Hello everyone!
This has been a bit of a productive week for me as I have four new features to introduce to the site!
User Blocking
Sometimes you might run have some issues with someone on this site, whether that is receiving unwanted attention from them or they post content that you would rather not see. For those types of scenarios, there is now the ability to block completely block a user from yours.
If you open a user's profile, you will now see a red "Block" button. When you block someone, you will remove all of their content from your experience along with removing all of your content from theirs. Should you or they have a direct link to one of the other's post, they will be met with a view that is the same as if the post was deleted. The user will be replaced out with a "[deleted]" and the body of the post will be replaced "[This post has been removed.]". The same will happen for when you or they come across the other's comment. Each profile will be inaccessible from the other and messages will not be allowed to be sent to each other. Previously sent messages are also removed from the messages inbox.
If one wishes to remove the block or to view which users they have blocked, this can be accessed through the new settings page available in the user dropdown in the Navbar.
User Banning from groups
Group moderators are now able to ban users from interacting with posts and comments in their group. This can be temporary by the moderator setting a specific date on which the ban will be lifted or permanent by leaving the date blank when banning the user.
Banned users will be able to view posts and comments but will be unable to post in the group or comment in any posts of the group.
Post and Comment Locking
Moderators are now able to lock posts and specific comments. When a post is locked, no comments will be allowed to be added to the post. When a comment is locked, no further replies will be allowed to that comment. Sub-comments will still be allowed to receive replies if they are unlocked.
Crossposts
Users are now able to submit crossposts to groups that they have joined by clicking on the "crosspost" button that appears in the action row at the bottom of each post. Groups not joined will not be available for crossposting.
Groups are now also able to define if they want to allow crossposting. Previously created groups can change this in the group settings that appears in the Moderator Tools dropdown in the sidebar. New groups will have an option to deselect "Allow crossposts?" when one is creating the group.
Performance
I had noticed that queries were starting to take longer and longer. It seems the database plan we were on was limiting us just a bit too much for the complex queries we needed to make, no matter how much I tweaked them to be faster. I have increased us to a step up in the hardware provided and have improved the performance of the requests by 10x. Hopefully everyone is able to see this increase!
That is all for the update! As always, feedback is welcome and letting me know of any bugs is greatly appreciated!