Cedric, founder of ForumSpark
Every forum from the early 2000s worth its salt had an arcade: a page of small games, a high score table, and one member who would not let go of the top spot. ForumSpark boards can have one again, and it is the headline of this release.
The Arcade is a free extension you install from the Extensions page. It comes with 55 games ready to play: puzzle, action, cards, classics and skill games, all running on your board in a sandboxed frame, nothing to download, nothing to configure, easy just as you’re used from us. 😉 The games sync in on install, the Arcade tab appears in your menu, and your members can start playing the same minute.
Crowns. Every game has one. The best score wears it, and the moment someone beats it the old champion gets a notification with one line: take it back. The Hall of Fame ranks members by the crowns they hold, and the front page shows who is playing, the latest scores and who led the most games this week.
Honest scores. A play starts a session, the game reports its result through the frame, and the score only counts when it comes from a real run within the limits set for that game. Your leaderboards stay clean without you policing them.
One game a day. The daily challenge picks a game for everyone. Each member gets a single attempt, and the day has its own board. It is the easiest way to get a community playing the same thing at the same time.
Challenges. Challenge a member on any game, or throw down an open challenge for the first taker, with a window of up to two weeks. Every score during the window counts, and the better best wins when it closes. Boards with the Credits extension can put a stake on it.
Built to be run. Guest play on or off, a pinned game of the week, categories with their own icons and colours, bulk actions on the games list, per game analytics, a reports page for the times a game misbehaves, and four widgets for champions, top games, latest scores and the daily challenge.
Tick topics on any topic list, pick Move topics from the moderator actions, choose the destination, hit Go. Categories are refused, topics outside the current forum are ignored, and both forums recount their totals once. We know, weird we didn’t have it before. Better late than never?
When a member asks for a new username, every admin gets a notification that opens the Name Changes queue. The member hears back when the request is approved or declined, and when an admin renames them directly from the ACP. Both show up under notification preferences, in-app and push.
ForumSpark accounts had no way to recover a password. A design flaw on our end. The Hub and the sign-in page now link to Forgot your password, the email brings you to the Hub to choose a new one. On Discover, communities created in the last thirty days wear a New badge and you can sort by newest. And the profile form on your Hub account no longer bounces with an email error when you only changed your bio.
The Dock composer has a link button now, the same one Classic has, opening the URL row under the editor. In Dock and Paper, attachments moved out of the bottom bar into a tray row between the editor and the post button, so a handful of files no longer squeeze the button.
The home and per-forum "since your last visit" banners used to hang around after you had read everything, because they were cached and nothing cleared them. Which was confusing. Reading, replying and marking a forum read now clear them, and a mention you have already read no longer counts.
A board with a verified custom domain now redirects its ForumSpark subdomain to that domain.
One reply sends one notification per person, even when it quotes and mentions the same member who also watches the topic.
The nightly Aegis cleanup no longer logs a failure for boards that have not finished setting up.
Read progress pings for a topic deleted in another tab, empty attachment uploads and a cache restart no longer produce errors.
An empty sidebar stays hidden for members on every theme, not only while managing widgets.
Themes can offer a picker for the applications a board has switched on, so a theme's shortcut tile never points at something that is off.
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