Hi everyone,

As we approach 2021, I wanted to take time to discuss changes coming to the site and detail their progress:

API 2.0
We're completely overhauling our API to allow rich integration with the Donut Team platform to power bots, applications and other websites.

The current work needed to finish this feature:

• HitAndRunEvent must be ported over. This is what is used to award badges and play history.
• Authentication is currently half-finished and is a major feature we're working towards for future integration.
• Today, we offered @Fat Tony the ability to test API 2.0 for his Twitter bot (twitter.com/DonutTeamRadar).

Profiles: Overhauled
We're working on a brand new rich profile system. It is currently feature complete, but is missing some crucial design aspects for badges.

The current work needed to finish this feature:

• Finalize design changes

Projects & Downloads
We're currently developing a new projects system that will replace the legacy content system. All content in the legacy content system will remain but you will have to update older submissions with new data to continue using it. More information when we get closer to release.

It will also update and replace our current download system.

There is so much to do that I can not actually discuss what is needed, but I'll leave it off with some work in progress images:

Downloads:

Projects:

Direct Messaging

This is a work in progress being developed on new technology that we're still familiarizing ourselves with.

The current work needed to finish this feature:

• Update design, it is currently using a simple design that does not really convey what is needed for this project.
• Fix issues involving sending and receiving messages.
• Auto-link support

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We are extremely excited about this update, so to prepare you for these changes, we'd like to leave you with the full patch notes (as of December 3rd, some features are not yet written on this list as they're not finalized). This patch will arrive in early 2021.

Get hyped and let us know what you're most excited for:

Direct Messaging!

We've added the ability to direct message another user or a group of users!

• Messages can be sent and replied to in real-time.
• Messages can not currently include BBCode, however links will be auto-tagged for your convenience.
• Groups can be formed and the creator of the group can name the group.
• Group leaders can invite anyone at any time to join in or kick someone from a conversation.
• If you don't want to be in a group, you may leave it at any time. If you're being continually invited back, you may block the group from adding you back in.
• You will receive on site notifications for messages, meaning you'll instantly know if someone has messaged you.
• Pages do not support Direct Messaging

Post Statistics

We've added a new Post Statistics page that is available for all users to view. When viewing a post, click on "View Statistics" (or the edit time if the post has been edited). From there, you can view information as well as view edits of posts.

• You can view the amount of times a post has been viewed.
• You can view the overall karma score
• You can view the percent upvoted (i.e. 9 upvotes, 1 downvote = 90% upvoted)
• You can view the overall karma ranking for your post (i.e the rank a post is at overall compared to other posts on the forum)
• You can view revision history

User Interface

Navigation Bar

• Some commonly used links can be now found in the new user dropdown; these links can be toggled on and off on the "Settings" page.
  
• We changed the colour scheme of the notification button to fit better with the search bar.
  
• Clicking the "View All" button on notifications will bring you to a refreshed notifications page. This page now supports pagination, so you can view all your notifications.

Quick Drawer
Introducing the new account dropdown, properly known as your "Quick Drawer."

• The Quick Drawer can be accessed at anytime by clicking on your avatar in the top-right hand corner on Desktop and Mobile.
  
• On Desktop, icons are displayed in a grid.
  
• On Mobile, icons are displayed as each row with the ability to scroll down.
  
• All icons (excluding Profile, Page and Settings) have the ability to be disabled in the Design Settings. This will be saved at the account level and can be tweaked at anytime.
  
• The Quick Drawer is not spawned when you visit Donut Team, it will be spawned the first time accessing it or after updating it to reduce the initial load time.

Notifications

• The notification page (accessed by clicking "View All" on your notifications panel) now has the ability to go between pages.
  
• Notifications will no longer be marked as read upon opening the notification panel or the notifications page:
  
  • All notifications can be marked as read by pressing the "Mark as read" button in the top right of the notification panel.
    
  • They can be marked as read individually by following the link of the notification.
    
