Hi,

It's been a long week with a number of challenges, but overall, the update to SGv2 went well, and we're finally back. We hope you enjoy the new site, it's been in development for a long time, and it's exciting to see it online. Thanks goes to all the volunteers that helped to provide feedback and to beta test along the way. We'll be ironing out bugs in the coming weeks, and working to address any performance issues that may arise. A couple of pages are disabled at the moment until they're further optimized, and we'll try to bring them back soon. Most noticeably, the page listing replies to your comments and posts.

New Features

Below is a quick introduction to some of the new features.

Whitelists/Blacklists

Whitelist

You can whitelist users by clicking the heart icon on their profile. When creating a giveaway, you then have the option to limit the giveaway to users you have whitelisted. It functions similar to a Steam group, and your giveaway will only appear in the feed for these users, and only be available for them to enter. When your giveaway is running, you can also add more people to your whitelist, and your giveaway will instantly appear in their feed.

Blacklist

Opposite the whitelist, you can blacklist users by choosing the icon on their profile. This will instantly remove your giveaways from their feed, and they'll no longer have permission to enter. Keep in mind, if a user enters your giveaway, you cannot blacklist them to invalidate their entry. You can only prevent them from entering future giveaways.

You can add up to 1,000 users to either your whitelist or blacklist. This might be raised or lowered as we see how it impacts performance.

Multiple Group Giveaways

Giveaways can now be created for multiple Steam groups (up to 25). These can be combined with your whitelist as well. A user just needs to be a member of ANY of the groups in order to join the giveaway.

Giveaway Filtering

There are a couple of options for filtering giveaways. If you click the gear icon on the top right of the giveaway list, you have the option to hide giveaways for games you own, or giveaways for DLC that require a base game you're missing. Secondly, on the main giveaway list, you'll see a little icon with an eye next to the name of each game. Clicking this will allow you to hide all giveaways for that game. You can manage this list from your account page in case you need to remove any games from your filter.

Keys

Giveaways now give you the option to attach a key. When creating the giveaway, just check the box for keys, and then input them into the text field, separated by new lines. You can enter keys up to 32 characters, and both Steam and Humble Bundle gift urls. You still have a chance to review your winners before the key is visible to them. When your giveaway closes, and you're viewing the winner, the sent checkbox will toggle the visibility of the key. When you have that box checked, the winner will be able to see either the key or gift link. If you uncheck the box, it'll be hidden again. You can add, edit, and delete keys for any winners after the giveaway is over.

The only exception are key giveaways for 50 copies or greater. These giveaways will automatically check the sent box once the giveaway ends. This is in place for general convenience and developer giveaways, so you don't have to manually check each box to distribute the keys.

Featured Giveaways

The site will automatically feature giveaways on the homepage for any giveaway with 50 or greater copies, that's ending within 4 days. It will feature up to two giveaways at once. If there are more than two, it'll select two at random to give them equal visibility. Whitelist and group giveaways can also be featured, and they'll only appear for members that have the appropriate permissions.

Community Voted

On the homepage you'll occasionally see a poll with the heading, Community Voted. We'll be importing a variety of game keys into the database, and the site will select three at random each day, and generate a poll. After the poll ends 24 hours later, the site will automatically create a 24 hour giveaway for the game with the highest votes. You'll be able to spot these giveaways in the list, because they have a thumbs up icon next to them.

Messages

The messages page allows you to view replies directed to you. You'll see a notification in the navigation bar with the number of new messages available. To clear this counter, click the mark as read button on the messages page.

Background Colors

The site generates unique background colors for each game and user profile. These colors are generated based on the game or user avatar. If you change your avatar, the background of your profile will be updated along with your avatar when you next sync.

Deleted Giveaways

Deleted giveaways will no longer appear on profiles, but you can find them on your list of created giveaways. You'll also be able to see your giveaway entries for giveaways that have been deleted.

Forum Categories

The new forum is broken up into categories. All posts from from the previous site have been imported into Uncategorized. We'll be adding a tool in the future to help the community categorize them.

Polls

You can now attach polls to discussions. You have the option to create general polls, or polls for games. You also have the ability to limit voting to users that own those games.

Comment Formatting

There are some improvements to comment formatting, and you can now add strikeout text, spoilers, attach images, and more.

Timestamps

Hovering your cursor over any time on the site will display the exact date. If a comment or discussion is edited, you can hover over the * to view the date edited. These dates will be displayed in your local time, based on your browser timezone when you're logged in. You can ninja edit a post within 3 minutes to avoid having the * appear.

Permalinks

The site now uses permalinks for comments and trade feedback. This means you can easily link to a comment, or jump to a comment from your messages page in order to reply. You can also quickly visit the last reply of a discussion. The site will sort out where the comment originated, along with the page number, and send you there.

Trades

Trades now have two optional inputs when being created. These are have and want. You can fill these boxes with keywords to help others find your trade. For example, you might have cards and want hats. Users can then search, saying they have hats, and locate your trade.

Sales

If you click the gear icon on the top right of the sales page, you can hide sales for games you own, or DLC where you're missing the base game. We determine your country based on your IP address, and show prices and sales for your region. If any of your wishlist games are on sale, they'll appear first on the recommended page with a heart icon. Sales from GamersGate and GreenManGaming should be Steam redeemable, but please double check before purchasing.

Support

The support section has been redeveloped to help staff with handling tasks quicker. We're now able to approve or deny a number of requests at the push of a button to simplify deleting giveaways, changing giveaway games, marking feedback as received, and rerolling winners. We also have a new role system, which will help us to add more staff, while dividing tasks between them. Expect to see the staff grow in the next week or two.

I'll be writing a separate post shortly to explain the new level based system for contributors.