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10 months ago
General
Hey there fuzzies!
We want to let you all know the progress with the “roll back/update” mentioned in the previous announcement. The way we described today’s update in our last communication was considered misleading by some community members and, in turn, caused confusion, which was never our intention and we apologize for this. Some of the changes in our original update were a one-way trip, making it impossible to revert to the previous state the site was in. With this in mind, we heard everyone loud and clear about what we could do to move forward in a better direction. We’d like to thank everyone who gave us clear and constructive feedback, as it was invaluable to understanding what we could do to improve Fur Affinity for everyone!
This new update is the first step in a long transition towards a proper, fully-functioning keyword tagging system and as such is not the final form of this project. As such, we’ve designed this update to work similarly to how Fur Affinity has operated in the past while continuing progress in further development of our keywords system.
Opening the Browse page will display an updated interface, closer to the previous system:
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou...../06/browse.jpg
It mostly appears the same, only now you will see that when making a Gender selection you will be automatically redirected to the Search page with filters already in place.
Based on your feedback, the Search page has been reworked, and now includes additional filters that were missing and previously only available on Browse (Category, Species, and Gender):
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou...../06/search.jpg
You will now be able to easily filter for which gender selection you prefer to see.
When selecting more than one option, only submissions containing all of the selected genders will be displayed by default. Alternatively, If you want to perform a standard full-text search for everything that uses any of the keywords (even alone) you can click the “Any of the words” option under the “Match Criteria” section of the search options. As a heads up, the keyword selector will only work in Extended Mode. You can change how the search functions by using additional options, such as “-” to exclude a term (example: “female !non_binary” to search for submissions with the term “female” and exclude “non_binary), or “|” to change the search to look for any of the terms next to it (example: “female | non_binary” to display submissions that have either “female” or “non_binary”).
For more information on options and operators to use for search, please refer to the Help Page.
In addition, we now require all submissions to have at least 3 keywords when submitting and editing previous works. We mentioned we were going to introduce this requirement at a later date when Tag Blocking was launched, and we feel like this is a great opportunity to take a step forward to encourage the change towards a proper tagging system. You will see this help text when submitting new works now:
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou.....6/keywords.jpg
For submissions that have keywords that don’t match the new requirements, worry not! We will be keeping your keywords in-place on your submissions; however, they will not be able to be searched for in our search system and if you edit an older submission you will be prompted to update keywords. They will only be displayed in the submission sidebar. When adding or editing new keywords, there will be a message that pops up informing you if some of your keywords are invalid.
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou.....rd_warning.jpg
If you have any problems, bugs, glitches ect. We would ask you to please put all the information you can get in a Trouble Ticket, instead of writing it in the comments. This way our Tech team can keep better track of the issue. You can submit a Ticket by clicking here or going to the “Support” section on the menu bar, and selecting “Report a problem”.
🖥️
General Changes:
⚙️ Re-introduced the gender selection options to the browse, submission finalize/edit page and the search page.
⚙️ Except for the browse page, genders will now be rendered as a series of checkboxes instead of a dropdown, clicking which would directly modify either the keywords area, or the search query box directly on the page.
⚙️ Adjusted layout, position and spacing of elements at all resolutions and display mode transitions.
⚙️ Added the comment anchor icon (that can be copied to link to the comment directly) to submission and journal comments on mobile view.
⚙️Hiding a comment on a submission or a journal will scroll the page back to its general position on load.
Search Page Changes:
⚙️ Adding Category, Art Type and Species dropdown filters.
⚙️ Adding page and per page options.
⚙️ Search query box will now expand to accommodate larger search queries. Newlines can be added to it for convenience by pressing CTRL + ENTER while typing.
⚙️ Extra "Search" buttons added for convenience at the bottom of the filters lists in the sidebar and on mobile.
⚙️ Adjusted the display of error messages.
⚙️ The Search form HTTP action has been changed from POST to GET, so now all filter options and the search query would be transmitted via URL - which can be copied, shared or bookmarked.
⚙️ Added "Advanced Search Help" section to the "Options" area on mobile view.
⚙️ Restricting pagination to the maximum amount of results the search backend is configured to return (5000), so it doesn't trigger an error trying to go past it.
