Changelog

Have rolled out a comments update which includes some bug fixes:

• Direct links to public comments should no longer require a user to be logged in to view
• It's no longer possible to reply to a deleted comment. This should fix an ongoing bug with "ghost comments", where a character page may show up as having comments despite not having any visible comments, but this will not fix any existing broken numbers, so if you've got an affected character profile please don't hesitate to file a ticket at the HelpDesk to have this corrected ^^

Thanks all, hope everyone is enjoying the weekend! 

Hi all, we've received reports on a link floating around that will hijack your TH account; this is an external link that was shared in a TH comment while disguised by URL shortener, and affected three users (these accounts have since been secured). The link in question, when clicked, would initiate an email change for your TH account -- this was due to a security oversight on my part, which has since been fixed and which I apologise for. 

The account responsible for spreading the link has been closed, and we don't have reason to believe that further accounts are sharing the link, but (as always) please do be careful of links from users that you don't recognise.

The three following security updates have been implemented that will prevent this from recurring:

• Changing your account email address now requires you to confirm your current password.
• We have made a site-wide security update to our forms which will validate your session on every form submission (this is a backend change, so shouldn't be a noticeable change). If you run into any issues with submitting forms around the site, please do reach out via the HelpDesk and I'll review this right away for you (this will show up as a "Sorry, your form has timed out" error)
• Clicking an external link that has been shared in any user-submitted content from now on will now take you to an intermediate page to confirm that you want to leave the site; this looks like the screenshot below. I've whitelisted a few common sites (deviantArt, Twitter, etc) so I'm hoping this will not be too disruptive. 

These changes should make this link (or similar links) ineffective, but if you're concerned about your account security, we also offer 2FA login protection, which will prevent any users from logging into your account even if your password or email have been compromised -- please consider enabling this for extra safety. You can find this option under Security & Access.

Thanks all for your understanding and sorry for the inconvenience; if you have any feedback, concerns or comments, or run into any bugs, please do let me know via the HelpDesk! 🙇

The front page has been recoded; this should not have any visible changes currently, but if you see any buggy behaviour or particularly if the front page is feeling laggy for you, please do let me know via the HelpDesk and I'll look into it right away for you. This recode is being pushed out to prepare for upcoming listing changes. 

Some users are probably aware already, but we've been receiving an increasing number of complaints recently regarding non-character uploads on the listings (codes, resources/bases/assets, commission ads, purge ads, games/event ads, species info sheets, etc) and decreased visibility of character listings, as well as the difficulty surrounding upload visibility due to competition on the popular submissions page. When we started un-listing non-character submissions, we received more complaints from users who were actively using these resources and wanted them to stay up, so it doesn't seem like removing these has been a happy solution.

Due to the feedback we've received, we're going to try adding in a new listing types to accomodate for resources/ads, which I thought would also be a good time to create a separate listing for code profiles. The idea is that when submitting a character/non-character, you can select it to be uploaded to one of several listing types (Character, Code, Asset/Resource, Ad), and each user can customise which listings they're interested in seeing on the front page and in search. Since it feels like users want this feature in sooner than later, it's likely that I'll push out a simple prototype in the upcoming week or two just for initial use and feedback, and then make changes according to user suggestions. 

I'm planning on creating a feedback thread for this once this is ready for testing, but in the meanwhile if you have any thoughts you'd like to have taken into consideration during the development phase, please do let me know via the HelpDesk. 

To prepare for this, I'll be doing some database maintenance tomorrow (around ~2AM site time). The last time we did this, it locked the database up for 30 minutes; we've since upgraded our database so this should no longer result in downtime (I've also tested this already to verify that the database stays up), but I'm a little nervous regardless, so please do be aware just in case. 

Thanks all for your continued patience and feedback! 🙇

We're currently preparing for a new search engine which should theoretically take some load off of the main database. It's possible we may run into some lag or bugs while we iron out the configurations; I'll be keeping an eye on this over the next few days and making tweaks as we go. 

Thanks for your patience as always -- if you run into any issues or find the site's feeling sluggish for you, please do let us know at the HelpDesk 🙂

Happy new year! 

We're trying out a new forum for Fav Exchanges -- https://toyhou.se/~forums/43187.fav-exchange

The primary objective behind this change is to clear the Fav4Fav threads out of the Character Discussion forum, so we won't be requiring threads like F2E raffles to be moved unless we hear feedback that they're being disruptive. 

If you have any feedback or suggestions regarding forum structure or stickies, please don't hesitate to reach out at the HelpDesk.

Hi all; some of our infrastructure will be getting upgraded starting from tomorrow. The process will likely span over the next few days.

This shouldn't cause any changes in site behaviour, but if you notice anything strange (particularly if the site starts becoming laggy for you), please don't hesitate to let us know at the Help Desk or at [email protected]. 

Thanks as always for your patience.

Hi all! A few little backend updates: 

• Some back-end code has been tidied up (related to user & content blocking). 
• We received some feedback regarding character submissions being slow for accounts with large numbers of followers, so the notifications system has now been moved to a separate server. Everything looks happy and healthy currently but we'll be keeping an eye on this over the next few days to make sure it can keep up with the load; this should improve overall loading time but may result in notifications being delayed. 
• A "Delete all" button has been added to the messages inbox and outbox (a small link next to the existing Delete button). 

Hi all, sorry for the sporadic latency today! Yesterday's notifications update interacted poorly with a traffic spike that we had today. If you received a notification during a lag spike, this may have caused the notification to go missing, or for your notification count to begin displaying incorrectly. 

We've now patched the root cause which should resolve the lag, and will be investigating a more permanent fix this week.

If your notification count is currently out of sync, I apologise the best way to fix this is by using the "Clear All" button at the bottom of your notifications screen. If this isn't working for you, or if you find the issue is persistently recurring, please open a ticket at the HelpDesk and we'll check this out for you. 

Thanks all for your patience and apologies again for the inconvenience.

Hi all, sorry for the errors this afternoon. We've run into a problem with our cache server running out of memory during peak hours, which I've identified the root cause for, but will have to try multiple fixes to see which works best without impacting performance. I'll be monitoring over the next few days to verify how this works at peak traffic. 

This will not result in any data loss or long-term operational failure (in the worst case, we can always buy another server), but I apologise for any lag and errors in the meanwhile. 

Thanks all for your patience throughout the process.