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Welcome To The New Forum!


Chris

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Welcome to the new SurviveTheARK! So you're probably wondering what is new and what we've been working on. Below we outline all the new features and improvements to the forums. We hope you enjoy them!

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THEMES

The forums now have theme options, light or dark. We've enabled the dark theme as the default theme. By navigating to the bottom of the screen and selecting "Theme" and choosing one of the theme choices the website theme will be changed. Our newest theme addition is the Dark theme. With the dark theme, we've re-skinned the entire website with a new background, font colors, and a whole lot more. If you would like to switch to the previous (ARK Light) theme you can do so in the Theme drop-down at any time.

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TRIBES

Tribes is a new and improved integration of our discontinued “ARK Tribes” system which was custom designed. The new Tribes system, now referred to as Tribes, will allow users to promote their tribe for other members to join as well as provide a space for current tribes to organize information for their tribe. Tribes can be public (anyone can view it without joining), Open (anyone can see and join), Closed (must be approved by a ranking member), or Private (hidden but member can be invited).

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Tribes offer 3 ranks of membership: Leader, Moderators, and Users. Ranks can be assigned by the Leader and Moderators however only the Leader can add Moderators. Whilst Tribe Moderators have control over content within their own sections, Forum Moderators can also control content in each tribe, only when necessary though.

Within a Tribe, Leaders can add and customize areas like forums, calendars, files, images, and blogs. Among customization of the areas mentioned, the Tribe Leader can customize the look of the Tribe by adding a photo, banner image, and an About Us section. An example of a tribe is below. This tribe currently only has a members list and an introduction section. Tribe leaders can add new sections at any time.

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Each new "Topic" is a separate forum exclusively for your tribe and maintained by your leader and moderators. An example of a new Topic is below. There is no limit to how many forum sections you can add!

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CONTENT REACTIONS

One of our favorite new features coming in the new forum version is Reactions. That’s right! You will now be able to react to a post or announcement by choosing some of our pre-made Reactions. Currently you will be able to choose from the following: Like, Sad, Facepalm, Thanks, Haha, and Confused. This will be a much more fun interactive way to show someone that you really like or dislike their post rather than the current up-vote system.

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NEW LEADERBOARD

A few tweaks are being added to the Leaderboards system. The Overview page located in Top Members will now show a quick glance at the top members with most reputation and most content. You can expand each of these sections by using the filter drop-down to view more than the top listed in the Overview layout.

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FORUM VIEW SELECTION

Tired of having only one choice for how you view forum sections or want a better way to jump between sections? Our update has got you covered! In this update members will be able to choose between Table, Grid, and Fluid views. Table view is the standard plain paginated view. Grid will allow you to view forum sections as “cards” like in an album where you can view all sub forums within the main forum. Lastly is Fluid view which is a variation of the Table view. With Fluid view you can change which sections you see by using the filter. When using the filter this will show or hide areas. Not interested in the social sections? You can hide those from your view. Only want to see Xbox forums and General Discussions? You can choose to show only those. These new views will make navigating much easier for those users that like simplicity.

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The Fluid view can be accessed by selecting the icon next to the start new topic button. After selecting this you will be presented with a new view and a filter box on the right-hand side like in the image below.

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Toggling different forum sections in the filter box will change what is shown in the Topics section. You can select as many or as few as you'd like to view.

 

EDITOR IMPROVEMENTS

Want to share a picture with your topic? Simply drag and drop into the body of your topic in the editor and it will auto attach and insert the image. Along with dragging and dropping, you can now copy and paste an image not only from a webpage but also from your local machine.

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Dragging and dropping an image will display the "-> Move" option when hovering over top of the editor window. Once dropping the image, the image will queue and be placed into the editor field where it was dropped.

 

AUTHY INTEGRATION

Back in an earlier version, two-factor authentication (2fa) was added which allowed members to further secure their account beyond just a password. Now in our update, the 2fa tool Authy is integrated. This enables authentication via text message, phone call, and push notifications using the Authy app on your smartphone.

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To setup Authy on SurviveTheARK, navigate to Account Settings and select the "Account Security" link in the settings navigation. Enter your password if requested, and click Enable under the Authy option. You will need to install the app on your mobile device or use one of the Authy browser plugins and link this with your phone number. Enter your phone number when requested and a push notification will be sent to the app to successfully link the app and SurviveTheARK.com.

