March 2025 maintenance (and other updates)

[Jeremy]

Site Maintenance

Thanks for your patience, everyone! While it took longer than expected, our scheduled maintenance has been completed! The maintenance included a software update with some changes you won't see, but a few you may notice, including:

• Conversations (formerly PMs) are now known as direct messages; a more familiar term used by other platforms like Discord
• A new way to login to the forum called passkeys; they can be used on many platforms, but check out Apple’s documentation as one example
• New [EMBED] BBCode shows thumbnails of other posts
• Image placeholders in threads; reduces the amount of "jumping" around the page when there are many photos loading
• Auto resizing of images with extremely large pixel dimensions; reduces the frequency of "file size too big" errors when uploading large photos from phones (to be enabled soon)
• Featured and trending content (to be enabled soon)
• Better performance

Testing New Ads

In addition to updates, we are also working with a new advertising network and starting a test run with it tonight. You may have noticed that the ads on TBT have been very limited compared to other websites. Unfortunately, our ad revenue has almost never been able to pay the site's bills, except for a brief time at New Horizons' release. This new ad network will help the site raise more funds, which will also be important for an upcoming server upgrade.

Starting later tonight, you may see ads in places where they didn't appear before. However, registered users will continue to see far fewer ads than visitors who aren't logged in. Our philosophy with ads will continue to have us use only the bare minimum in favor of a better user experience. We don't run TBT for profit, so the goal of this change is for the site to better afford its expenses with as little impact as possible.

Over the next few weeks, we'll test different types of units and placements to see what works, but logged-out users will be impacted the most.

Excuse The Mess!

After the update, you may notice some things that appear to be out of place. If you notice anything that seems wrong to you, feel free to let us know here while we continue to tweak everything. (For example, the shop icon is different and highlighting text in posts is too dark.)

Thanks for waiting and be sure to read Justin's post below for a couple of small event updates!

 

[Justin]

In addition to the updates from Jeremy above, I have some news to share about our next forum event.

TBT's Sakura Week Begins March 24th

The previously announced and tentatively titled Hybrid Flower Breeding Week event will now be called TBT's Sakura Week! Plus, it has been moved up to begin one week earlier on March 24th to reduce conflicts with other Spring events. Perhaps you can guess what might be new in this year's edition of flower breeding...

Leif Bell Bonus Begins Now

Just as with previous flower events, there will be associated items to purchase in the Shop. To help you out and celebrate Leif's imminent arrival to The Bell Tree, the Leif Bell Bonus is now available from today until the end of March.

During the Leif Bell Bonus period, you can earn an extra 15 Bells bonus for every day that you create a post in an eligible board. This is an additional bonus on top of whatever amount of Bells you may already receive from posting. Happy earning!

Eligible boards include Animal Crossing discussion boards, Nintendo Treehouse, Gamer's Lounge, The Museum, and bell-eligible Brewster's Cafe threads. The daily bonus resets and can be earned again after 22 hours has passed.

 

[seliph]

Uhhhh I think I found something out of place

Was hovering over reacts and well

 

[MrBox]

woo-hoo, sakura week! can't wait
also interesting!

 

[Briar]

Yeah, the reactions are really crazy:

Spoiler

Looking forward to Sakura Week, and yay for the bell bonus!

 

[Jeremy]

Uhhhh I think I found something out of place

Was hovering over reacts and well

View attachment 614279

Yeah, the reactions are really crazy:

Spoiler

View attachment 614280

Looking forward to Sakura Week, and yay for the bell bonus!

Reactions are fixed!

woo-hoo, sakura week! can't wait
also interesting!
View attachment 614281

This is actually something that will be fixed later (I suppose unless people like it!)

