Hey all, it's your friendly neighborhood chroma. The openFractals community publicly launched today, July 11, 2023! A site link with general invite and statement was provided in fractal chats' General, random and Announcements channels:
OpenFractals is the new forum environment for fractal chats! Come on over and try it out. This is an extension of the fractal chats community with extra features like an image gallery, as well as a forum for fractal, coding, maths and rendering discussion, with a ton of resources curated from our collective history like tutorials and params. Files available to access after quick signup.So a big thank-you and congrats to us founding members that have joined and helped test the site, as well as future members who join us. It's lovely to have you all here and you are all seen and heard.
Our modmin team so far consists of bezo97 as co-site editor; modmin and content curator Toan Lish; forum and content mod Complicated Reality; and myself, technochroma as site and domain editor/creator/upkeep.
Announcements
and other stuff:
Today we all collectively agreed to not be a host for AI images or content. If there is a demand for it, we will reexamine in the future. This does not mean we will disallow debates over AI if they pop up.
Removed the FAQ section for now. We are taking feedback on what kinds of frequently asked questions we want to answer up front.
FAQ: some basics like "what is a fractal" or "how can I get started with fractals" could be answered in the FAQ but longer explanations and stuff can be turned into blog posts. Or forum posts. Whatever we feel like.
Plz remember that we have about 2 weeks left for the current competition, "Humor". We will be figuring out how to integrate the compos into the forum setting, after all it might be easier :3
Site Updates
Here's some site stuff I did today as part of sweeping up after launch. I always accept feedback and critiques for this kind of stuff.
Added a Search page and results page, this link is accessible by the nav bar (nested under More) for now. Search is additionally enabled in the Forums at the top of the main forums window.
Disabled the social bar. No need for it unless we really want to additionally expand to Facebook, Twitter, etc. I mean we could? But most of our social tools are already integrated into the site. Maybe in the future. Open for discussion.
Fixed the invite to the openFractals app from the Home page. (it was being wonky on Android Mobile and showing a white background for white text.)
If the app invite popup (on mobile site) is bothering you too frequently, I will try just turning it off and leaving this static invite on the Home page after our first week or so of launching.
Enabled manual caching for most pages. This results in significant desktop site optimization/speedups according to our google page lab.
Site To-Dos
(so far, and this list will grow with your feedback)
Convert certain site images (such as forum category header images) to lower resolution jpeg as a test to see if it speeds up the mobile site at all.
Speed up the mobile site in general. A lot of this is limited by phone hardware itself but I think we have some options still.
Write updated file share guidelines. Ideally we would want to see your lovely images in the Image Gallery part of the Forum. This will save space in the File Share area - we have just 50gb to work with as the site evolves and expands. I believe I can upgrade that to 100gb at some point soon if we need it.
Notifications and Popups - Are you able to see as well as mute your notifications if you want? Do you have access to choose what you see and do not see?
The text wysiwyg editor is a bit dumb. I will make time to set additional formatting options such as quote and indent.
We are adding more functionality as we go. Hit us up for feedback, suggestions or critiques.
Add flair like emojis, badges etc.
Thanks all, have an awesome remainder of your week. I'll undoubtedly be back soon with more updates.
All the best,
chroma