I just finished our newsletter for January. You should receive it in your email, otherwise you can view it online. Because I couldn't afford the mailing server we didn't have a newsletter in December. Be sure to check out WF highlights. Before the server shutdown and fundraiser I was working on adding some new features. Here are some new features you might not have noticed yet: View thread browsing history. Under the secondary navigation, go to Quick Links > History to see the last 50 threads you viewed. Useful for jumping between frequent threads. "Live Threads" have been enabled, and should automatically upgrade a thread if someone posts something new while you're viewing it. Profiles now show recent tweets as a profile sidebar block if you've added your Twitter handle to your account information. The Writing Workshop profile tab is been fixed and now will not display unless you've created a Workshop thread. Two-Factor Authentication. I haven't tested this yet, but to secure your account against hacking, you can set up a second method of authentication. Go to Your Account > Two Factor Authentication. There you can add a Google Authenticator or Yubico key. If you've received a Warning, you can now privately see what the Warning was for, when it was given, and how many points it was worth, as a tab in your profile (only you and moderators can see it). You can now order Supporter Membership with bitcoin, through BitPay. It's super easy! You can also create a $1 automatic/reoccuring subscription (without Supporter status) through Account Upgrades. Someone suggested this idea in the Server Discussion/Fundraising thread. The gallery was updated to include better privacy settings, easy copy-and-paste BBCode (to display gallery pictures in threads instead of uploading as attachments), and bug fixes. This gallery is way underused, there are so many levels of privacy, album options, "stream" abilities, it even as tagging! Try it out. The photo gallery is now a media gallery, and now allows you to upload or embed videos! You can have video "albums" or playlists. This is really cool, someone should put together a video playlist of writing classes or writing advice. I've set up a donations manager that'll allow us to easily raise money for the server or crowdsource new features (if you guys get behind this idea, I haven't had much feedback yet). It's great because it'll allow tracking of progress through a "progress" bar that can be displayed on the sidebar as needed. Double-clicking a forum's respective quill icon on the forum home will mark the entire forum as read. We could do this in vBulletin, but couldn't on Xenforo until now. There's now a User Map that shows your location based off your profile. Note that it shows locations based on your location in your profile, which is public, and you can change your location and it will change or remove you from the map. Location is indicated by our quill icon. This feature is just for fun, I thought it'd be cool to see a worldwide representation of our users. As of now I'm still messing with it and it's only showing a few dozen. Status updates are now viewable and enterable on the bottom of the forum homepage sidebar. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Where's the free Red Bull for us late nighters? On the real, great job Daniel. You're definitely not as lazy as what all the rest of the posters were telling me.
I thought there was going to be a change to the short story contest word limit? It seems that it is still the same.
I think it would attract more entries if it was less and a smaller difference between the minimum and maximum. Something like 500-1,000/1,500 words. There was someone else who had made a comment about it before me that maybe might want to chime in as well. I can't remember who exactly it was though.