Submission Edit & Submission Finalize Page Changes:
⚙️ Description and keywords fields will now automatically expand to fit their contents.
⚙️ Finalize submission page, the thumbnail preview will now be visible on small/mobile screens as well.
⚙️ Submission edit page, added the thumbnail preview.
Browse Page Changes:
⚙️ Added the gender dropdown back with our new tagging framework in mind.
⚙️ If a gender filter from it is selected, the Browse page will redirect to the Search page while transmitting all of the other selected filter options.
FA+ Users-Only Changes:
⚙️ Extra “results per page” dropdown options that are available only for FA+ will have a different background to make them stand out.
Keywords Related Changes:
Entering/updating submission keywords is now done in accordance with new parsing rules:
* Only a-z,0-9,_ (underscore) are allowed.
* Keyword must be minimum 3 characters long (subset of 2 characters are supported)
* There must be at least 3 keywords provided.
The "Note" section under keywords input fields on submission finalize and edit pages updated to reflect this.
Existing keywords that are invalid according to new rules:
* Will be converted to new format ("/" and "-" replaced with "_") when editing a submission, and saved when the edit page is submitted. User will be warned/prompted when this happens.
* Displayed as they are on the submission view page, but visually "disabled" and unable to be interacted with.
Again we would like to remind you all that this is not a completely finished product. Much of the updates coming into FA from the start of the year are building the groundwork for final solutions, as we are working with an ancient infrastructure with limitations that restrict who is able to work on it in its current state. There are plans in motion for a recode as mentioned in our previous Town Hall announcement, but that takes time. In the meanwhile we hope to be making quality of life stop-gap solutions to the current site. We’ve been making great progress in these areas, such as our initiatives with Tag Blocking as well as Display Names. We made a mistake in how we handled this update, and we are actively working to resolve how this happened to prevent it from occurring again by moving forward with more communication, and proper testing.
We feel it is important to note that we have enjoyed having comments on journals open to communicate with our community members and get feedback from others when we are both doing things right as well as wrong. We unfortunately had to lock the comments on the previous two journals as much of the conversation seemed to be turning into unhealthy arguments against our trans/non-binary/gender fluid community members, as well as being gynophobic and we will not tolerate this behavior.
Fur Affinity is woman and LGBTQIA+ owned and operated. We’re very proud of the community of inclusivity we’ve fostered, and implore(and to some degree expect) everyone to help us preserve those values.
Lastly, we wanted to update you all on where we are with this year's Roadmap. There is currently a lot in “Code Review” that we hope will start coming out swiftly over the next couple months. We have side projects we are also working on that we hope you will all enjoy.
Main ticket items
⭐ Tag Blocking Part 1- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (FA+ Launch)- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (Everyone Launch) - Completed ✅
⭐ Technical Debt Fixes- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Large Bugfixes Round 1- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Implementing Cloudflare Turnstile (Tool to verify users and block bots) - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ IPv6 Support - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ User Block Improvements - In Development ✏️
⭐ 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) - In Development ✏️
⭐ Audio Player Updates - Researching 📖
⭐ Writing Upgrades - Researching 📖
⭐ Fixing Thumbnails - Researching 📖
⭐ Dev Friendly Initiative - Not Started 🍃
Side Projects
✏️ Site page “Banner Museum”: Featuring all previously used site banners with links to artists (for modern AND classic banners)
✏️ Site page “I Was Here”: A memorial page for all users who are no longer with us.
✏️ Site page “Wall of Awesome”: A way to track and shout out people who donate to the site! This will be an “opt-in” page for donors and not required if you prefer to remain anonymous!
✏️ Moved ads to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
✏️ Added a Mature rating to ads, making a total of three ratings: General, Mature and Adult.
Thanks to everyone for being patient with us while we sort through this and helping us make FA a better place for our community as a whole! Please keep comments within our Code of Conduct rules and a reminder to be excellent to each other! ❤️
We want to let you all know the progress with the “roll back/update” mentioned in the previous announcement. The way we described today’s update in our last communication was considered misleading by some community members and, in turn, caused confusion, which was never our intention and we apologize for this. Some of the changes in our original update were a one-way trip, making it impossible to revert to the previous state the site was in. With this in mind, we heard everyone loud and clear about what we could do to move forward in a better direction. We’d like to thank everyone who gave us clear and constructive feedback, as it was invaluable to understanding what we could do to improve Fur Affinity for everyone!
