I realise that sometimes it can be hard see that this website is being updated, because so much of the work we do is on the back end. As admins, we probably don't shout enough about website updates, but then, if it's on the back end it's probably not of that much interest to members. Anyway here goes:


Registration/Account Blocking:

We have spend a temendous amount of time this year on improving the registration validation process, to stop bots and spammers creating accounts. We have over 20 validation checks, written by AI, that automatically block the majority of them.

For those that do manage to create accounts, we have new scripts that check the uploaded content to highlight spammers which we then immediately ban.

We're never going to be able to keep out all spammers on a site like this because we want to make it easy to sign up for genuine members and also protect your privacy. Therefore we haven't gone down the phone verification route. We've also learnt that most of the spammers we get are not bots, but people sat in data centers in the far east who do this for a living.


Member Blocking Feature:

This stops blocked members from contacting you but it doesn't stop them viewing your content. The maxmium number of blocks is 100, which we believe should be plenty on a 'community' website. After all, what would be the point in joining a community site, and then blocking hundreds of members?


Chat:

Chat was completely re-written this year as part of the streaming feature (still in beta), however the visible functionality hasn't changed, so it would be difficult to tell as a user. However, with nice clean chat code we're now in a good position to do a major overhaul of the front end at some point. There's a number of possibilities here, including perhaps building the video streaming into the chat?

Any member can start a live stream. If you're going to stream straight away, then my suggestion is:

* Call into chat and announce that you're about to live stream
* Go to My Streams and click 'Broadcast'.
* A box should pop up asking you for access to your camera and mic. Click 'Allow'
* On the broadcasting page, you should now see your camera and mic are working. When you're ready to stream click 'Publish'
* Once you are publishing, a link to your stream will appear in the Streams section (link in the left hand menu). Members wanting to watch can click this link to watch your live stream and chat with you.

Now you just need to decide what you're going to do on your stream. How about:

* A mukbang
* Some belly play!
* Use your imagination - only within the website rules please

Yes, we'll be working to iron our these glitches over the coming days. The chat has been completely re-written, so the code's in much better order.

Chat should be back up, sorry for the inconvenience.

Could this have been due to the chat restart which happens every day about that time? When the chat restarts, it momentarily boots everyone from chat, then connects them back in, but defaults to the 'General' chat room.

Some people have reported an issue with MOV files, which we're looking into.

In the meantime you could try changing the file format and see if that makes a difference. MP4 is usually the best.

Chat will be temporarily offline today while we upload some back end code updates. It should be running again later today.