Week Ten Site Updates

Posted by Eric · October 5, 2026

Site Updates — September 28 to October 4, 2026

There have been more than 220 changes since the last update.

Sixteen bugs have been fixed since last week, and eleven of them came from your reports. In this update we’ll get into character sheets, storage, and a little more. We’ve also already finished our first feature theme as discussed in last week’s announcement!

First Feature Theme: Notifications and Unread State

Our first feature theme update, “Notifications and Unread State” is complete and live and we completed all four objectives!

Unread notifications now update live: On the dashboard, My Games lights up a game’s icon when it has something new for you and dims it once you’re caught up. Inside a game, the forum sidebar does the same for each forum, and a newly started thread shows up there on its own. If you keep several tabs open, reading something in one tab updates the others.
The bell lists all your notifications: Your notifications dropdown used to stop at twenty items. Now, a “show more” button at the bottom loads the rest.
You can tell two similar topics apart: A notification about a topic now mentions what game it belongs to (or, for the community forums, its forum) next to the time. “New post in OOC” was useless when you’re in six games that each have an OOC thread.
One click marks a whole forum read: Click a forum’s lit-up unread icon in a game’s forum sidebar or on the community home page, and that forum is marked read. You don’t have to open it first, and there’s no confirmation box. If you mark a whole game as read, the site still asks first, because that one is harder to undo.

A few smaller things came along with it:

Inside a forum, Mark All Read only appears when there’s actually something unread to mark.
The bell’s own “Mark all read” function used to falsely affect your direct messages as well, temporarily zeroing your badge without actually clearing the unread notification. We’ve patched this: DMs will only clear when read, as initially intended.
While doing some testing, we found that people who had applied to a game could see information about members-only topics, such as whether they had new posts and the date it was last active, even though they couldn’t open it. Nobody could read anything they shouldn’t have, but the unread signal itself was a leak, and it’s closed. (There’s more about this kind of fix further down.)

These changes answer six of your feature requests. Thank you to everyone who has already checked theirs and told us it works.

What’s in the slot now: the next theme is Reading and Navigation, which has just started. It groups requests about finding your way around forums, threads and resources. The plan isn’t written yet, so the exact scope is still in flux but contains about 10 individual feature requests. As forewarned last week, there’s no date attached. You can still use the upvote buttons on the theme epics in the Issue Tracker to show us what you’d like to see after that, and the next topic showcases the value of your upvotes.

Away Messages: One Notice, Every Game

The theme wasn’t the only thing to come out of the new feature lane this week. One single request jumped the line: “Feature to address all games currently running or in with a health issue notice” has 14 votes; the next most-voted open request has 4. When the community is that clear, we listen.

The request came from a GM with five active games who needed to step away and didn’t have the energy to post the same notice five times. Thanks to them for asking, and to the member who pointed out that games already had announcements we could build on.

How it works:

Open your profile menu and choose Away Message. Pick the day you’re leaving and the day you’re back, then choose which games to post it in (all your games are ticked to start with). One click posts a banner at the top of every game you picked. It comes down on its own on your return date.

What each game shows depends on your role there:

Games you run show your note, if you write one, and every member is notified.
Games you play in show only your name and your dates. Only that game’s GMs are notified, so co-players aren’t pinged, and they’ll see the banner when they next visit.

The page previews both versions before you post, so there are no surprises.

Notably, this feature will not send out multiple notifications to the same user. If you share three games with someone, they get one notification listing all three games. You can also end your hiatus early. Hit “I’m back”, and the banners will come down everywhere you’ve posted them. The “edit” function allows you to change the dates or comments in the banner simultaneously. One main note for GMs: You can remove a player’s announcement freely under “Manage Annoucements”. This maintains the GM’s control over content posted in your own games–but does not allow the GM permission to edit the message.

As with most site content, you’ll need a verified email to post an away message. Full details are in the help guide under “Community, Messages, and Social → Away messages.”

