You may have noticed that 8WAYRUN has been down for an extended period of time (instead of the scheduled 3 minutes of downtime each morning). This was due to a huge upgrade to the platform in which this website is built upon. This is not an insignificant upgrade, so I wanted to go through it all explaining some of the new features. As usual, a lot of the changes are behind the scenes or for the moderation team, which will be left out of this announcement.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Authy One-Touch
We've supported 2FA for a long time now. But it was always using an app (such as Authy or Google Authenticator) where you have to open up the app on your phone, and type out a 6 digit number into the website. With this update, we now support One-Touch logins through the Authy app. This means instead of having to open the app to login with 2FA; you will instead immediately receive a notification on your phone, where you can approve your login with a single button press.
For security reasons, 2FA is recommended across the entirety of the internet. This way, for someone to log in to your account, they would need to not only know your password, but also have your phone... which is far more unlikely. It literally costs us $0.09 every time someone logs in using Authy One-Touch; but for the security of our members, its worth it. You can enable 2FA from your account security page.
Push Notifications
Keeping on with expanding support for mobile devices. We now support push notifications! They can be enabled on your account preferences page on any device which supports push notifications. You may need to enable push notifications on your device if you have previously disabled them; I know I disabled them on all my computers.
"Likes" are Now Known as "Reactions"
There was a time on the internet where most websites only allowed "positive" reactions to posts. This of course meant you could "like" content, but you couldn't "dislike" it. The switch from "likes" to "reactions" means we can provide more verbose interactions with people's content. As well, people's like count is now known as a "reaction score"; which will weigh not only the positive reactions, but also the negative reactions.
Markdown Support and Improved Rich-Text Editing
BbCode is a widely used standard across forums on the internet. However, because of the rise in popularity of websites like Reddit and GitHub, the popularity of Markdown has increased as well. Markdown is a much easier to use formatting language than BbCode. As of now, we support the majority of universal Markdown syntax.
We have also expanded rich-text editing to areas on the website which usually had simpler formatting; such as profile posts and comments. You can now post rich content almost anywhere on this website (but not image attachments). The rich-text editor itself has also been improved, with many new syntax codes and features such as inline spoilers and table support.
Content Bookmarks and Sharing
Have you ever found a random post in the middle of a long thread that you wanted to hold onto somehow? Now you can. There is now a "bookmark" system in place that will allow you to save quick links to posts, comments, events, media, and even wiki articles. These bookmarks are easily accessible from your account drop-down menu on the top right of every page. You can even give bookmarks individual labels for filtering. With these bookmarks, also comes the ability to share directly to individual posts/comments, which was lost in the previous major upgrade.
In Closing
The majority of other changes are too small to get their own section, or specific to behind the scenes stuff. If you notice any issues with this website, please let us know so we can fix it!
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Authy One-Touch
We've supported 2FA for a long time now. But it was always using an app (such as Authy or Google Authenticator) where you have to open up the app on your phone, and type out a 6 digit number into the website. With this update, we now support One-Touch logins through the Authy app. This means instead of having to open the app to login with 2FA; you will instead immediately receive a notification on your phone, where you can approve your login with a single button press.
For security reasons, 2FA is recommended across the entirety of the internet. This way, for someone to log in to your account, they would need to not only know your password, but also have your phone... which is far more unlikely. It literally costs us $0.09 every time someone logs in using Authy One-Touch; but for the security of our members, its worth it. You can enable 2FA from your account security page.
Push Notifications
Keeping on with expanding support for mobile devices. We now support push notifications! They can be enabled on your account preferences page on any device which supports push notifications. You may need to enable push notifications on your device if you have previously disabled them; I know I disabled them on all my computers.
"Likes" are Now Known as "Reactions"
There was a time on the internet where most websites only allowed "positive" reactions to posts. This of course meant you could "like" content, but you couldn't "dislike" it. The switch from "likes" to "reactions" means we can provide more verbose interactions with people's content. As well, people's like count is now known as a "reaction score"; which will weigh not only the positive reactions, but also the negative reactions.
Markdown Support and Improved Rich-Text Editing
BbCode is a widely used standard across forums on the internet. However, because of the rise in popularity of websites like Reddit and GitHub, the popularity of Markdown has increased as well. Markdown is a much easier to use formatting language than BbCode. As of now, we support the majority of universal Markdown syntax.
We have also expanded rich-text editing to areas on the website which usually had simpler formatting; such as profile posts and comments. You can now post rich content almost anywhere on this website (but not image attachments). The rich-text editor itself has also been improved, with many new syntax codes and features such as inline spoilers and table support.
Content Bookmarks and Sharing
Have you ever found a random post in the middle of a long thread that you wanted to hold onto somehow? Now you can. There is now a "bookmark" system in place that will allow you to save quick links to posts, comments, events, media, and even wiki articles. These bookmarks are easily accessible from your account drop-down menu on the top right of every page. You can even give bookmarks individual labels for filtering. With these bookmarks, also comes the ability to share directly to individual posts/comments, which was lost in the previous major upgrade.
In Closing
The majority of other changes are too small to get their own section, or specific to behind the scenes stuff. If you notice any issues with this website, please let us know so we can fix it!
🅾
