Firstly, we hope everyone is staying safe, winter is here … at least up here in Canada 
!
Last year, we upgraded our messaging system and introduced our beta “group chat” feature to replace the flash based group chat we used to have. We built the integration but relied on a 3rd party service for the back-end of chat. We thought going with a provider would free up development time for other site improvements.
Unfortunately, the service is not as stable as we would have liked it to be. Connection errors have plagued many of our users … errors that were outside of our control. Keyword, were.
You should hopefully notice that the new chat doesn’t look all that different, but you will notice a massive improvement to the stability. The added bonus here is that we are now able to build on these new foundations, and be able to move much more efficiently as we add in new features!
There are some things that aren’t built yet, but we will bring them soon, in smaller releases:
- Ability to view archived messages
- Reactions to messages
- Slash commands (like gifs)
A couple new things you will notice:
- Blocks are now permanent. People were abusing that, so we decided that to put an end to it.
- You can now delete individual messages in a conversation, and they will be deleted for everyone!
One final thing to note; we have hired a designer to help us move forward in the making the site more amazing. You will see some of their work coming through soon!
Thank you for being the amazing community that you are!
Xo
ANFJock & Jaystorm