Bugs, Fixed

Posting and the editor

Pasted card draws couldn’t be un-bolded: When you copy a card draw, your browser also copies the bold styling of the box the cards sit in. The editor stored that bold where the Bold button couldn’t reach it. Pasted bold now arrives as ordinary Bold, so one press of the button turns it off. Text pasted before this fix may still be stuck. If you have a post like that, delete the stuck text and paste it in again.
The quote handle sat on top of the author’s name: In the composer, the first letter of a quoted author’s name looked struck through. That was the quote’s drag handle, drawn on top of the letter. On touch screens, it covered even more. The two no longer overlap.
Find (Ctrl/Cmd-F) couldn’t see most of the HTML source: The HTML, BBCode and Markdown source panes only draw the lines currently on screen, so your browser’s Find couldn’t search the rest. Pressing Ctrl/Cmd-F inside one of those panes now opens a search that covers the whole thing.
The OOC double underline didn’t show on iPhones: Hidden OOC text is marked with a double underline. Safari on iPhone ignored the style we used, so iPhone readers had no way to see that hidden text was there. That affected every iPhone reader, not just the person who reported it. It’s fixed.
On phones, a topic’s Manage menu opened behind the site header: With no room below, the menu opens upward, and nobody had checked what was above it. Any menu that opens upward now appears in front of the header.
Forums said “No topics in this forum yet” while they were still loading: You’d briefly see the empty message and a Create First Topic button before the list arrived. Now you see a loading spinner instead.

Games and recruitment

Accepting an invitation could be impossible: An invitation’s link could take you to the game page, and in an open or public game you were redirected straight into the forums before you could press Accept. Invitees now stay on the page with the Accept banner.
End Early skipped the grace period: When a GM ended recruitment early, applicants lost their forum access straight away, whatever grace period had been set. End Early now starts the grace period. Closing immediately is still available as a separate choice, and the dialog explains what each option does for your applicants.
Max Players looked like it hadn’t saved: It had saved, but the recruitment editor kept showing the old number until you reloaded the page. Now it shows the saved value live.
A per-person write grant on a topic did nothing in some forums: If a forum’s own setting turned someone away, giving them access to a single topic in that forum didn’t help, even though the settings screen accepted it. Now the most specific setting wins: a topic grant overrides the forum, and the forum overrides the game. A grant stops counting if that user is no longer a game member, but is preserved in case they return.
Links in a game’s description to another tab of the same game did nothing: The address bar changed, but the page stayed where it was. Those links now switch tabs.

Character sheets

The full-screen field editor was see-through on dark themes: When you expanded a sheet field to edit it, the editor’s text was drawn straight over the sheet underneath. It now has a proper background.
Insert Clone carried old sheet numbers: Cloning a post with sheet values in it brought the old numbers along, so every edit afterwards raised a “this has changed” conflict even when nothing had. A clone now picks up the sheet’s current values.
“Post anyway” could fail twice in a row without telling you why: It now shows an error you can read, and when you choose to post anyway, the post goes through the same way your first attempt would have.

Old links

Old Invision blog-entry and download links led to a “page not found”: Links to blog entries and downloads in one particular old format weren’t being redirected. They are now. Links to things that no longer exist get a clear “this page has been retired” page instead of a generic “page not found”.
Thousands of old forum links now work again: Archive copies of the old site had mangled many of their links, so they failed when anyone followed them. We fixed about 96% of them, and they now take you to the right place. This came to light when something started replaying an old archive at us at around 400,000 requests a day. Fixing the links has the side effect of pushing that traffic off of the forum service, reducing the load on the site.

Your Storage, and Other People’s Posts

Both issues here came from a member’s report.

They had removed an image from their own post, but someone else’s post had quoted it. The quote kept the image alive, so it kept counting against their storage, and they had no way to remove it. As they pointed out, that means anyone could fill up your storage just by quoting your images.

Here’s how it works now:

If only other people’s posts still use one of your images, it no longer counts against your storage: We keep the image so their posts don’t break, and your Storage tab marks it as free.
Your own post’s edit history doesn’t count as using an image: If you remove an image from a post and only an old version of that post still contains it, it’s free too. If you edit or roll the post back so the image returns, it starts counting again.
Deleting from the Files page can no longer break a post: Deleting a file from there used to remove it at once, even if a post was still showing it. Now it refuses to delete a file that’s in use, and otherwise marks it “Deletion pending” until the cleanup runs.