 

GALLERY IMPROVEMENTS

The gallery has received a few quality of life improvements in our update. The first change is the addition of the “add more image” button. Images could be added whilst others were being uploaded but it was not made clear previously. During detail editing for the uploaded images, you can now use the “copy details to all images” which allows you to copy all the information across every image you are uploading.

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CONTENT MESSAGE

One of the simplest but possibly most key features for forum members is the Content Message feature. This is like the next feature but it allows a moderator to pin a message at the top of the topic for everyone to see. This may be used to keep things on track or guide discussion, especially when we are asking for feedback on things. Below is a quick example of a message that might be left by a moderator on a topic. These will be in varying background colors depending on the message and importance: green, orange, red, grey, white, and no color.

contentmessage.png

 

RECOMMENDED REPLIES

The Recommended Replies feature, although not available to users to add, can be a great way to highlight posts. Moderators may sometimes “recommend” a reply on a topic and leave a note which make the post appear at the very top of the topic with any notes that may have been applied. Keep an eye out for posts that have this as it can help accelerate finding a solution or an answer to what you might be looking for.

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DEVICE MANAGEMENT

The final feature of our huge upgrade is Device Management. This allows you to monitor logins on your account. Notifications can be sent to your email when a new location or device is used. The user also has the ability to deactivate a device which will force the account to have to log back in on that device.

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The Device Management options can be accessed by navigating to Account Settings and selecting the "Recently Used Devices" link on the left-hand side. From here you can choose to sign out of a device or disable automatic login.

 

That's just a small taste of some of the new features we have added in our update, I'm sure you'll uncover more as you continue to use SurviveTheArk.com to interact with your fellow survivors!

Pssst... Soon I'll be releasing our official app which will enable you to get notifications from within the ARK, directly on your mobile devices! I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I set it live :) 

KEEP ON SURVIVING!

- Casanova, lilpanda and the SurviveTheArk Mod Staff

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Was the issue of larger images not being displayed fixed with this change as well? I never could direct-link images to this forum, I assume either .png or the size of them (5 MB+) is the problem. They are being converted to show up directly when you insert the link, but will not be displayed in the actual thread if you save the thread or edit. A simple text-link, with no hyperlink, always works.

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3 minutes ago, MostSpy said:

I gotta say, I'm usually the first one to put crap on Wild Card for complete incompetence, however, this time I think the graphic designer for this website has done a VERY good job.

I love this 0_background_dark.jpg

I'm also loving the graphics, such good work put into this!

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1 hour ago, Dragon said:

Was the issue of larger images not being displayed fixed with this change as well? I never could direct-link images to this forum, I assume either .png or the size of them (5 MB+) is the problem. They are being converted to show up directly when you insert the link, but will not be displayed in the actual thread if you save the thread or edit. A simple text-link, with no hyperlink, always works.

Yup, those images are WAY too big. Resize those beasts!

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Just now, maze said:

Looks great. 

One thing I noticed is, that the old 'Likes' are gone. Still counting on our profiles, but they don't show below the old posts. 

Yeah that's because the old like system was replaced with the new reactions system, so it won't be able to display any data from the old system on individual posts.

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@Casanova

New forum is nice and all, but some messages are hard or impossible to read without having to select the text: gray letters on gray background, black/dark letters on dark background etc.

Example (from https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/215384-psa-boss-changes-after-v2620-stealth-buffs/&do=findComment&comment=1222887):

image.thumb.png.c491cab7040a20a5b4d1b6e27c47f9b0.png

and this

image.thumb.png.fb71f5101e5368640495cce38cf85a34.png

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28 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

@Casanova

New forum is nice and all, but some messages are hard or impossible to read without having to select the text: gray letters on gray background, black/dark letters on dark background etc.

Example (from https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/215384-psa-boss-changes-after-v2620-stealth-buffs/&do=findComment&comment=1222887):

image.thumb.png.c491cab7040a20a5b4d1b6e27c47f9b0.png

and this

image.thumb.png.fb71f5101e5368640495cce38cf85a34.png

A stop gap fix for this is to use the Ark light theme through the drop down menu for themes at the bottom of the page.

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35 minutes ago, GP said:

I've raised this one with the Admin, we'll see what he says, I do believe it needs changing.

Along that point.  I have a brother who is colorblind and he will not be able to see the distinction between quoted posts and the new posts.  It's cool looking, but very subtle.  

White mode might work better for him for that reason (though that one is subtle too) but dark mode is loads more fun.

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