This new update is the first step in a long transition towards a proper, fully-functioning keyword tagging system and as such is not the final form of this project. As such, we’ve designed this update to work similarly to how Fur Affinity has operated in the past while continuing progress in further development of our keywords system.
Browse Page Update
Opening the Browse page will display an updated interface, closer to the previous system:
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou...../06/browse.jpg
It mostly appears the same, only now you will see that when making a Gender selection you will be automatically redirected to the Search page with filters already in place.
Search Page Update
Based on your feedback, the Search page has been reworked, and now includes additional filters that were missing and previously only available on Browse (Category, Species, and Gender):
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou...../06/search.jpg
You will now be able to easily filter for which gender selection you prefer to see.
When selecting more than one option, only submissions containing all of the selected genders will be displayed by default. Alternatively, If you want to perform a standard full-text search for everything that uses any of the keywords (even alone) you can click the “Any of the words” option under the “Match Criteria” section of the search options. As a heads up, the keyword selector will only work in Extended Mode. You can change how the search functions by using additional options, such as “-” to exclude a term (example: “female !non_binary” to search for submissions with the term “female” and exclude “non_binary), or “|” to change the search to look for any of the terms next to it (example: “female | non_binary” to display submissions that have either “female” or “non_binary”).
For more information on options and operators to use for search, please refer to the Help Page.
Keyword Update
In addition, we now require all submissions to have at least 3 keywords when submitting and editing previous works. We mentioned we were going to introduce this requirement at a later date when Tag Blocking was launched, and we feel like this is a great opportunity to take a step forward to encourage the change towards a proper tagging system. You will see this help text when submitting new works now:
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou.....6/keywords.jpg
For submissions that have keywords that don’t match the new requirements, worry not! We will be keeping your keywords in-place on your submissions; however, they will not be able to be searched for in our search system and if you edit an older submission you will be prompted to update keywords. They will only be displayed in the submission sidebar. When adding or editing new keywords, there will be a message that pops up informing you if some of your keywords are invalid.
https://d.furaffinity.net/media/jou.....rd_warning.jpg
If you have any problems, bugs, glitches ect. We would ask you to please put all the information you can get in a Trouble Ticket, instead of writing it in the comments. This way our Tech team can keep better track of the issue. You can submit a Ticket by clicking here or going to the “Support” section on the menu bar, and selecting “Report a problem”.
🖥️
Tech Changelog
🖥️General Changes:
⚙️ Re-introduced the gender selection options to the browse, submission finalize/edit page and the search page.
⚙️ Except for the browse page, genders will now be rendered as a series of checkboxes instead of a dropdown, clicking which would directly modify either the keywords area, or the search query box directly on the page.
⚙️ Adjusted layout, position and spacing of elements at all resolutions and display mode transitions.
⚙️ Added the comment anchor icon (that can be copied to link to the comment directly) to submission and journal comments on mobile view.
⚙️Hiding a comment on a submission or a journal will scroll the page back to its general position on load.
Search Page Changes:
⚙️ Adding Category, Art Type and Species dropdown filters.
⚙️ Adding page and per page options.
⚙️ Search query box will now expand to accommodate larger search queries. Newlines can be added to it for convenience by pressing CTRL + ENTER while typing.
⚙️ Extra "Search" buttons added for convenience at the bottom of the filters lists in the sidebar and on mobile.
⚙️ Adjusted the display of error messages.
⚙️ The Search form HTTP action has been changed from POST to GET, so now all filter options and the search query would be transmitted via URL - which can be copied, shared or bookmarked.
⚙️ Added "Advanced Search Help" section to the "Options" area on mobile view.
⚙️ Restricting pagination to the maximum amount of results the search backend is configured to return (5000), so it doesn't trigger an error trying to go past it.
Submission Edit & Submission Finalize Page Changes:
⚙️ Description and keywords fields will now automatically expand to fit their contents.
