YudumSosyal 3.0 — a new design, English Yudum and a faster site

Quite a lot has changed since August 22, and the version number has moved up to 3.0. This post sums up three weeks: first the highlights, then everything that's been added, fixed and improved.

🌟 Highlights

• The site has moved to its new design. The home page strips, Discover, news, members, the online list and the login and sign-up pages have been redone from scratch; more than thirty pages now have a sidebar. At the top of the home page there's a strip that scrolls through sections on its own, and below it are strips for videos, games and groups.
• English Yudum has grown. The English home page, privacy, terms of use and chat rules, the help center, English versions of movie/series/game pages and chat welcome pages are all live. Visitors with an English browser get the English home page; menus, notifications and forms are also largely bilingual.
• Now you can write too. Members can pick a section and category and submit content like posts, recipes and quizzes; the selected ones are published in the Yudumca showcase.
• 18+ age limit. Your date of birth is asked at sign-up, when signing in with Google, in the chat's registration window and at guest login. We've explained why we made this decision on this page.
• New chat commands: /msg, /query, /notice, /hop, /join 0, a four-tab /help guide and /ayarlar. 12 of your chat preferences can now be changed from the site too.
• The site is much faster. The data the home page downloads has dropped from about 1.35 MB to 0.4 MB, and the first render from 1.9 seconds to 0.45 seconds. When lots of people come in at once, the server can now serve almost twice as many pages as before.
• Registration security has been tightened. A mass fake-account attack was stopped, the fake accounts were cleaned up, and registration rules have been strengthened against a repeat of the same attack.

✨ Added

• Announcements in the webchat: announcements published at the top of the site now also show in the chat's left panel; click one to read the full announcement in a window. Release notes have moved to the About window.
• The Settings page now has tabs: My Profile · Account & Privacy · Chat Settings.
• Avatar at sign-up: you can pick from ready-made avatars or sign up with your Google account.
• Group picture: group admins can upload a group avatar from the chat and from the site.
• Pinned posts in the feed: posts that stay at the top for a set time; the feed puts posts in your language first.
• Chat conveniences: emoji shortcuts like :) :fire :thumbsup, a channel box when you type /join with no arguments, confirmation when leaving a channel, and an invitation to register an unregistered nick.
• Registered-only channel mode: in rooms like live stream chats, unregistered users can't read or write.
• Maintenance warning: before a long maintenance, a countdown warning strip appears in the chat.
• Football: matchweeks by name ("Week 1 · date"), a matchweek picker and a league strip on the standings page.
• Streamers page and a streamer application form.
• Scheduled announcements: announcements at the top of the site can be published with a set start and end time, and split by language.
• Quiz result lock: only people who've taken a quiz can see its result page.
• The Games section and the first English "Who is" pages are live.
• Moderator tools: a moderation strip on profile and group pages; a reason is required for every action.
• A visible "Sign up for free" button on the login page; a "can't be played right now" note on the pages of movies that can't be played.

🛠 Fixed

• Being left unidentified after reconnecting to the chat, and repeated "identify first" warnings.
• The window staying open after leaving a channel; an empty user column outside channels.
• 17 movies not opening in #sinema.
• Ordinary English sentences being mistaken for banned words and blocked; someone banned from a channel still being able to write.
• Some home internet users being blocked by mistake and not let into the chat.
• Members who changed their nick dropping off the site's online list; the friends page showing up empty.
• New news items not showing on the home page and in the news section, and the headline getting stuck on an old story.
• Suspended groups still showing on the site; accounts that hadn't verified their email appearing in "New members".
• The request accept/reject and "Add to queue" buttons not working in the DJ console.
• Activation and password emails not reaching some email providers.
• Non-existent addresses opening a blank page — you now get a "not found" page.
• Incorrect information on help pages and typos in movie genres.
• The site being down for hours on September 11 and the automatic restarts on September 13. The causes of both were found, and protection against them happening again has been added.

⚡ Improved

• Content with images comes first in lists; headlines fill up in order with the newest stories.
• Very short feed posts made up of a single emoji or just a link are no longer accepted (except statuses).
• All chat commands are included in the Turkish and English help.
• A "check your spam folder too" reminder after sign-up; activating your account takes you straight to settings.
• Fixed the browser offering to translate in the wrong direction for English visitors; browser form warnings are now in the page's language.
• General security improvements.

🗑 Removed

• The old site theme.
• The site switching to dark on its own when your device is in dark mode.
• Ad spaces that were left empty are no longer shown at all.

If anything catches your eye, you can write to us with the Report a Problem button in the chat or through the help pages. Happy chatting! 💧