What’s New?
Your posts now say something about who you are.
- Ranks and stars
Every post shows your rank and post count. It starts at your very first post, so you are not staring at a ladder whose first rung is fifty posts away.
- Pick your own title
Prefer something other than the rank you earned? Set a custom title and that shows instead. Leave it empty to go back to your rank.
- Signatures
A few lines under everything you post. Set it once in My FlameNet, clear the box and save to remove it.
A ring is meant to send people round the circle. Now it can.
- Put the ring nav on your own site
Open your ring and copy the snippet. It is plain HTML with no script and no stylesheet, so it works on any site, however it was built. Visitors who use it travel to the next site in the ring.
- Prev, Random, Next and List
All four work from any member site, and the ring wraps around — going back from the first site takes you to the last.
- Ring owners can see the traffic
Every hop through the ring is counted, so an owner can tell whether their ring is actually carrying anyone. Crawlers are excluded.
Four thousand hand-sorted links, and two new ways into them.
- Random Site
One click drops you somewhere in the directory you would never have gone looking for. The old web had this everywhere and it was the best thing about it.
- Bookmark a site
Star any listing to keep it. Your bookmarks sit with your watched threads and saved stations rather than in a separate list.
Your home page is now yours to arrange.
- Choose your boxes
Weather, top stories, discussions, activity, karma, the poll, who is online — keep the ones you want and switch off the rest.
- Put them in your own order
Give each box a position and it moves. The ones you care about can sit at the top.
- Pick a colour
FlameNet normally takes its colour from whichever section you are in. Choose one of the seven and it stays the same everywhere instead.
- Save your ZIP code
The weather box stops asking every single visit.
A new section, and the first one built to be left running in the background.
- Four hundred and twenty stations
Seventeen genres, from ambient and chiptune to jazz, metal and public radio. Search by station name or browse a genre.
- It plays while you browse
Picking a station does not reload the page, so the music keeps going while you read the forums or check your mail.
- Save the ones you like
Star any station and it lands in My Stations. The chart of what everyone is tuned into builds itself from real listening.
Members can now put their own music on FlameNet.
- Upload and share MP3s
Add a title, artist and description, then share a track with a single link. WAV, OGG, FLAC, M4A and AAC work too.
- Rate and comment
Every track has a comment thread and a thumbs up or down.
- Your uploads are searchable
Tracks now turn up in MP3 / Audio Search alongside the rest of the library, with the most-played listed on top.
- Uploading works again
Video uploads had been failing quietly for some time. They work now.
- Views are counted
View counts had been sitting at zero regardless of how often something was watched. The most-watched videos now appear on the Video Search page.
- Delete any message
Previously you could only remove messages you had sent yourself. Now you can clear anything out of your own mailbox, whether you sent it or received it.
- The Compose button is legible
It had been turning an unreadable purple against its own background once you had used it.
- Every section shares one layout
Each part of FlameNet used to draw its own page header, and several drew none at all. They now share a single header, coloured to match the section you are in.
- Buttons you could not read
All Sections in News Search and Create a Room in Chat had the same fault as Compose. A sweep found and fixed the rest before anyone else ran into them.
- Videos, Audio and Radio in the menu
All three now appear in Explore, so they are reachable without knowing the address.
- Saved things live in one place
Watched forum topics, saved radio stations and finance watchlists were each kept separately. They now share one home — which is what will let us tell you when something you follow gets a reply.