Hello everyone,

This is a post I never wanted to make but recently the UK government passed the Online Safety Act which forces websites to follow a strict framework in relation to user created content, even going as far as requiring users to submit proof of identity which I feel would compromise user privacy and go against the principles of a free and open internet.

I do not have the resources to implement the required framework and so cannot comply with this law, therefore I have made the difficult decision to block GoneGothic to visitors from the United Kingdom, which also affects me as that's where I live.

I now need to consider whether I want to continue to keep GoneGothic online or retire the community once and for all.

I only hope the site has in some way made the lives of the users better and I always enjoy hearing stories from members about how it has impacted their lives.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who supported the site over the years and contributed to making it a community I've been proud to be part of.

Dav

I've finally got around to redesigning the forum index so that the latest 5 topics of each forum will be listed. Also this page is now mobile responsive!

Most of the changes since the last update have been behind the scenes and shouldn't be noticeable from the frontend of the site.

Here is a list of the latest changes:

• Added a new content parser for comments and posts.
• Removed all mention of ratings from the site
• Removed the ability to hide comments on profiles
• Major behind the scenes updates

Cya!

This round of changes has focused more on removing poorly implemented/utilised features in an effort to allow me to spend more time working on the features members want once the mobile optimisations are completely rolled out.

Here is a list of the latest changes:

• Updated the style of comments displayed on profile and comment pages
• Removed the ability to send a user an email from their profile
• Removed the ability to privatize/deprivatize comments
• Removed the privatize, deprivatize and add buddy links from comments
• Removed the table of random smilies above comment forms
• Removed the ability to send group comments
• Removed cloaked comments (Private comments now function in the same way as cloaked comments did)
• Removed the ability to rate a user (This may be temporary, I'd like to hear your thoughts!)
• Many database changes
• Update server and third party components

Cheers!

I've been busy and have added emoji support throughout the site 😲😲😲

Here are some more changes:

• The account settings, login audit, delete account pages have been updated to be mobile friendly
• The change password/email form has been split into separate forms
• Removed signatures (They ruined the mobile layout of many pages)

Enjoy 🖤

Just to keep you updated on the mobile updates announced in the previous post.

Here are some of the latest changes:

• All Artwork, Blogs, Gallery and Poetry pages have been updated to be mobile friendly
• The update profile page has been made mobile friendly
• Removed AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger fields from profiles

More updates on the way!

As you may have noticed (judging by the look of the place) the site is currently undergoing some long overdue changes!

Over the coming weeks I will be replacing the templates throughout the site with responsive versions that will work on mobile devices.

The main goals are to:

• Introduce newer web practices with regards to HTML/CSS & Javascript
• Enable a mobile responsive design
• Provide a better user experience on all devices
• Pave the way for making the site more maintainable so new features can be added swiftly

Some of the changes that have already been deployed are:

• Updated site header/footer to work on mobile
• Updated navigation, many things have moved but should still be easily accessible
• All search pages have been updated with cleaner forms and more concise result layout
• The photo and artwork search results are now laid out in a much better fashion
• A verified badge has been added to member search results if a user is verified
• A green badge has been added to member search results if that user is online
• All pages accessible from the main navigation have been updated to be mobile friendly (except for the forums)

Note that some pages will act a little clunky and have poor styling until they are transitioned over to the newer templates. Please bear with me during this phase!

Stay tuned for more!

Just checking in to report that a couple of bugs have been fixed:

• Search Pictures was broken and displayed a white screen
• Deleting a forum post was failing. Thanks to @james for reporting this
• Resetting ratings or profile counter was failing
• Under certain conditions reporting a user was failing

Thanks!

I've been busy lately with the redesign, but it is coming along nicely and you'll all be able to see it soon. I'm going to change the design progressively because it's such a large area of work and each page needs testing to varying degrees.

This means that when I launch the new design it'll look similar to the current one in some respects, but come with added benefits such as mobile responsiveness so you'll finally be able to use the site on your mobile phone and tablet without all the zooming around. I'm also going to start implementing the new design before all the pages are complete so I can gather feedback about the new vs old pages, but I'm definitely going to update the most used pages first so many may not notice the old design creeping in.

Once all the pages are updated to the new front end framework, I'll get to work on actually designing them away from what we already have here with your feedback. Unfortunately during this period the site style switcher will have to go away as it'll have no useful effect on the new design other than messing it up.

For now, here are a few of the updates I have made since my last post:

• Added user card tooltips to the new user mention links
• Removed enemy lists, they were a unused feature by the majority of users and I don't see any benefit in keeping the feature around.
• The forums are now publicly accessible and I've fixed an issue with polls not rendering their content correctly.
• I've just fixed an issue that was preventing new user signup's. Thanks to @nella for reporting it!
• Fixed a bug with the pop-up smilies, there was a missing template causing a white screen error.
• Fixed an issue with the search pages pulling out numbers in place of religion, ethnicity, etc...
• Fixed an issue with the style switcher
• Fixed a bug with the preview profile option. Thanks to @gallifrey_rises for reporting it!
• Reverted the deletion code, the new way was a little buggy and left a few orphan threads, comments and posts around

As always please let me know if you notice any bugs.

Thanks!

Well it's nearly been a month since my last post, so I thought I'd better let you all know what I've been up to. A few of you may have noticed some of the updates I have made and listed below as the month went on.

• Comments and posts all over the site will now automatically link to a user profile if they are mentioned like so @user
• Along with the above update, mentioned users will also be notified via email of the comment/post they were mentioned in. This can be disabled in your account settings
• Fixed abug with poetry buddies, blog buddies, poetry search, blog search, artwork search and picture search pages where a blank white screen would be displayed in some instances
• Fixed buggy pagination in the forums. Thanks @Sunspots
• Fixed a bug where logged out users could not browse blogs
• Fixed a bug where users with dashes in their name could not be parsed by the user mentioning script. Thanks @equinox
• Major behind the scenes improvements

If anyone notices any issues then please let me know, Thanks again!

Hi everyone

Thanks for your continued time and patience! I've made a major change to our database lately.
Due to the nature of this update and the size, if any of you notice anything out of the ordinary when deleting things such as comments, posts, topics, etc then please let me or an admin know. I've been preparing this change for weeks and found no issues so far.

This change will aid me massively when we launch the new site. I've also made a number of bug fixes recently. You won't notice these but you will notice the following:

Fixed issues with comment counts for blog posts, user pictures, artwork and poetry

With regards to the new site I am currently open to suggestions on features that set us apart from other social network sites. When I started GoneGothic it was always my intention to create a community site and the same applies to the new site. We currently have features such as Artwork, Poetry and the Forum.

I am interested in promoting features such as these, please feel free to give me suggestions.