⚙️ Finalize submission page, the thumbnail preview will now be visible on small/mobile screens as well.
⚙️ Submission edit page, added the thumbnail preview.
Browse Page Changes:
⚙️ Added the gender dropdown back with our new tagging framework in mind.
⚙️ If a gender filter from it is selected, the Browse page will redirect to the Search page while transmitting all of the other selected filter options.
FA+ Users-Only Changes:
⚙️ Extra “results per page” dropdown options that are available only for FA+ will have a different background to make them stand out.
Keywords Related Changes:
Entering/updating submission keywords is now done in accordance with new parsing rules:
* Only a-z,0-9,_ (underscore) are allowed.
* Keyword must be minimum 3 characters long (subset of 2 characters are supported)
* There must be at least 3 keywords provided.
The "Note" section under keywords input fields on submission finalize and edit pages updated to reflect this.
Existing keywords that are invalid according to new rules:
* Will be converted to new format ("/" and "-" replaced with "_") when editing a submission, and saved when the edit page is submitted. User will be warned/prompted when this happens.
* Displayed as they are on the submission view page, but visually "disabled" and unable to be interacted with.
Again we would like to remind you all that this is not a completely finished product. Much of the updates coming into FA from the start of the year are building the groundwork for final solutions, as we are working with an ancient infrastructure with limitations that restrict who is able to work on it in its current state. There are plans in motion for a recode as mentioned in our previous Town Hall announcement, but that takes time. In the meanwhile we hope to be making quality of life stop-gap solutions to the current site. We’ve been making great progress in these areas, such as our initiatives with Tag Blocking as well as Display Names. We made a mistake in how we handled this update, and we are actively working to resolve how this happened to prevent it from occurring again by moving forward with more communication, and proper testing.
We feel it is important to note that we have enjoyed having comments on journals open to communicate with our community members and get feedback from others when we are both doing things right as well as wrong. We unfortunately had to lock the comments on the previous two journals as much of the conversation seemed to be turning into unhealthy arguments against our trans/non-binary/gender fluid community members, as well as being gynophobic and we will not tolerate this behavior.
Fur Affinity is woman and LGBTQIA+ owned and operated. We’re very proud of the community of inclusivity we’ve fostered, and implore(and to some degree expect) everyone to help us preserve those values.
Lastly, we wanted to update you all on where we are with this year's Roadmap. There is currently a lot in “Code Review” that we hope will start coming out swiftly over the next couple months. We have side projects we are also working on that we hope you will all enjoy.
🗺️Roadmap for 2025!🗺️
Main ticket items
⭐ Tag Blocking Part 1- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (FA+ Launch)- Completed ✅
⭐ Display Names (Everyone Launch) - Completed ✅
⭐ Technical Debt Fixes- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Large Bugfixes Round 1- In Code Review ⏳
⭐ Implementing Cloudflare Turnstile (Tool to verify users and block bots) - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ IPv6 Support - In Code Review ⏳
⭐ User Block Improvements - In Development ✏️
⭐ 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) - In Development ✏️
⭐ Audio Player Updates - Researching 📖
⭐ Writing Upgrades - Researching 📖
⭐ Fixing Thumbnails - Researching 📖
⭐ Dev Friendly Initiative - Not Started 🍃
Side Projects
✏️ Site page “Banner Museum”: Featuring all previously used site banners with links to artists (for modern AND classic banners)
✏️ Site page “I Was Here”: A memorial page for all users who are no longer with us.
✏️ Site page “Wall of Awesome”: A way to track and shout out people who donate to the site! This will be an “opt-in” page for donors and not required if you prefer to remain anonymous!
✏️ Moved ads to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
✏️ Added a Mature rating to ads, making a total of three ratings: General, Mature and Adult.
Thanks to everyone for being patient with us while we sort through this and helping us make FA a better place for our community as a whole! Please keep comments within our Code of Conduct rules and a reminder to be excellent to each other! ❤️
Enjoy my work? Please consider sending support to my Ko-fi!
https://ko-fi.com/sciggles
⭐SHOP⭐TWITCH⭐TWITTER⭐BLUESKY⭐
Email is Sciggles@Furaffinity.net
