Ready for some upgrades to the itch.io neighborhood system? If you were not conscious, itch.io’s neighborhood system lets any recreation developer, challenge proprietor, or jam host create a message board for his or her followers and gamers to talk. It’s totally featured, with the power to customise boards, guidelines, and moderators. Today we’re comfortable to announce a handful of latest enhancements.

Building a powerful neighborhood is a vital a part of growing and launching an indie recreation. You can get direct suggestions from gamers, and assist flip them into even greater followers of your work. The challenge neighborhood web page is the place all of this begins. We’ve redesigned the neighborhood web page to incorporate extra details about your challenge, present current devlog updates, and embody some shade out of your challenge’s customized theme:

View Forager’s neighborhood web page

The new header is proven throughout all matters and sub-categories which are associated to your challenge. If somebody finally ends up on a subject to in your neighborhood from a search consequence or a direct hyperlink then it is easy for them to get again to your challenge web page to be taught extra about what you make. 

Your challenge web page’s customized colours at the moment are used to fashion any neighborhood pages the place your challenge header seems. The fashion pulls from hyperlink shade, button shade, and header shade (from the Background 2 theme shade). Expect to see much more shade when shopping round itch.io.

The customized colours are additionally appropriate with itch.io’s darkish theme: we alter the colours to ensure textual content is at all times legible and excessive distinction.

Lastly, if you happen to use itch.io’s devlogs function then your most up-to-date posts will present up on the highest of the web page. The good place to announce updates to your challenge for viewers of your neighborhood.

Recent posts listing

Communities that use “listing” mode to have sub-categories now have a current posts listing on the principle neighborhood web page to make it simpler to see current exercise. This is like the subject listing on a class web page, however contains posts from all sub-categories.

Additionally, for communities that do not use directories, you may nonetheless entry the current posts listing by dropping /current on the finish of the URL. We’ve discovered this handy for devs that wish to maintain a more in-depth eye on what’s taking place throughout all matters of their neighborhood.

This is an typically requested function so we’re comfortable to lastly have it out. All neighborhood classes can now be searched by the contents of the posts. This contains the itch.io international neighborhood, and any jam or recreation communities. You can restrict your search to sub-categories as nicely.

Search contains options for limiting search to solely matters, or matters and replies, search by precise phrase or any mixture of the phrases you supplied, together with a number of sorting choices. We’re no Google, so the search algorithm is not going to be essentially the most superior, but it surely ought to provide the capability to seek out discussions about sure key phrases.

You can discover the search enter on the highest of any neighborhood or sub-category header.

Building a protected place for everybody is a vital a part of making a neighborhood. Moderation instruments can assist you try this, so we have included some enhancements on this replace.

Ban device can ban from any class

We’ve improved the ban dialog to allow you to ban the individual from any class in your class hierarchy. This solely applies if you happen to’re utilizing sub-categories.

Restyled experiences web page

This is an older replace that we forgot to announce. The neighborhood experiences web page is now simpler to make use of with a brand new design. Reports are sorted latest first so you may see what’s most up-to-date.

Moderation logs present extra data

The moderation logs web page allows you to audit what different moderators in your neighborhood have been doing. The web page has been up to date to point out extra details about what actions have taken place, and what goal these actions had been utilized to (eg. Who was banned from what neighborhood).

Spam moderation

With extra folks utilizing itch.io than ever, spammers are extra keen than ever to unfold hyperlinks to diets capsules and no matter else they’re into. Posts that aren’t
caught by our computerized spam detector may be reported as spam with the
Report hyperlink beneath a put up. itch.io website moderators and admins
will now be reviewing experiences for all communities which are marked as spam.
We’ll handle cleansing issues up for you if there’s a problem, and we’ll
use it to coach our spam detector.

The neighborhood subject pages have seen a number of smaller high quality of stay enhancements as nicely!

Sticky headers for posts

When studying lengthy posts, the creator data of a put up will now keep on with
the highest of your browser so you may simply entry their profile. Also, for
communities that use upvoting/downvoting, the vote UI stays on prime as nicely so it is easy to
give suggestions on the put up.

Video embeds require a click on to activate

Youtube and Twitch video embeds now require that you just click on on them first earlier than they’re activated. The most blatant impact of this modification is that threads with a whole lot of video replies will not make your browser lag! (Some video games get a whole lot of video feedback!) Additionally, third occasion code from video embed suppliers will be unable to routinely run you view the web page.

Comment to neighborhood migration

itch.io allows you to select between feedback or a message board on your neighborhood in your challenge pages. If you begin with feedback then resolve to go to neighborhood, you may understand that every one your feedback are not seen. We’ve constructed a device that may allow you to migrate your feedback into a subject in your neighborhood. It’s not publicly accessible, however if you would like an admin emigrate your feedback then contact assist.

That’s all for this replace. Thanks for studying. If you made it to the underside of this web page then you should actually care about itch.io. We’re internet hosting a beta of our new app so go test it out and provides some suggestions: https://fasterthanlime.itch.io/install-kitch