I'll be continuing on the modernization and quality of life improvements here before returning to any RPG elements. Next up is support RSS feeds for both reading in posts to sectors as well as allowing linkFilter to integrate into RSS readers.

RSS Inbound

The next release will allow sector moderators to subscribe their sector to a number of RSS feeds. Only moderators will be able to see these feeds. They will be able to easily convert one or more items in the feed into posts in the sector. I may also add some auto posting ability, since it's still pretty dead around here.

RSS Outbound

All sectors and views will support an RSS output. Authenticated views like Home will include a token to make it easy to include your customized feed in a reader.

Embeds

With this release you can post embedded images and videos. Images can be posted from Flickr, Imgur, Giphy, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, or any direct link to an image file. Videos can be posted from YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Other embed types like audio and podcasts will be added in a future release.

Release Notes

• Added support for reading oEmbed API calls
• Added support for detecting oEmbed endpoint
• Added support for using oEmbed proxies
• Added video post type
• Added image post type
• Fixed bug where users could not edit or delete their own posts
• Fix XP dropdown so that it won't be empty
• Moved old static images to /imgs
• Added support for multiple types to rating
• Fixed issue where titles would preview long but then be truncated

TSIA, baby! #featureRequest

Bounties

This release of linkFilter introduces bounties, activities that grant extra rewards for completing specific tasks. Bounties typically run for a week or a day and encourage users to explore and interact.

Once acquired you can click the XP bar to track your progress. Be sure to complete your bounties before they expire, and then collect you reward.

Currently only Cando 99-30 in The Archive is offering bounties, but expect to see more soon.

Release Notes

• Adds support for bounties, activities that grant additional rewards for specific actions
• Fixes for nightly and weekly maintenance
• Fix for new sectors not appearing in post dropdowns
• Refactor award for bounties and prep for award log
• Fixes for pagination in sector view

The Archive

This release introduces The Archive, moving all the posts from before "the collapse" to a separate section of the site. Posts in The Archive are locked: no voting, no editing, no commenting. Posts can be recovered from The Archive by crossposting them to other sectors.

The Archive also introduces linkFilter's first NPC: Cando 99-30. Cando manages The Archive and will soon start offering bounties for activities involving all those old posts.

Crossposting

This release also introduces crossposting. Any post can be crossposted to another sector. The original post creator gets awarded XP as well as the person crossposting. You can crosspost your own posts too, but you won't get double XP.

Release Notes

• Posts can now be cross posted to other sectors
• Crossposting results in XP rewards for original post as well as cross post
• Posts and Sectors prior to the 2011 shutdown are now contained in The Archive
• The Archive can be browsed by year and month, by sector, or searched
• Posts in The Archive cannot be edited, voted on, or commented on
• Significant improvements to search
• Significant improvements to site performance
• Fixes for avatar selection
• Fixes for mobile site
• Fixes for site sluggishness for users with space in username
• Fixes for search not being updated on new posts
• All users are subscribed to new sectors (for now)
• Fixes for posts that are associated to a hard deleted user
• Support for filtering by date moving forward from linkFilter launch
• Bookmarks will work deleted and archived links
• Fixes for sectors containing "all" in the token
• Purging caches on user preference update
• Recent posts in archived sectors moved to limbo

I wanted to share my thoughts on the next release for linkFilter, because they may be controversial.

Post Reset / The Archive

I'm going to be moving all posts and sectors except for the very latest ones into a new section of the site titled The Archive. A new heading at the top will allow you to delve into the sectors and visit the heyday of the site. Search will return results from the both areas.

This will allow us to start building a series of sectors that are user moderated and focused on whatever you're interested in. When more of the game mechanics start to come into play there will be reasons to visit The Archive and pull posts into the main area.

User Reset

Once I've introduced some more game mechanics I'll be doing a user reset, pulling everyone back to level 1 and 0 XP. I want to give everyone a reason to start posting again since most users who were here back in the day have already unlocked everything. There will be new things to unlock and new mechanics to allow active users to progress quickly. All posts and sectors between now and the reset will remain active.

Thoughts?

Share them here, in the chat, or on the Discord.

Now with Markdown

Out today, Markdown editing across the site.

I don't know about you, but I always found the editing on linkFilter lacking. My wonky CR/LF to html break conversion never worked right. It also made the text edit fields terrible to look at.

I've removed support for editing HTML directly, and now we just use markdown. All the old rules for where images are allowed and aren't still apply.

Refactored posting

I refactored the posting of links, journals and comments to use as much of the same code as possible. Moving forward this should make making changes easier and more uniform. As with all refactors, you will probably find a bug or two, just let me know.

Other stuff / Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug with comments creating new threads when they weren't supposed to
• Fixed mobile mode so you can post again
• Removed support for legacy skins
• Turned off all post-per-day cost multipliers
• Added support for mod deleting and undeleting
• Removed support for mod editing
• Comments use proper user/title/body after post
• Added notification on new sector creation