[Solution added in first comment] April AAA Game giveaway [Level 4] on April 1st :) (4 1)

bump for rick gus roll

real bump! (for solved)

bump:)

Bump for finally solved, but not before being Rickrolled at the very end.

Bump for solved! Thanks for the AAA giveaway! ;)

Nice nonogram, bump

Bump for finally solvin' it. Thanks for the headscratcher and the AAA...A :P(altho it may very well have been that I needed to take a shower :! )

bAAAmp for solved

Solve bump

bAAAmp!

Wasn't the title something like this?

April AAA Game giveaway [Level 4] on April 1st :) (4 1)[First time giveaway]

I'd like to point out that the vagueness of the "format" probably left a lot of people adrift. There were plenty of other things that were noticeable with the formatting, especially the stilted sentences with a non sequitur, very rare capitalization, and unique punctuation :). The title could have contained link codes. It indicated there could be a null cipher, and here on SG we count letters, words, and lines as zelghadis taught.

Generally we use "formatting" to mean forum comment formatting (formatted text), the way the sentences and paragraphs are arranged and text modifiers, especially since you italicized that word, but in context it sounded like you probably meant the date format, then further emphasized with the title change. I guess you were hinting that the month-day date format would reverse the numbers in the link code, leading to the bonus nonogram, but without that red herring, knowledge that the shortener link codes could be customized would lead to solving the main puzzle.

the second part of the last part of the last sentence

???

This could mean a few things, with the spoilers, all the punctuation, and emoting.

All we knew is the code was in this main page, and to ignore the date which appears five six times, or definitely use the date, "who needs the date anyways? :)" might mean either.

If it weren't for my own assumption that the url shortener only had random link codes, I would have definitely solved this. Very good hiding of the GA! Thanks for the puzzle.