Discourse released a major version upgrade just over two weeks ago, and I’ve finally been able to make some time to roll it out tonight. Let me know if you notice anything wonky.
I’ve also put a Discord widget in the title bar of the site. You will only see the widget on the desktop version of the site, as per the directions. I’m not sure what will happen if I try to use the same JavaScript in the mobile template, but I’ll try it out sometime.
Discourse requires that you customise each theme individually, so our light and dark themes have light and dark widgets to go with them.
Discourse update highlights
Here are some highlights of the stuff we got with the recent forum upgrade.
Bigger emoji
When 1-3 emoji exists on their own line, they’re now automatically made larger! Now you can communicate in emoji without needing to squint as much.
Award a badge to a set of users
Badges now support “bulk award”, allowing admins to upload a list of user emails which will all be granted a badge.
Maybe this will be useful for MyGame in future.
MaxMind DB downloads now require a license key
Due to changes required by the CCPA, MaxMind has changed the download process.
I’ll look into this in future.
Internet Explorer 11 Deprecation
Discourse will be ending support for IE11 on June 1, 2020.
Wait… Discourse still supports IE? Impressive!
Polls
Single Option Polls
Polls can now be created with a single option - vote or don’t vote. Note that once you vote there is no way to remove the vote.
Is this the greatest forum update post you have ever read?
- Yes
0 voters
Poll group restriction
Polls can also be restricted to a specific group.
This is a poll for members of Team Rhino
- Rhinos are the best
- No, really. RHINOS ARE THE BEST!
0 voters
This poll can only be done by members of Team Cat
- Kitties are the best
- No, really. CATS ARE THE BEST!
0 voters
Invite users from your contact list
Users can now be invited from the contact list when using Android.
Get spamming!
(Don’t really spam, but feel free to invite folks using the new feature.)
Search both public and personal messages
Using the in:all flag, you can search both in both public topics as well as PMs.
No major changes.
Differentiate Between PMs and Topics in Search Results
Users can use the in:all search filter, introduced in Discourse 2.4, to search both public and personal topics at the same time. Results in search now show the PM envelope when the result is a PM to visually differentiate topics from PMs.
Auto-archive Group Message on Close
Group messages are a great way to enable discussion between a user and a group, or amongst a group itself. Group inboxes are shared, so it can be helpful to to archive messages once they are handled. Now, when group messages are closed, they’ll automatically be archived.
