Hello all,

It’s now March, and we’re rapidly closing in on our final ‘launch’ feature set. Our focus has been on fixing structural things to prepare for mass site use, and has involved a lot of fiddly details – but it’s getting there!

Here’s a quick outline of the key changes since our last update:

Blocking of other Users

You can now block other Users on Furry Network.

You can access your ‘block list’ by visiting your Account Settings from the top dropdown menu, and adding the username of the character you’d like to block to the list.

Once blocked, you’ll no longer see any content from the blocked user. Comments, promotes, follows, messages and commission requests will be disallowed. The blocked user will receive a message such as “You are unable to comment on this submission” and “you are unable to send commission requests to this user” – and will be unable to interact with you.

As it stands, this currently means that the blocked user can still browse your submissions and generally see your activity. We’re considering changing this to be similar to being ‘blocked’ on other sites (such as Twitter), where the blocked user cannot see any of your activity either – and would value your feedback on this via Twitter and the Support Thread for this topic.

We’re working on adding a ‘block’ button to user profiles to make this easier – which should come in a future release. ‘Mute’ functionality – similar to Twitter, where you can simply hide that user’s activity site-wide – is also being worked on. Taken together, we think these will give Furry Network some of the most powerful and easy-to-use tools for self-moderation available today!

User Bans

This is technically an admin tool, but we felt it important to show you how the technical tools of the site work in conjunction with our rules and site policies, to make our administration effective and fair.

Admins can now choose to ban users forever or for 2, 3, 5, 7, or 10 days, depending on the severity of the infraction and in line with our Code of Conduct. Banned users are automatically unbanned after the specified time period, which is added to a record of previous administrative actions taken. Characters of banned users have a “banned” icon visible on their profile page avatar.

Import tool now saves to Drafts

Newly imported content from other sites is now automatically imported into the “Drafts” section of the “Manage Artwork” page, so you can work through it at your leisure, edit and updating them, and choose which submissions you’d like to make public.

This also gives you an opportunity to reorder the imported content – whatever you mark as public first will show up as the ‘oldest’:

This also unlocks a number of powerful new features – including being able to assign imported images to the “Photos” content type, immediately after import!

As this is a freshly launched feature, we welcome your feedback on how we can make the overall importing experience better. You can hit us up on Twitter or make your voice heard on our Support Thread for this topic.

No more Importer Duplicates!

We fixed an issue with the importer creating duplicates: you can now safely re-run the importer to copy across fresh content from other sites, without it creating a ton of duplicated content!

“Delete All” feed confirmation

The magical “Delete All” button on the feed now asks for confirmation before it deletes the contents of your feed:

 

Improved Page Titles

The page title shown in your browser window has been improved – and will now show more information about the page you’re on:

We’re going to shorten the full “Furry Network” title to “FN” for all pages except the homepage in a future update, so you can see more of the descriptive title in future.

 

 Full Changelog:

• Users can now block characters from their Account Settings by typing in that character’s name. Once blocked, they will no longer see content from the blocked user. Comments, promotions, following, messages and commission requests will be disallowed. The blocked user will receive a message such as “You are unable to [comment on/promote] this submission” and “You are unable to [send commission requests to/send messages to/follow] this user”
• Admins can now choose to ban users forever or for 2, 3, 5, 7, or 10 days. Banned users are unbanned after the specified time period. Characters of banned users have a “banned” icon visible on their profile page avatar.
• Artwork is now initially imported into Draft status rather than Public
• Fixed issue with the importer creating duplicates
• Fixed issue with galleries displaying duplicates when a user initially visits the site
• Added a confirmation message for the activity feed’s “delete all” button
• Page titles have been updated to be more descriptive instead of only displaying “Furry Network”

 

What we’re working on:

We’ve got another big update planned soon with a lot of features you’ve asked (and voted) for. Here’s a sneak peek on some of them:

• Privacy tools for user profiles, to prevent search engine indexing and guest access
• Zoom feature for viewing submissions
• Linking commissioning artists directly to price sheets from the Community section
• Additional admin tools
• Site-wide Announcements
• SFW/NSFW toggle in dropdown menu
• Delete Character functionality
• Fix bug with only 15 most recent comments displaying on submissions
• Change page titles from “Furry Network – [page name]” to “FN – [page name]”
• Fixing bug with community feeds taking a long time to load
• Tweaks to the Commissions tool, based on feedback from testers

 

Thanks everyone – and we hope you enjoy this new update!

 

-Varka and the Furry Network team