Hi all, I have overhauled the forum system so it no longer operates with dynamic drop down boxes. each forum is a robust standalone page so users can get their bearing easier. Hopefully this should help the forum to feel more stable and firm. it also includes a breadcrumb at the top of subforums and topics, to more easily navigate. (this won't appear if the topic is loaded as standalone like this > https://fanworx.org/topic?id=100) Now that forums are more solid, I will be working on the notify system, keeping track of read/unread topics per session, so you can more clearly see activity when visiting, and also get on site notifications for DMs and topic replies.

wow, this is special! DMs!!! Now you can talk directly to another member and invite other members if you wish. There is a button in each person's profile, there is an inbox in the header with a new message button. notifications happen by email. you can leave a DM with a button inside the conversation. very important note. These are not private messages. They are not encrypted. I cannot add encryption at this point unless I start asking for ID from people, a requirement of the UK online safety act. The fundamental reason is that, in order to protect vulnerable individuals, There needs to be a way to access messages in extreme cases. Rest assured, it would not be easy, I can't just open your messages, but if a judge ordered it, I could sift through the raw data in the database backend.

It's been a while!! Well I was suffering from a hernia for a while and it was sapping my energy constantly, and so I went in for surgery about 7 weeks ago. Now I am feeling much better and recovered enough to think more clearly about this. Today I have created the user profile system, which also allowed me to have a user list. Alongside that, I have been able to make avatars more consistent, so any bugs in the previous avatar implementation should be gone. User avatars and usernames can be clicked to visit the user's profile. you can edit your profile from the login section at the top right. currently, there is only the basic bio, but I can add more fields to build out the user profile. I will also be able to build out user's walls and user's DMs. user list is available in the header ^ I'm not certain what my priority should be. should i go and work on DMs now or shall i make it so you can click on a user's posts and see all the posts listed? or something else? something to think about.

the image system has been updated from the ground up, so data s easier to handle and so you can check in your uploaded images if it fails to attach to your post for some reason. it also allows me to do further updates to make sure an image is attached to a post, even if it fails to be inserted by bbcode. it's also a bit of a testing ground for sorting and filtering. the image gallery link is in the header now. or if you don't want to use your scroll wheel you can click - https://fanworx.org/Image/Gallery

I have added the ability to react to posts. You can add a thumbs up or a love or a laugh or a celebrate or a idea reaction. I think this is like a good 'likes' system, or thumbs up or rating or however you want to call it. in my mission statement I said I want an upvote type thing like reddit but without the negativity. So I think this is good. at some point it may be possible to order things by how many reacts they have, but i'm not entirely sure about that right now. I'm also more keenly aware that I need to be looking at adding an in site notification, not just the email notifications. My next task is images though. The current images system doesn't have good management options and you can't easily access the images you may have uploaded. also, I have no resized versions and that makes some page loads really cumbersome and inefficient. I aim to improve that.

I reworked the topic cards so that they use real links. this way you can see the url and use normal browser functions relating to urls like right clicking and opening in a new tab and similar stuff. The topic preview is now static and the latest post preview appears in a tooltip. That can be improved in time to be more attractive. Topics now open in a full page rather than an overlay. This gives a sense of stability and prevents page elements from arguing with each other. Reply form is reworked to appear fixed to the bottom of a topic or if a reply button is clicked on a post, it summons the reply form and glues it to the screen, allowing you to scroll the topic while replying. Because of changes to elements that are cached in the browser, you may need to clear your browser cache for this site.

the ratings system is now up and running!! Reviews to come next. also, i updated the fan work submission for to have a better layout and an image upload button for the thumbnail.

i have made it so a new fanedit now creates a topic for discussion and includes that topic on the fanedit page. it also will auto create a topic for reviews, but the reviews system is still work in progress. feel free to write a review in the topic, but bear in mind it won't register as a review, it will need to be reposted from the fanedit page to count. reviews will be special post types with ratings linked to them.

I have finally created the fan works page. Users can submit their own fan edits. more types of fan works will obviously come afterwards, but this is working for now, hopefully without any hitches.

I've added emoji button to the toolbar. 😎 I have worked on the reply form. now there is a reply form at the bottom of each topic. the reply button next to each post now includes a quote of that post. Each post now has it's own id tag and opening a topic can go right to the identified post. I will probably need to make that url accesible from the post number. the email notifications should now include a direct url to the new post.

I've added a report button to forum messages, fanedits and fan worker profiles, so that users can report objectionable content. The report fires off an email directly to me. I can then use the new admin tool to view each message or fanedit, etc and can edit where necessary and I can disable a user account from that screen. In time I could create more advanced moderation tools, but for now it will suffice. btw, please don't use the report button frivolously, as it could get irritating to receive a lot of emails.

It became apparent that site rules and guidelines are not sufficient, so I have added a language filter system. It may be a tad annoying for people who use language responsibly, so The filters can evolve over time depending on how people feel about it. Site rules were clear but I have put together a language guide for anybody who is in doubt. It is linked in the rules page under the communication section. You probably don't need to read it if you keep in mind that this site is publicly accessible and kids can read this. I also have admin alerts in case any slurs are used as this is a more serious case.

Image upload!!!! Currently the upload form is attached to the user card, you can use it to upload an avatar :) click your name ^ the uploaded images can be viewed in gallery

If at all possible, I'd love to be able to tweak/update content after it's submitted; right now, entry titles, details, posters get locked in after first submission (as does editor bio and avatar)

I've created the profiles system for fanwork creators. currently you can claim your own creator page after submitting some fanworks. The claiming process only has a submit function currently, so be careful, it's not editable right now. I'll add that later. If you do mess up, let me know. I can delete the data from the database but it's a bit of a pain to do.

I added topic views so we can see engagement, also added total posts to forum cards. I also added unique user icons that are generated from username. This is just to give some visual feedback for now, until I make a image upload system.

after I switched this page to a more modular approach, I am now able to create 'versions'. The plan is to have it so you can see more recent posts, it will expand the recent posts to be wider and show more, and you can easily switch back to main view. Javascript was becoming unruly though, with 13 processes listening for mouseclicks. I needed to combine them into one listener, which meant rewrites. I have just a little bit more to do on that, then i can continue. after that I will make it so that topics actually have a url. It'll all work the same, it'll just update your url bar with the path to the topic so you can link to it directly. ETA is the next couple days, tomorrow if all goes well.

I've added an edit button. This is a much needed breath of fresh air, as we now no longer need to worry about typos. This was more work than it needed to be though... I've run up a lot of technical debt through laziness... I am currently using a model/view/control method, but I left a lot of razorpage methods in place and now it's getting awkward trying to weave them together. I need to take some time to clean up the old methods. I have been laying some groundwork though so I do have a lot of the pieces already created.

I did a lot of work on layout, showing useful data in the forum cards and changing the layout so that types of data will be in the expected position so your eyes aren't darting all over the place. I also updated the general layout, nudging forums to the left to make space for recent posts on the right. While there is a recent updates box on the main page, there needs to be a sense of activity on the forum page, so i feel this kind of bulletin feed is really effective at giving an at-a-glance idea of what's new, with a decent preview. next step will be moving the new topic button from the top of the forum page, into the header of each open forum, and having the new topic form open within the forum container. after that, I feel it's important to add a post edit feature and also a way to control image sizes in posts.

I've create a safety assessment to ensure compliance with the law. I would prefer to allow appropriate discussions as would happen in a public place like the park, a restaurant, etc. but UK law seems to be a bit of a mess at the moment, so I need to be more stringent. Whilst public registration is not open yet, I need to have this in place before I do open it up. I welcome all feedback, opinions, etc.