Another major feature we are adding soon is "reactions", to be included when we roll out Pips.
Reactions are an expansion on the "likes" you are already familiar with, with a much broader palette that allows community members to quickly express their feelings about a particular post/reply/comment.
Reactions will be expressed on a post like so:
Click on a reaction that has already been expressed to add yourself to that reaction, or choose the plus icon to choose one of the other reactions.
You'll be able to post multiple reactions per post, as well.
If you don't want to give your members the power to express themselves this way, you can opt to only support the "like" (heart) reaction, so that things work like they do now. In fact, for existing sites, you will need to enable the full reaction suite (we are not going to opt you in by default) in your admin control panel.
New Topic/Reply/Comment Interface
Some interfaces will be changing to enable this new feature, but the most prominent change will be for reply/comment/topic post boxes. We have not been handling those items consistently across content modules, so we plan to unify those in this release (as well as add support for reactions).
Here is a how a reply/comment box looks currently:
This is how they will look with the new release:
Note that we will display online status, titles, and badges on larger screens. A new theme section will allow you to customize these posts, as well.
The green bar you see on the left in the example above is a unique color per post author, allowing readers to easily associate specific posts with authors as they scroll through.
The gear icon the left replaces the "Take Action" link. The post date is now in a secondary font color below the post.
Again, you can use the theme settings and/or custom CSS to customize the style of these boxes. We would advise you to take a screenshot of your current reply/comment boxes in advance of the release though, if your goal is to keep the same general styling your have now, because it will likely change when we do the update.
Reactions will be available for all customers/plans/versions.
You should expect this to be rolled out sometime in the next two weeks.
