Socials, a beta Discord, and invites that follow up
Today was about people: being findable, giving testers a place to talk, and making sure an invite doesn't quietly go nowhere.
Social accounts
TCG Marquee now has accounts on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, all under the same name, with the same profile picture and bio. Every image in the launch set shows the real wall, drawn by the same code the LED board uses, with made-up demo cards.
The links show up in the footer of every page, and on the about and contact pages. They come from one setting, so adding a new account puts it everywhere at once, and search engines learn that the accounts and the site belong together.
One lesson for anyone setting up a new Facebook Page: Facebook makes new Pages wait before they can claim a username. Until then, the Page's numbered address works fine.
A private Discord for beta testers
Testers now have their own Discord server for bug reports, feature ideas, and photos of their setups. It's private in two ways:
- The invite only shows up for beta testers, on their account page. It isn't anywhere public on the site.
- Joining isn't enough. Newcomers land in a welcome channel and can't see anything else until they're approved, so a shared link doesn't get anyone further.
The site also posts to the server's announcements channel on its own whenever there's a new blog post or new board firmware.
Invites that follow up
An invite that sits unused now gets one friendly reminder on day 5. After 14 days it moves to an inactive list, where it can be sent again with a fresh link. If someone asks for an invite a second time after one lapsed, they go back to the top of the list, with their history showing, instead of being quietly ignored.
Fixes
- Signing in sometimes showed the home page instead of your collection, until you refreshed. The browser was reusing a saved copy of the home page. Signing in now goes straight to your collection.
- Formatted emails in the admin inbox showed as blank. A security setting meant to stop other sites from framing ours was also blocking our own preview. It now allows this site, and only this site.
- Some forwarded emails never arrived. A subject line with a line break in it made forwarding fail without a word. Those forward properly now, and every message shows whether it was forwarded, or exactly why not.