    • Notifications that do not have links attached to them have been modified to support this. You will be brought to your notifications page upon clicking it.
      
    • The site has been updated to check if you have new notifications on each page request. If you use multiple instances of the site, clearing it on one will clear the bell indicator on the other upon the next page request.
      

Homepage: Refreshed

TODO

Forum: Refreshed

The forum has been redesigned with a new heavy focus on content.

Forum Sidebar

• Redesigned the forum sidebar.
  
  • The forum show will now show relevant information to the page you're currently on.
    
    • Topic Listing Pages will now show Community Home, Discord, Play History, Create Topic, and all boards
      
    • Topic Pages will now show Follow Button and Top Contributors to topic
      
    • New Topic will now show information about making a new topic, Drafts and a Forum Home link.
      

Forum Homepage

• Redesigned the forum homepage

Forum Topics

• Topic pages have been refreshed.
  
• A new "Top Responders" section has been added to the sidebar to show who has the most upvotes in a given thread.

Rising Topics
We've added a new section to the forum called "Rising Topics". Rising Topics will only show topics that have been made in the last 3 days with a karma score of 1 or greater. Topics that are newer with more karma score will be displayed first.

Profiles: Refreshed

Profiles were given much needed love in this update. We've increased their usability and polished the overall design.

• The new profile topper features a clean layout and presents information about how much karma you've accrued, how many subscribers you have, how many subscriptions you have, your join date and the website of your choice.
  
• Below the profile topper is a navigation bar for profiles.
  
• Play History has been made front and center. The last five things you've played will be displayed in a row at the top of your profile.
  
• Below Play History is the new activity tracker.
  
  • The activity tracker will show both threads you've created and your replies.
    
  • From the activity tracker, you can vote on content or if you're the owner you can access your edit and deletion tools.
    
  • Expanding the activity tracker will give you a pagination system. This allows you to go back to the beginning of time and see someone's first post. (Be gentle)
    
• There is also a new "Mods" section of profiles. Your mods section will show all mods you've published to the Content Submission System.

In addition to this, managers were removed from the profile design. In the future, this may return, however we've sunset our current iteration of pages with no plans on updating them in the future.

Search

• The ability to search by post is now here!
  
  • Please make sure to use "literal searches" (using quotes around the statement you're looking for) when searching for posts, as it will provide the best information. Literal searches are still a work in progress, so please give us feedback.
    
• The ability to search the documentation site from the Donut Team main website is also available now.
  
  • Please note that this feature is experimental and subject to change; because of this, we're labeling this as a "Beta" feature.
    
  • This is intended to help guide new users towards the documentation site, not as an alternative for navigating the documentation site.
    
  • We are actively working on improving accuracy
    

Settings

• The Settings page was refreshed with a new design.
  
• The following theme settings have been removed:
  
  • Classic Theme (Pink)
    
  • "Green" Theme
    
  • Aurora Borealis Theme
    
  • Dark Theme
    
• The "Topic Preview" setting has been removed. This feature was under-utilized and under supported, however we would like to review the concept at a later date.

Formatting

BBCode

• The BBCode editor will now insert tabs when pressing the Tab key on your keyboard. This is useful for code tags or formatting your own posts.
  
• A new button has been added to each post to embed a "smart quote"
  
  • Smart Quotes allows a user to embed a copy of your post in their own post.
    
  • Smart Quotes includes a link to the topic the quote was made on, so you can quote something across several topics.
    
  • Smart Quotes will not show content that is not accessible to you.
    
    • If a post has been deleted, it will not show the quote.
      
    • If a post was made inside a board you do not have access to, it will not show the quote.
      
  • Smart Quotes use the REVISION identifier, meaning if you update your post, their quote will not be updated.
    
    • This means that the quote will be as it was when it was quoted, which allows you to have a proper discussion or debate with someone and not have them change their post on you.
      
