DU updates and announcements

[EarlG]

Hello everyone,

Last year, in the wake of some financial struggles, we started a new, low-key fund drive to help balance DU's budget. The Tip Jar fund drive turned out to be a big success, and most importantly, it helped us manage our budget all the way through to the end of the year. So we're doing it again this year. In fact, we're doing it this week!

TIP JAR FUND DRIVE

Compared to our other major fund drives in February and August, the Tip Jar fund drive is relatively short. It will run from today (Monday) through Friday evening. There will be a small banner at the top of each page, and a reminder at the foot of each thread. All we're asking you to do is kick into our Tip Jar with a one-time contribution. If you are already a monthly or yearly subscriber, making a one-time contribution does NOT affect your ongoing subscription in any way.

The fund drive asks you to show your appreciation for DU, but DU wouldn't be the community it is without its members, and so once again we plan to recognize DUers that YOU think make this community special. As a bonus for contributing during the Tip Jar fund drive, you'll be able to leave "kudos" for another member. This is not like the Hearts fund drive -- the members won't be notified when you leave kudos or get a marker on their posts -- but when I announce the end of the fund drive on Friday, I'll recognize DUers who received kudos.

Finally, during the Tip Jar fund drive we will be operating the site ad free for registered members. If you are a registered member but not a Star Member yet, we hope that trying out the ad free experience will help you to consider upgrading. Star Memberships are "pay what you want," and if you kick into the Tip Jar this week, you will become a Star Member.

BLUESKY EMBEDS

We are at long last updating the DU software today to include Bluesky embeds. They should work exactly the same way as other embedded content -- if you simply provide the link to a Bluesky post, when you post your message, the link will automatically transform into an embedded Bluesky post.

We are NOT removing X.com embeds from DU at this time, but we are removing the old "Twitter" styling from X.com embeds. They will now be clearly marked as X.com embeds, and not pseudo-Twitter posts.

So going forward, DU posts will automatically embed content from Bluesky, X.com, Threads, and Mastodon (as well as YouTube). However, one of the projects on our to-do list is an upgrade to DU's Account Settings which will let you choose which content you would like to see auto-embedded, and which content you would prefer to just see as a link. So if all goes according to plan, in the not-to-distant future, you should be able to turn off whichever embeds you don't want to see.

As with all DU updates, there's a chance that something might go wrong or not look correct. If any pages are messed up for you, or if you think that something has gone wrong, please feel free to reply here, in DU Community Help, or send me a DU Mail directly.

That's all for now -- thank you for reading, and as ever, we appreciate your support!