service update

New Help Section and More Updates~!

Article Image Cover Credit: Kantoku (カントク)

With hundreds if not thousands of changes since we updated in July, the EcchiDreams Beta is going very well (Despite the one or two hiccups, I will get to them later). We did not stop updating in July, although I did stop reporting on it after the 15th of July when I released the Leave of Absence Improvements announcement. Whilst this wasn't intentional this has left many people in the dark about what's going on, save unhelpful or insightful statuses I've randomly posted. The truth is I've been very busy working on EcchiDreams since the update and this announcement will hopefully catch everyone up and inform you of new features released today. The reason is that our change log almost changes daily during a Beta cycle as we're hot on the trail of bugs, and what not. 

Big Changes from The Last Announcement:

This is a summarised list of changes from the last announcement. It is not the complete list as most of the changes have been little tweaks and edits to pave paths for the bigger updates.

We have a new default EcchiTheme

EcchiDreams a long time ago once had eight or nine themes, with our main theme being dark, over the years however this is been proven to be unnecessary. After NekoLust became the site administrator for EcchiDreams we had a very blue theme, a dark theme, a mobile theme and a lite theme. I kept these maintained because it was ours. Now that we no longer require a mobile theme (Because our site should now be fully responsive) we have just two themes. The "Default" EcchiTheme, and the "Lite" EcchiTheme. 

So why have we limited choices? You might be asking, and that's a fair question. From the outside it does look like we've reduced the options. But let me explain about the key features of our new theme. The new theme has a user controlled colour pallet, twelve (12) options for primary colours, twelve (12) for secondary colours, this makes one hundred and forty-four (144) different combinations which is by far more options than we've ever had combined. Once more everyone gets a uniform theme, and you have full control on what colours it uses for you. 

New Chatbar Software

Previously we used ArrowChat for our Chatbar needs, however with all the incompatibilities that cropped up and quite frankly shoddy, poor security coding, which just never got fixed. We've switched to an alternative method. Whilst the features are pretty much the same; the look and feel of the chatbar isn't and there's one or two features you might be interested in, such as handwritten messages, deleting messages, view chat history, saving conversations to your device, reporting conversations and even blocking individual people who you don't want talking to you. We'll be constantly updating this to make sure it brings you the best service possible. 

EcchiChat Page

Again, will only work for logged in members, it's a large version of the chatbar, check it out. - https://ecchidreams.com/ecchichat/

Activity Feed

You may have noticed that at some point we lost the "View New Content" system. This isn't actually the case; it's been replaced with the Activity Streams section, which allows you to create and share your own activity feed and control what you want to keep an eye on. We have several defaults at the moment, so please check it out when you have time. Some of the default streams are (All Activity), (Unread Content) and so on.

Community Help and Tutorial Section - Brand New!

Opening today is our new Help and Tutorials Section, something based off a suggestion that @Whoreo had for EcchiDreams and something we've done in the past, kind of merged together. Introducing our Community Help and Tutorial Section (Only available for logged in dreamers) - https://ecchidreams.com/help 

If there is a feature you're not sure about on the site or you're finding it hard to get started please checkout this new section. If there's no tutorial of it, ask in our Community Questions Forum! If you know your way around the site, you can help those that don't if you so wish to. All fellow dreamers can respond. All staff can respond to, this is a community driven project.

You can finally deactivate your account - Brand New!

We have changed the system involved in the deactivation of ones account. Previously you had to ask a staff member to deactivate your account and it wasn't the best system to have in place. Ultimately it led to users having no real control over their account, and had to rely on staff to do the whole process, which was difficult because only Community Administrators have that level of ability. We now have an automated, staff reviewed system in place, that allows you to deactivate and re-activate your account at any time! Please read our Tutorial on it which shows you how it works and how to do it. Sure it'd be sad to see anyone leave but now people actually have the choice, rather than having to do it the long and horrible way -- it puts you back in control of your account.

Current Known Problems:

As you may have noticed not all of this has gone swimmingly; there are a number of problems that are still being addressed. 

EcchiText Security Problem

There is a known fault with the EcchiText system that allows an attacker to remotely execute javascript on to a target (victim) computer(s) via EcchiTexts. This message when sent to other people, and if they have notifications enabled, triggers a remote piece of javascript on the targets (the victims) machine.

This XSS (Cross Site Script) exploit has been noticed by us before it was used on EcchiDreams, so thankfully no one has been affected by this on EcchiDreams. After testing I confirmed that we maybe vulnerable to this attack, and as a precaution I have disabled the EcchiTexts system until the problem is patched. I want to make it clear - there's no need to panic, there's no need to change your passwords and dump all your files and nuke your computers, we've not been hacked or anything like that. We'll have this problem solved soon and it'll be secure and online again.

Emojis

We've had a bit of a problem with the Emoji's and emoticons on EcchiDreams lately, and as such the whole feature has been removed until we can work out what's going on. Unlike the previous fault this is not a security problem, although the coding that the third-party developer did was simply shocking and wrong, and the whole thing has to be re-done from scratch. Something I've not been happy about to say the very least. We'll keep you informed.

Missing Features

The EcchiCash/EcchiCredits and Awards/Achievements systems are still not complete; and way behind schedule. There are a number of reasons for this, on our end we're waiting for third party developers, and on their end they're waiting for proper documentation, and so on. I will keep you up-to-date on this, however I anticipate release early/mid 2016 (I am not promising this). Of course once the actual applications are released by the third party developers, I can then start working on them to adapt them to EcchiDreams. I have been Beta testing them for the third party developers in a closed beta, and I can confirm it is definitely being worked on, but I cannot talk more specifically about it.

Upcoming "Things":

There are a few things we've currently got in the works, and are being developed such as;

Resources Navigation

We're making page menus that have icons on them to take you to the relevant places on EcchiDreams, like RP Adverts, RP Preferences, etc, etc. These will consist of simple pages with 300x150 images on them as well as a title that will take you to the section when you click/tap on it. Sounds uncomplicated, and it really is. It'll be easily maintained and allow members something that might make their navigational experience easier. We will announce when this is done and we will welcome all feedback on it, as usual. 

Rules, rules, rules... More sodding rules

Er- no actually. We plan relaxing the rules even further! Not only that but our Terms of Service will be tweaked and bettered and our Community Guidelines will be getting a complete re-write because of how out of date they are, and they're supposed to be the layman's version of the Terms of Service. In addition our Privacy Policy will feature a "Laymans" version as well as a technical version, which will also be brought into the year 2016. 

In closing...

I am not very good at these announcements. But as always if you have any questions leave them in the comments below, and I will try to answer them. Also feedback and constructive criticism is invited.