-- Official Announcements! --

[Melooon]

** Alerts and Mentions **

You'll find a new bell icon near the top of your screen! This is the alerts bell and it will ring when you get alerts! If you want to get alerted about new posts on a board or thread, click the notify button at the top of the thread! You can also change your alert settings to suit your needs!

We also have a new mentions system! Just do @name as you'd normally expect and you can mention someone 

That is all, carry on! (Be sure to clear your cache to make sure things work!)

(Also in case you missed it, we now have a minecraft server tooooooooo *magic mc link*)

[Melooon]

New Theme! - Newspaper

Hi, I am pleased to announce there is a new forum theme available! You can find it in your look-layout section.

The Newspaper theme is a slightly more modern look for the forum, its mainly aimed at people who want to enjoy discussions but don't like all the over the top text styles etc - The main focus here is readability and clarity.

It also features automatic dark mode switching based on your browser preferences! Enjoy!

[Melooon]

MelonLand 98 and Images

Just a quick note to let people know you'll find a new theme called MelonLand 98 - This is the main forum theme, but super stripped down for better compatibility with low-end computers! If you use a low-end computer let me know if it improves your experience or if there's anything it could do better!

ALSO the forum now has image caching and optimization! You should not notice any big difference; images may load faster across the site and take up less bandwidth! However, Im mentioning it so you know to be on the lookout for bugs; if you have any image-loading bugs this week be sure to report them!

ALOS ALSO Hope you have a good St Patricks day - or successfully hide from it like I do 

also also also thank you to everyone who donated recently - there were a few of you 

[Melooon]

Wiki Updates!

The wiki homepage has been reorganised a bit and I also updated it to the latest version! There are now separate sections for info pages, MelonLand pages and guides!

Feel free to go and make some edits!

[Melooon]

Forum Updates

Hi all; some general updates on the forum! Iv recently reorganised the boards a little and added two new boards:

• Site Resources - This is a board for posting resources you make or provide that people can use on their sites!
• Games Gallery - This is a special gallery for posting interactive artworks such as games or adventure sites!

Changes to forum signups:
For the last week or two Iv been testing a new signup system - people are no longer instantly added to the forum when they sign up; instead, they must provide a short private bio and are then manually approved. While sometimes it feels a little like playing Papers Please, I think this system has been working well So we will be keeping it - this has also allowed me to remove captchas for new members and remove most new member limits!

New Moderation System:
@shevek has been helping me plan a new Moderation system that I've been slowly testing over the last week or so. @shevek will also be acting as a moderator; although I hope to add a few more in the very near future! As some of you may have known we paused the moderation program last month, so this is the first step of reimagining it!

Key changes:
* Staff ranks have been removed from profiles - you'll no longer see any Administrator label or Moderator label next to names - this is to make it less intimidating for people to interact with a staff member and help them feel less isolated.

* ALL moderation posts will now be clearly labelled like this: no moderation interactions will happen outside of moderation labels.

⚑ Moderators Note ⚑

Hello this is a moderation note! You should pay special attention to this note because its very important, also melon is hella cool and very pro

My aim is to have more moderators with a wider variation in their tasks, but with less heavy issues to deal with (Not that we have many  ). Moderator roles will be more focused on topic management and community building. Moderators won't be able to delete topics or posts, and they wont be able to issue bans - but they will be able to hide or lock topics, move topics and pass off more serious issues to me to deal with.

The goal is basically to make moderation a constructive task, rather than a rule enforcement task - while also giving me some space to step back and give more people greater agency to guide the forum. It's still a very WIP concept and I don't think you'll notice any big changes, but I wanted to let everyone know the plan!

Also for the sake of transparency; moderators will be listed on the wiki so you can check that list if you are ever curious!

Forum Theme Updates:

Some of you might remember Ice's excellent analysis of the forum design; I listed a few changes that I thought would be good here; Im gonna be working on some of those over the next few weeks!

As always if you have any questions - you cant reply here because its an announcement thread, but feel free to make a topic in the forum discussion section 

[Melooon]

Mini Update

A newspaper mode quick switch button has been added to the floating tools!

If you click the newspaper you will be switched to newspaper mode and you can click it again to switch back!! If you use newspaper by default, it will switch you to the MelonLand theme.

With this in mind I'll be making some edits to the newspaper theme over time to make it EVEN more reader focused!

[Melooon]

New Moderator and News!

Hello! I'm pleased to announce we have a new Moderator  ! @awhe has been on the forum for a number of months now and always a positive mood spreader and general good vibe creator! I think they will really be able to help out around the forum, so Im super happy and I hope everyone else will be too!

Along those lines Iv also created a new wiki page that lists active and past Forum Staff - since we no longer make that explicitly clear on posts, you can refer to this list if you are unsure! https://wiki.melonland.net/forum_staff

My aim is to slowly expand the staff on the forum over the next coming months; partly because I think its better for the community and the mental health of everyone to have a wider group of people influencing the vibe - but also because Id like to step back a tiny bit myself and focus on my own projects more. So the goal atm is to slowly build the infrastructure to make that possible!

In Other News!

The MelonLand Mastodon Server is being closed; signups are no longer available. It didn't really seem to be what people wanted and there are so many other instances out there that can offer a better experience for people. Im not sure what I'll do with the accounts I run (they may be moved over to a personal server, or stay on the same address) - but their wont be community accounts and the link has been removed from the ML entrance page. If you are still using your account I recommend switching away sooon!

In Other Other News!
I have a big new homepage centric project that I'm starting work on that I think will be SUPERR FROGOGOLIN COOL  (Or maybe it'll be terrible, but hey, life is for living  )

[Melooon]

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A special BBCode for text art has been added thanks to @Okato  To use it just paste your text art inside the new BBCode tag (make sure you're using plain text editor mode)

Code

[tart]Your art goes here[/tart]

Here is a noble moose! ?? I think?? I dunno Im not a text artist, but I'm told this is how it works!

                                            .      //
                                       /) \ |\    //
  VK                             (\\|  || \)u|   |F     /)
                                  \```.FF  \  \  |J   .'/
                               __  `.  `|   \  `-'J .'.'
        ______           __.--'  `-. \_ J    >.   `'.'   .
    _.-'      ""`-------'           `-.`.`. / )>.  /.' .<'
  .'                                   `-._>--' )\ `--''
  F .                                          ('.--'"
 (_/                                            '\
  \                                             'o`.
  |\                                                `.
  J \          |              /      |                \
   L \                       J       (             .  |
   J  \      .               F        _.--'`._  /`. \_)
    F  `.    |                       /        ""   "'
    F   /\   |_          ___|   `-_.'
   /   /  F  J `--.___.-'   F  - /
  /    F  |   L            J    /|
 (_   F   |   L            F  .'||
  L  F    |   |           |  /J  |
  | J     `.  |           | J  | |              ____.---.__
  |_|______ \  L          | F__|_|___.---------'
--'        `-`--`--.___.-'-'---