returning soon in the near future. These features include:

• Custom login handlers such as Steam and Discord

• Content Download History

• Main Downloads homepage

• Discord Integration

• Donations

If you have any questions regarding these changes or find a bug you'd like to report, feel free to post them here!

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AND THE PCAs GO TO...

The ParkCrafters Awards will return this May! This is a community-wide event to help celebrate the anniversary of ParkCrafters along with all its members and projects. Be on the lookout for more information about this year's main event, which is coming soon!

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MORE EVENTS!

ParkCrafters will continue to provide more competitions and events throughout 2025! We can't share anything too specific yet but a fan-favorite competition will be returning this year... 👀

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THE FIRST BUGS OF 2025 SQUISHED!

We've fixed numerous bug issues throughout the site during this update. Feel free to read the full bugfix list below:

• Report Center updates.

• Email notification when dormant accounts sign in.

• SEO Improvements.

• Updated share link functionality (click to copy).

• Fixed a potential stored XSS issue

• Added a default timeout for the SMTP connection.

• Added Message-ID generation for SMTP emails, for compatibility with SMTP servers that do not follow the RFCs.

• Added email notification for users signing in to dormant accounts.

• Added a requirement for CAPTCHA to be enabled for guests to use post before registering.

• Improved IndexNow error logging.

• Improved consistency with share links popups and added click to copy URL.

• Improved the Report Center, adding new functionality and improving the user experience.

• Optimised deleting member content.

• Fixed an issue where changing a primary or secondary group for a member wouldn't reset the cached value.

• Fixed an issue where permanently deleting content from the ModCP-Report Center would fail. Fixed a wrong path in the robots.txt file.

• Fixed an issue where deleting nodes could throw an error.

• Fixed an issue where member profiles could be broken if a member had an invalid group.

• Fixed an issue where search can be slow on very large communities.

• Fixed an issue where the member history may show a wrong "by" name.

• Fixed an issue where the diagnostics statistics settings wouldn't save successfully.

• Fixed an issue with the admin stream settings, where the "Active Members" Setting wouldn't be saved.

• Fixed an issue where creating a stream in the ACP wouldn't show all available nodes.

• Fixed an issue where streams could not always be sorted correctly.

• Fixed an issue with Firefox, where one couldn't break out of the quote box by pressing enter twice.

• Fixed an issue in the core-webhooks documentation.

• Fixed an issue where automatic moderation rules couldn't be created if there were no report types.

• Fixed an issue where the s3 deletion task wouldn't be enabled.

• Fixed an issue where promoted Comments could not be removed from Promoted Content.

• Removed the deprecated hive task.

• Removed the ping call to the deprecated Google Sitemap Service.

• Replaced the h2 header on the landing page with an h1 element.

• Fixed an issue where editing the member restrictions would throw an exception when downloads was enabled.

• Optimised topic summary for busy communities.

• Fixed issues with JSON-LD/Schema.org markup in Q&A mode.

• Fixed an issue where publishing a future topic manually wouldn't update the topics publish date & time.

• Fixed an issue where approving a topic may not immediately update the number of topics pending approval.

• Fixed an issue where archived posts were not included in the post counts.

• Fixed an issue where topics you have posted in are not always marked with a star.

• Fixed an issue where creating comments via REST wouldn't show the comment when comments were synced with forum posts.

• Fixed an issue where Map fields were showing on the form for non-Address fields.

• Fixed an issue where Polls are not converted correctly during SMF conversions.

• Added support for Bluesky post embedding.

• Added Bluesky & TikTok Social Profile theme links.

• Added Bluesky content sharer.

• Added support for Postmark email handling.

• Added a security protection to prevent malicious actors from exploiting the Service Worker.

• Fixed X sign-in button colors.

• Fixed a niche issue where template caching can throw an error.

• Fixed an issue with password fields where the advice popup may be duplicated.

• Fixed an issue where unread items can appear as read in the notifications list.

• Fixed the wrong string length check in the quick title edit feature.

• Fixed an issue where the report type field would appear even if there was only 1 report type.

• Fixed an issue where AdminCP search would search too often, now waits for you to stop typing.

• Fixed an issue where registrations could be broken if the geolocation check failed.

• Fixed an issue where editing the title via AJAX wouldn't update the search index.

• Fixed the missing language string in the confirmation dialog when a report was rejected or completed.

• Fixed an issue sending mail via SMTP.

• Fixed SMTP emails sending the wrong hostname for EHLO/HELO commands.

• Fixed an issue where Club Activity was displaying incorrect data.

• Fixed the v5 preparation check to take only QA forums into account, instead of QA forums and also the solved topics setting.

• Fixed an issue where Club Activity was displaying incorrect data.

• Fixed an issue where Club Activity was not including Pages Categories in Clubs.

• Fixed an exception with Content Widgets when using Items with no container class.

• Fixed an issue where the club members tab wasn't shown to club moderators.