Three Things That Popped Up Unexpectedly

We found all three of these ourselves, and all three are fixed.

Blocking someone could be detected: When blocking someone, they’re not supposed to be able to contact you, and they’re not supposed to be able to tell that you blocked them. Neither held up completely. A sender’s copies of messages carried information that showed who had blocked them, even though it wasn’t rendered on the page. A “Typing…” status update still reached the person who’d blocked them. Additionally, editing an old message delivered the new text around the block. All of those paths are now closed. That includes message search, which had the same problem.
A poll stayed up after its post was deleted: We found this during a moderation case: a rule-breaking poll stayed on the topic’s poll banner after its post was removed. Polls on whispered or GM-only posts had the same problem and showed on the banner to everyone. A poll is now hidden anywhere its post is hidden.
Applicants could see unread markers for members-only topics: We covered this in the notifications section above.

Moderation

Removing a spammer’s content now goes further: Last week, we introduced for staff a one-click removal of a banned account’s content. A member pointed out that two removed spammers were still on 12 game rosters, had friend requests waiting, and had left empty conversations in people’s inboxes. All three are now included in the removal, and Undo still restores exactly what was removed.
More protection against spam DMs is being tested: It runs quietly for now and doesn’t change anything you see. We’ll say more once it’s switched on.

Character Sheets: New Layouts Are Coming

Pathfinder went first. If you own a sheet that uses the “Pathfinder (Experimental)” template, a banner at the top of it now offers to “Try the new layout”. Before anything is changed, it shows you what the new layout does differently, which totals it works out for you, and anything that behaves unlike the sheet you’re used to. Your values are the same in either layout, and “Switch back to the classic layout” in the sheet’s Actions menu takes you back whenever you want. A few fixes came along with it: a ticked checkbox now clears on the first click; only a shield you’re actually using counts toward AC; and a skill’s ability modifier now includes temporary changes.

It won’t be the only one for long. New layouts for 45 more systems are built and approved, and we’re close to finishing their final checks. We expect them to start appearing next week. The list includes: D&D 5e, 3.5, 4e and 2e, Basic D&D, Pathfinder 2e, Starfinder, Star Wars Saga, d20 Modern, Mutants & Masterminds, both World of Darkness editions, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, GURPS, 13th Age, FATE, Legend of the Five Rings, Naruto and many more.

Each layout is checked against the old sheet field by field before it ships, so you see the same values in both. For the systems whose old sheets did calculations (D&D 3.5 and 4e, Pathfinder 2e, Starfinder, Star Wars Saga and Naruto) or should have (D&D 5e!), every calculation was also checked against the old sheet’s answers. In a handful of cases the old sheet was the one getting it wrong. For example, it could show “NaN” instead of a number when a row was left blank.

They’ll arrive the same way the Pathfinder sheet did: as an offer on your sheet that you can try, decline, or switch back from. During the opt-in live testing period, nothing changes until you say so.

Under The Floorboards

Our error logs got quieter: About 200 “errors” a month were actually coming from a browser’s built-in scripts on iPhones, not from our code. We now ignore them, so real errors are easier to spot.
Rate limiting got another round of tightening, and our deploy process got more checks that stop two people’s unfinished work from colliding. You won’t see either of these. That’s the goal.

Every Site Update So Far

What’s Next

Try the notifications changes and tell us what’s still missing: Check the bell, the lit-up game icons in My Games, and one-click mark-read on the forum list. This was our first feature theme, and how it lands with you will shape how we run the next one.
Going away soon? Try Away Message instead of posting in each game: If something about it doesn’t fit how your table works, comment on the original request in the Issue Tracker.
If you own a Pathfinder sheet, try the new layout: You can switch back from the Actions menu at any time. If you do switch back, a quick note telling us why is the most useful feedback we can get, and it’s the best way to improve the 45 layouts that come after it.
If quoted images used to fill your storage, check your Storage tab: Images that are only used in other people’s posts are now marked “free”.
If you reported one of these sixteen bugs, please check it. We’ve replied to every ticket. If you’re still noticing the bug, reopen your ticket. Several of this week’s fixes only exist because someone came back and told us.

Keep on weaving those myths!

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