Change Log: behind the scenes at BHW

Chapter 1, Section 1, Rule 6, Point 3 has been added in to clarify our stance on cross-selling in approved BSTs.

Zwielicht said:

Cross-selling, even to other approved BSTs, is not permitted anywhere in their marketplace sales threads.

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This clarification has been added in to help keep what's being advertised in a sales thread clear to customers.

Rules of the Joint Venture subforum have been updated to include that investments of any sort, whether the OP is offering to invest or asking for an investment, are not permitted.

We're currently experiencing some issues with deliverability to Yahoo domains for about 10% of our email traffic (we fully check out on their recent changes https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/ ) if you're waiting for 2FA's please use your back-up codes.
Email notifications please be patient - we expect them to flood in within the next 24 hours.
In both cases please whitelist us for faster delivery https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/

Diamond Damien said:

We're currently experiencing some issues with deliverability to Yahoo domains for about 10% of our email traffic (we fully check out on their recent changes https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/ ) if you're waiting for 2FA's please use your back-up codes.
Email notifications please be patient - we expect them to flood in within the next 24 hours.
In both cases please whitelist us for faster delivery https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/

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All email issues with Yahoo have now been resolved and mail is once again delivering as usual.

Updates to marketplace spam management have been implemented to our existing algo, removing the impact of spam / low value posts on the marketplace.
Marketplace merchants will still receive notifications about posts on their threads however the global visibility of those posts will be significantly reduced.

We've made a change in the mandatory required information for every sales thread - now it's required to provide a "How to purchase" ("Call to action") section in addition to the refund policy, description of the service, pricing, off-forum contact details, and TAT (if applicable).

This change aims to help all the members understand how they can purchase any Marketplace listed service without contacting the seller first (unless the seller explicitly requested it).

The change is detailed in Chapter 1: General Rule; Section 2 - 2.4: Call to action / "How to Purchase" section

We have an exciting announcement to make about BHW's themes.

That's right! The dark theme and light theme for BHW will be fully updated soon.

These improved themes not only have some much-requested updates, but also improve the functionality and usability of the forum.

More details will be posted in the forum suggestions and feedback section early next week.

The new Dark and Light styles are now live. Your account will automatically be ported to the relevant style - for more on how to pick your theme please visit https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-to-view-the-white-bhw-theme.1042232/
Please keep all comments about this change in the dedicated thread here https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/announcement-introducing-the-new-bhw.1585112/

Since my last post here, we've expanded our marketplace algorithm to take in additional data points that impact some low-value posts on the marketplace that frequently reached the homepage and devalued our user experience. As these posts were of little interest to anyone other than the marketplace thread owner and the member posting, we removed some of the less relevant post types from the homepage feed. The adjustment allows the member to post and the merchant to interact with the member without filling up the homepage with erroneous posts. We’re now analyzing hundreds of data points across the system to decide on post-bumps. This creates a large data set that informs our decisions when tuning our algorithm. This data is anonymously collected and processed.

As with all algorithm changes, there will be some false positives, but we're happy to say we've removed over 6,000 low-value posts on marketplace threads from appearing on the homepage in just two weeks, leaving those engaged posts with higher visibility. We will continue tuning the algorithm to reduce these false positives while delivering a better user experience to over six million four hundred thousand unique forum readers (GA Stats) visiting the forum each year.

We completed the rollout of the new forum styles. and myriad changes that go on the backend to achieve these.

Platform bugs and security patches have also been applied, keeping the forum stable.

There's an upcoming update that I'm excited to shared with all of you.

So, you know that problem where it says "Jr. VIP" twice on a member's profile?


We've decided that we're going to resolve this by using the user title ladder for all non-staff usergroups.




Since we'll be making the user title ladder more prominent across the forum, we're also going to be looking the possibility of adding new titles based on post count and maybe even reaction score. After this goes live, keep an eye out for any polls about new user titles here in the forum suggestions and feedback section.

Zwielicht said:

There's an upcoming update that I'm excited to shared with all of you.

So, you know that problem where it says "Jr. VIP" twice on a member's profile?

We've decided that we're going to resolve this by using the user title ladder for all non-staff usergroups.

Since we'll be making the user title ladder more prominent across the forum, we're also going to be looking the possibility of adding new titles based on post count and maybe even reaction score. After this goes live, keep an eye out for any polls about new user titles here in the forum suggestions and feedback section.

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On July 24th, we set this live.

As always, if there are any issues, please let us know.

We have two new updates that went live today.

Badges For Jr. Executive VIPs & Executive VIPs.
Executive VIPs and Jr. Executive VIPs now have badges to show their ranks on BHW. This was done to make it clearer as to what the username (box?) colour represents since we're now using the user title ladder for all non-staff members.

Premium Members now also have proper badges instead of plain text badges (you're welcome).

Prefixes For The FRC Section
We've added prefixes for the FRC section. This allows you to filter the threads based on whether or not the FRC (free review copy) is available. Also, a new chapter was added in the FRC Rules that shows how to use the FRC prefixes.

Here's a quick preview of the FRC prefixes:

Since implementing the MP algo, we no longer need the 72 hours promotional bump rule (discounts, coupons, CTAs, etc).
Now, we only have the 24h bump rule as mentioned in the Marketplace Rules - Chapter 1, Section 4. This should clear out any confusion around tread bumping - what and when

Here's what the updated rules state:

Zwielicht said:

Section 4: Thread Bumping Guidelines
You can respond to any of your customer queries as often as you'd like and even post updates to your sales thread regarding any service updates. Our marketplace bumping system means that any post you make within a 24-hour window will not appear on the homepage aka "bump" your sales thread, but will appear in your thread. This allows you to engage with customers and potential buyers in your sales thread whilst also conforming with the BHW marketplace bumping rules. This is an update for October 2020 and now part of the core marketplace functionality.

To check how long you'd have to wait before your next post bumps the sales thread, please check the 24-hour timer above the post editor:

Note: Your next post will bump the sales thread if you don't see the 24-hour timer.

Update (September 4th, 2024):

Feel free to include promotions, coupons, discounts, advertisements, or calls to action (CTAs) in your bump post. Please note that the sales thread will only be bumped once every 24 hours, no more than that.

For "thank you" types of posts, please use the React button. If you want to address multiple customers or questions in your sales thread, combine the responses in one post using the multi-quote feature.

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We are performing a hardware refresh over the next few weeks, which may result in about 45 minutes of total downtime.
We will inform you of the exact time and dates of any interruptions to regular service in advance.
This will result in a slightly faster BHW experience for all.

ICQ has been removed from your profile account details.
The service was closed in June 2024, and it doesn't look like it will make a comeback.

Hardware update day.
As previously mentioned, we'll be running the final push on our hardware upgrade today, which will result in about 45 minutes of planned downtime around 6 a.m. EST today.

Diamond Damien said:

We are performing a hardware refresh over the next few weeks, which may result in about 45 minutes of total downtime.
We will inform you of the exact time and dates of any interruptions to regular service in advance.
This will result in a slightly faster BHW experience for all.

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UPDATE -
We're back up on our new tin.