• Fixed an issue where Moderators could see inaccessible content titles in the IP Tools.

• Renamed 'Facebook Pixel' to 'Meta Pixel'.

• Removed an unnecessary </li> tag in the editorAttachmentsPlaceholder template.

• Removed Guests must complete CAPTCHA setting - guests will always need to complete CAPTCHA if enabled.

• Deprecated Sendgrid API support.

• Fixed an issue where the ACP permission to manage venues wouldn't work.

• Fixed an issue where the calendarEvent_rsvp webhook wasn't fired when somebody clicked on "Leave event" inside the RSVP box.

• Implemented support for permissions on Custom Fields.

• Added custom fields to the Downloads API responses.

• Fixed an issue where the unapproved posts icon is hard to see on hot topics in the topic listing.

• Fixed an issue where 'popular now' badges won't be instantly removed when disabling the feature.

• Fixed an issue where the ACP Overview Statistics showed the total comment count of all comments instead of for each database.

• Fixed an issue where RecordFeed widgets could not be embedded outside of Pages.

• Fixed a minor mistake in the REST API Records endpoint documentation.

• Fixed a broken link on the analytics page.

• Fixed an issue where unsupported image types would not be held/blocked according to Action to take if scan fails setting.

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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!

• 2,164 Total Members (+707 new members)

• 3,577 Current Files on our Downloads Section (+60 new files)

• 409 Topics Created (+68 new topics)

• 5,,489 Posts Created (+1,154 new posts)

• 4,648 Reactions Given (+1,266 new reactions)

• 119,,273 Downloads (+40,707 new downloads)

• 26,212,560 Visits Since Launch (+17,459,292 visits)

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That wraps it up for this update! I know this was a long overdue and large update so if anyone has any questions, comments, or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to any ParkCrafters staff member! Until next time - keep crafting!

- ParkCrafters Staff Team

Everything looks great! Thanks for your hard work!

I love it! Definitely has me hyped up for what is coming soon!

Looks very nice! Will take some getting used to of course, but I like it. Happy for the dark theme too!

I love how the site looks, congratulations on this new era of parkcrafting!

It took me a while to figure out the new nav but I really like the look and feel of the forums!

Overall I like it as well, except that it seems more difficult to browse through threads and figure out where unread posts are or not. Maybe a different highlighted color would make it easier?

I'm confused by the emojis. They're just B&W outlines now, instead of multi-colored. Many of them are just blank rectangles. The 'classic' yellow smileys are still there, but when I try to add one to my comment, it doesn't show up. Am I doing something wrong? Or am I missing something? Maybe it's because I'm still using Win7 (with the Chrome browser)? Also, it was convenient having the most recently used emojis at the top of the list. I don't see that there anymore? Now, I just type in traditional emoticons.

As far as navigating: I just check the "Notifications" (bell symbol) icon at the top of the page, and click on (and read) each one 'til there aren't any more. Afterward, I click on "Unread Content" at the left edge of the page and go through those one-by-one , always returning to "Unread Content" after each one 'til there isn't anything left to read.

All-in-all, I like the new ParkCrafters look and feel. :-)

Thanks all for the feedback regarding the new update! While this is only the first version of this update, we are continuously improving and fixing smaller issues like this - which is why feedback is so important. Thanks for taking the time to post some feedback, I'll look into these items to see if I can make navigating more intuitive and easier.

If you have any additional comments, feedback, or issues you've encountered, I invite everyone to post them here so we can easily track them and investigate to make ParkCrafters even better!

If I could make a suggestion?

Is there some way to hide the index tab on the left, have it slide in and out?

I like the forum itself to be much larger. Old eyes that have seen too much and all that!

7 hours ago, JB said:

I'm confused by the emojis. They're just B&W outlines now, instead of multi-colored. Many of them are just blank rectangles. The 'classic' yellow smileys are still there, but when I try to add one to my comment, it doesn't show up. Am I doing something wrong? Or am I missing something? Maybe it's because I'm still using Win7 (with the Chrome browser)? Also, it was convenient having the most recently used emojis at the top of the list. I don't see that there anymore? Now, I just type in traditional emoticons.

As far as navigating: I just check the "Notifications" (bell symbol) icon at the top of the page, and click on (and read) each one 'til there aren't any more. Afterward, I click on "Unread Content" at the left edge of the page and go through those one-by-one , always returning to "Unread Content" after each one 'til there isn't anything left to read.

All-in-all, I like the new ParkCrafters look and feel. :-)

It seems that now we have three kind of emojis 🙂 (Regular) (Classic) (B/W Fontawesome) actually there is also outline

On 3/12/2025 at 4:54 PM, citytrader said:

If I could make a suggestion?

Is there some way to hide the index tab on the left, have it slide in and out?

I like the forum itself to be much larger. Old eyes that have seen too much and all that!

Will look into this too, thanks for the suggestion!