 

[Dunquixote]

Site Maintenance

Thanks for your patience, everyone! While it took longer than expected, our scheduled maintenance has been completed! The maintenance included a software update with some changes you won't see, but a few you may notice, including:

• Conversations (formerly PMs) are now known as direct messages; a more familiar term used by other platforms like Discord
• A new way to login to the forum called passkeys; they can be used on many platforms, but check out Apple’s documentation as one example
• New [EMBED] BBCode shows thumbnails of other posts
• Image placeholders in threads; reduces the amount of "jumping" around the page when there are many photos loading
• Auto resizing of images with extremely large pixel dimensions; reduces the frequency of "file size too big" errors when uploading large photos from phones (to be enabled soon)
• Featured and trending content (to be enabled soon)
• Better performance

Testing New Ads

In addition to updates, we are also working with a new advertising network and starting a test run with it tonight. You may have noticed that the ads on TBT have been very limited compared to other websites. Unfortunately, our ad revenue has almost never been able to pay the site's bills, except for a brief time at New Horizons' release. This new ad network will help the site raise more funds, which will also be important for an upcoming server upgrade.

Starting later tonight, you may see ads in places where they didn't appear before. However, registered users will continue to see far fewer ads than visitors who aren't logged in. Our philosophy with ads will continue to have us use only the bare minimum in favor of a better user experience. We don't run TBT for profit, so the goal of this change is for the site to better afford its expenses with as little impact as possible.

Over the next few weeks, we'll test different types of units and placements to see what works, but logged-out users will be impacted the most.

Excuse The Mess!

After the update, you may notice some things that appear to be out of place. If you notice anything that seems wrong to you, feel free to let us know here while we continue to tweak everything. (For example, the shop icon is different and highlighting text in posts is too dark.)

Thanks for waiting and be sure to read Justin's post below for a couple of small event updates!

Hi Jeremy! I’m missing my home button on the top bar.

 

[Mistreil]

i would like everyone to know i'm special and somehow managed to water a post in the brief moment this was working

getting started with flower watering early ヽ(✿ﾟ▽ﾟ)ノ

 

[xSuperMario64x]

the shop icon used to be a bell bag and now it's a shopping basket, was that intentional? I personally like the way it looked before.

I'm happy to hear about the image update, the "jumping" around was always a big issue in my art gallery. hopefully it won't do that anymore.

 

[You got mail!]

yay!! great to see this site up again and I am excited for sakura week!! may we grow all the flowers we'd like and water tons of posts.
Also, is it just me or is the shop icon different? I believe it was a bell bag before

 

[-Apples-]

Reactions are still not fixed for me. I only see like, love, hug, and celebrate. Where are the apples?

 

[xSuperMario64x]

also, the rating thing present in some threads makes peoples' sidebars look very crammed and weird lol

(on the mobile version that is)

 

[KittenNoir]

Yay I’m so keen for sakura week!!!!!

Thank you for the bell bonus too time to start posting !!!!!

 

[himekirako]

Hi Jeremy! I’m missing my home button on the top bar.

i noticed that too!

 

[Giddy]

I am SO happy about the resizing large images when it comes to, have to always screenshot the images to make them smaller >.<

And yay sakura week~ coming quicker than expected, I'll go grab my watering can

 

[S.J.]

Interesting to hear about the ads! I've always loved how few ads TBT has had, and it's definitely noticeable compared to other sites. I felt like I noticed a new placement of (wide, but thin) ads between posts in some of the threads (maybe a week ago?). I wasn't sure if it was new, or whether I'd just missed it before! Either way, I completely understand ads are a necessary part of the site, and I hope the new system can generate better revenue!

Looking forward to Sakura Week, too!

I feel like the Bell Bag shop icon changing to the basket wasn't intentional, so I'm sure it will be fixed!

 

[LambdaDelta]

Uhhhh I think I found something out of place

Was hovering over reacts and well

View attachment 614279

ok, but this was an improvement

 

[skarmoury]

Resizing images lfgggg I am free from the shackles of having 5 mb images
Also cant wait for Sakura week!! the return of the sakura collectibles I am excited....

 

[seliph]

ok, but this was an improvement

None of them worked tho :[

 

[Flaria]

I'm curious on how the Sakura week would go and may try my best to post often? Lol. Perhaps.