    • You can use this feature to display changelogs in your own post as well, quoting the current revision and appending it to the new revision you're working on. This is an idea we're currently fleshing out, so please let us know if you have any suggestions.
      
• When specifying a quote's author, you can now use an @ symbol before the name to add a link to their profile. Example: [quote=@jake]Jake's quote[/quote]
  
• Added an alias for "hiddencontent" called "hidden"
  
• Added the ability to put spoilers and hidden content tags inside another set of the same tag.
  
• The URL Tag will no longer show http:// or https:// when displaying a URL.
  
• A website URL that does not have a URL tag around it will now be automatically linked.
  
• All website URLs will now go through the Donut Team Safety Tunnel. (Read below)
  
• Any URL or IMG tag that starts with "file://" will no longer proceed with changing to that element. Instead, it will show up as text. We hope this helps new users identify when an image is not uploaded correctly, as the file protocol is used for accessing local files.

Trust & Safety

This update got some love for ensuring our users are not exposed to dangerous or malicious content.

Safety Tunnel
We've added a new link filter that we're dubbing the "Donut Team Safety Tunnel." The Safety Tunnel will now filter out certain sites from being accessed and give you content warnings for others.

• Added the Safety Tunnel
  
• There is a whitelist of other Donut Team services and commonly used websites. This whitelist will automatically continue past the Donut Team Safety Tunnel.
  
• There is a graylist of websites that are generally fine, but may have things some users may not want. Donut Team will try to give our best on content identifiers for the website, though in some cases they may be vague.
  
• There is a blacklist of websites that are blocked from being linked from Donut Team. If a user submits one of these links, our Safety Tunnel will give you an explanation as to why we're refusing to redirect you there.
  
• Any website not in the whitelist, graylist or blacklist will give you a heads up that you are leaving Donut Team, but will not have content identifiers.
  
• The Safety Tunnel logs a count of how many users proceeded on the specified link. We will display the number of other users who have navigated to this page as a courtesy to let others decide for themselves if it is safe to visit.
  
• You can not currently opt-out of this feature. If you'd like this to be an option, please let us know.

Swear Filtering

• We've enabled a basic swear filter on all posts.
  
  • Viewing the raw edit of a message will include the removed words.
    
  • Applies to the following:
    
    • Topic Titles
      
    • Posts/Post Previews
      
    • Username registration
      
    • Display names
      
• You can not currently opt-out of this feature. If you'd like this to be an option, please let us know.

Vote Manipulation

• Your ability to vote will be automatically disabled when your karma ranking drops below a specific negative number.
  
  • We are not going to disclose the amount that this process will start at currently.
    
  • This feature will only impact 0.021% of current users.
    
  • We will continually be monitoring this to ensure users are not suppressed
    

Registration

• Blocked over 2,000 domains from registration
  
• Usernames that contain inappropriate words will now automatically be blocked.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where design settings would not be set correctly for www.donutteam.com - You will need to reapply this fix to take affect.
  
• Fixed an issue where the post editor would not break really long strings of text and would ruin the page's design.
  
• Fixed an issue where automatic scrolling to a post would be broken if an image above it hadn't been loaded yet.
  
• Further optimizations that should speed up the website and improve stability.

API v2

TODO

Known Issues

• Searching in the "All" tab is causing weird pagination issues that we're working on fixing. Sorry for the inconvenience!

This is very exciting.

Didn't expect such a big update. Anyways, best of luck, Jake!

I've seen this the day it was posted, however, I just now get to post. I am really excited especially about the dms feature. Not quite sure how that's going to be, but this'd be a pretty easy way to talk to mod developers in private now and possibly ask/receive requests you don't publicly want, without having to joint he Discord

Looks really cool and intuitive! A possible feature request would be to add a community uploads page in the Download page so that other people's mods can be found more easily and they could possibly have a like/dislike feature for ranking them

@Exonymat that's what the "Projects & Downloads" aspires to be!