Hello everyone, and welcome to our April Bell Tree Direct! We want to start by thanking all of you for your patience and support during our data migration and move to our shiny new forum software. We know that the process hasn't been without its bumps and quirks, so the understanding and kind words from all of you meant the world to us. You all rock.
New Airport Boards
After seeing the amount of activity in all of our New Horizons boards and discussing community feedback, we've decided to create a new board: Dodo Business Class. We expected the primary function of The Airport (AC:NH Online) board to be a means to connect with others for the purpose of free visits, services, and general in-game hanging out, but it's come to our attention that many people are requiring payment or tips for such services. While we don't have any issue with this, we felt it was best to specifically designate The Airport as a board for all free visits or services, and any threads where payment or tips are required should be made in the Dodo Business Class board. Threads that are for item sales or trading still belong in Nook's Cranny. We hope that this change makes it easier on everyone to find what they're looking for and reduces the amount of confusion surrounding the board's purpose(s).
New Additions to Our Staff Team
We know it's been a while since we opened this round of staff applications, but we wanted to make sure all of the current staff were acclimated to the new forum software prior to throwing a new set of people to the sharks. However, we've been assured that our three new team members have come equipped with chainmail dive suits and wouldn't mind some shark action.
Kaiaa will be rejoining us as a moderator after being a valuable asset to the staff team from 2013-2015. She has proven to be an extremely hardworking and dedicated mod, and we feel her positive and approachable demeanor will be great to have with so many new members joining us.
Mairmalade has been a long-time member here on The Bell Tree, and has a lot of experience with forum moderation. We feel that her sense of humor and eagerness to jump in and help out will make her a perfect addition to the team, and that she'll be well-received by our community.
Bobo will be joining our Project Staff team. We feel that his creativity and unique sense of style when it comes to his artwork will add a fun and interesting new vibe to our team of artists, and we're all excited to see what he comes up with when it comes to events and collectible creation.
While this round of applications is closed, we do anticipate opening apps again sometime in the next few weeks, as we expect our userbase to keep growing and for the amount of needed help to increase! A separate announcement will coincide with the reopening, so keep your eyes peeled for that if you've ever dreamed of an endless supply of forum fun and unlimited breadsticks. As always, we appreciate each and every one of you who took the time to fill out an application. For now, please give a warm welcome to Kaiaa, Mairmalade, and Bobo!
Ko-Fi Donations
We've had a few people show interest in donating to the site through the years, and while we've never had a permanent donations tab, we've noticed a lot of people mentioning their interest in helping us recoup some of the costs associated with our software upgrade. We are pleased to announce that we are accepting donations via Ko-Fi for the time being, and we sincerely appreciate all of you who have shown interest in helping The Bell Tree continue to grow. For those who don't know, Ko-Fi is a donation-centered site that allows "fans" to donate money in $3 increments as a means of supporting a person or other entity. There are no fees and all payments are processed through PayPal. Click the link below to donate, and thank you all so much for your continued support!
All donations will be put towards new add-ons and features for the site. Please note that we won't be offering any forum perks to Ko-Fi donators, though a separate TBT Premium feature is currently being discussed. We won't be ready to share details about this for quite a while, but it's definitely a very exciting prospect!
Bell and Shop Information, Courtesy of Jeremy
Finally, bells and collectibles are back on TBT! As you may have noticed, we spent some extra time converting our bell and shop systems to the new version of the site and they finally went online Friday night. You'll now find them in the top right of the navigation bar, under the bell symbol. To reactivate your collectible lineup, simply go to your inventory and change a setting on any item. This will reset your profile and the same collectibles you displayed on the old version will appear with your posts.
You'll also find our new trading system under the bell icon. This will allow you to open trades with other users by offering bells or collectibles. Counter offers and prices can be negotiated safely until both users come to an agreement. Please try it out and let us know what you think.
Like we did when the bell system was previously down for several days, we'll be calculating bells earned from posts in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons board from the last two weeks. They will be sent out in the next few days and we'll post an update in this thread when that happens.
As promised, we are also providing refunds for the now defunct Avatar Width Extension add-on. To receive the refund of 300 bells, go to your inventory and click "Sellback" at the right of the item. Since users who purchased this add-on recently would have gotten very little use out of it, we will also refund an additional 150 bells if you bought it in 2020. Please make a thread in Contact the Staff if you'd like to apply for the bonus. We will also provide some sort of compensation for owners of the group add-on, but we are still deciding what it should be and will announce more information about it in the future.
The shop system is still a work in progress and we are already working on adding some features to it. In the short term, though, there are a couple of issues we'd like to highlight. For the first day some users weren't able to adjust their inventory. This was due to having at least one collectible with a message that contained an unusual symbol. While many of them could be adjusted, about 150 across the site had their messages deleted completely. If one of yours was affected, we may be able to restore it on a case-by-case basis, so please make a Contact the Staff thread if you're interested. Another issue we're currently experiencing is from the user title color change add-on. These have been temporarily disabled and hidden while we work on a fix, but they'll return in the next couple of days.
There are a few other features we'll be looking into, such as showing the collectible messages when hovering over them and better sorting features on the inventory page. The Seashell currency will also stop being distributed for the time being due to the new system working differently. In about a week we'll be updating how this works and redistribute Seashells to new users and those who reach their 2-year milestone. Thanks for being patient through this upgrade and please feel free to report any new issues you come across while using the new systems.
Blog Archive
As mentioned in previous announcements, our Blog Tree has been retired and is now archived in a read-only board. All prior blog entries are viewable here, though we may eventually offer an alternative to the blog feature that will allow members to write about and keep track of their islands and game milestones.
Auction Rules Update and Cellar Board Note
As we've seen a number of auctions popping up with the release of New Horizons, we felt it necessary to implement an addition to our rules regarding auctions and how they're handled. Going forward, all auctioneers and bidders must abide by the following new rules:
- The end time of the auction must be clearly stated and should not be increased or decreased after it has already started.
- Bid retractions are not allowed except under extraordinary circumstances.
The following changes have been updated on our Rules and Guidelines page.
We also want to make a short statement about conduct in The Cellar board, and more specifically, about Mafia games. While we fully understand that these games can be intense and emotions can run high, we expect all members to abide by our site rules and guidelines concerning respecting others at all times, and recently we feel as though this hasn't been the case. The same rules apply to The Cellar board as the rest of the forum, and this means that excessive cursing, name-calling, disrespectful comments, and aggression will not be tolerated. Games may be closed by staff discretion if we feel they're getting too toxic or inflammatory. We know Mafia is important to some of you and closing a game would be an absolute last resort, but everyone needs to remember that this is a family-friendly forum and any Mafia game taking place on The Bell Tree needs to reflect that.
Bell Giveaway
This wouldn't be a proper Bell Tree Direct without a few bells to hand out, so get them while they're hot! This is our biggest bell giveaway to date, and we felt it was the perfect time fill your pockets with riches seeing as how you've all stuck with us during these
That's all we have for you today! Thank you again to all of you for sticking with us during the move, and we hope you're all enjoying the new features as they roll out. Many things are still being worked on and tweaked as we go, but hopefully it'll be a lot less frustrating now that everyone's beloved pixel squares are back and jazzing up your sidebars! As always, thank you for being a part of the community, and we look forward to sharing this new era of TBT with all of you.
