cohost dot org

hey there! this past week we mostly did bugfixes and other unglamorous stuff around the site. the main things that are user-visible are:

• we made some improvements to the way the pop-up lightbox works on image attachments.
• we restyled the “create a new page” page to better match the rest of the site after not having touched it since before our public launch.
• we fixed the issue where you couldn’t edit a page’s profile without changing its avatar shape.
• we fixed the issue where you couldn’t edit the content warnings on posts with one or more content warnings after posting them.

we’ve also made some small operational changes to hopefully reduce the sporadic availability issues (e.g. “503 first byte timeout”) we’ve been having. that’s all for this week! thanks for using cohost

happy wednesday! despite it being a short week, we’ve got a good amount of stuff for you today.

first off, as the title suggests, 100% of you should now have access to asks. check your project settings page to enable them!

let’s see the rest:

• added a new profile link privacy setting: “pages following you”
  • this is especially useful for private pages. since users already need approval to follow you, this lets you share contact info without needing to follow back.
  • it’s probably somewhat useful for public pages too but that’s not what it’s Built For
• we now show all tags in a share tree, rather than just showing the tags from the most recent share. all tags now live with the post they are attached to!
• you can no longer block yourself

it’s cohost launch anniversary week! you might remember that we celebrated our first birthday (as well as eggbug’s birthday) back in february, and might be confused why we have two birthdays. february was our private launch, but june 28, 2022 was our public-facing launch! those of you who joined on launch day have now been here for a year!

to celebrate, we have some Fun Surprises:

happy monday! you haven’t heard from us for a bit because we haven’t shipped anything major in a bit! jae’s back from vacation and is putting the finishing touches on Asks, and today we’ve got something new.

a common feature request that we get is for a direct messaging system. people often need a way to contact each other privately and, since we don’t have DMs, there’s not an obvious way to do that.

we’ve said before that we have no intention of ever shipping direct messages for several reasons — most important among them that we believe other platforms do a better job than we ever could, and we really do not want to be in a position where we have to moderate DMs.

today we’re shipping Profile Links, an easy way to list contact information in your profile with privacy controls built in. as of now, you can set links to be visible to: everyone, only logged-in users, or only pages you follow. despite the name, they don’t have to be links; you can put whatever you want in there!

you can set these up from your edit profile page. we’d love to hear your feedback on how we can improve this feature moving forward.

that’s all for now! we’re hoping to have asks out this week as well, after which jae will be getting started on user tipping.

thanks, as always, for using cohost!