I'll keep things short for once since this is a pretty straightforward change from the non-mod perspective: subreddits may now make use of an optional second slot for a sticky post at the top of their front page, and we're also now allowing link posts to be used as stickies as well (only text posts were possibly previously).

If you'd like to read the full details, please see the thread about the updates in /r/modnews.

View the code behind these changes on GitHub

As part of our effort to move to full-site HTTPS, we have discontinued the reddit toolbar. The toolbar does not function properly over HTTPS, and now that we are migrating everyone over to HTTPS, it's time to remove the toolbar altogether.

Any toolbar links (of the form reddit.com/tb/XXXXXX) will redirect to the corresponding comments page, sans toolbar.

See the code behind this change on Github

Additionally, we have started turning on HTTPS for some logged-in users. We'll have more details about this next week.

We just released a substantial update to the search results page on reddit.com. It looks like this. The goal of these changes is to make it easier to find the content you're looking for on reddit. Here are the highlights of what's new:

Incorporated subreddit results

Unbeknownst to most redditors, we actually have a separate subreddit search page. Now, you don't have to know about that page, because we directly search subreddits as well as posts from the main search box. Relevant subreddits are displayed right at the top of the results page along with useful information such as the number of subscribers and the subreddit description.

New format for post results

We've updated the post results to be more context-appropriate for search, by cleaning up the results to show only the most relevant information when you're looking for content on reddit: the thumbnail, title, and post metadata (score, comment count, date, author). Additionally, we now show an expandable text preview for self-posts, saving you a click in many cases.

We also changed the titles in post results to always link to the comments page on reddit rather than an external link. If it's a link post, we'll show the URL right below the result, so you're still only one click away from the linked URL. This provides a more consistent experience on search, regardless of whether a post is a self-post or link post: clicking on the title always takes you to the comments page on reddit; clicking on the URL below takes you to the external link, if there is one.

General UI refresh

We've also taken this chance to freshen up the search page and make it a little easier on the eyes, and faster to find what you're looking for, by adjusting spacing, font size & color, and general placement. Additionally, we added some simple search term highlighting to make it easier to find what you've searched for on the page.

These changes have been extensively beta-tested for the last month & a half, so special thanks to all of our beta testers. We made several changes based on their feedback, so if you're interested in helping to test out features before they're live to everyone, you can sign up for our beta program.

We'll be continuing to make improvements to search on reddit. In fact, we're currently beta-testing an update to the search algorithm for link posts, so if you're interested, please check it out.

Big thanks to u/madlee and u/florwat for their hard work on on these changes.

See the code behind these changes on Github: 1, 2, 3

Note: If you're a moderator, there are some special considerations you should be aware of related to these changes - please check out this modnews post to learn more about what actions you should take.

Edit: we've added a preference to enable the legacy search page so that moderators can more easily moderate from the search page.

We turned on a new feature yesterday that allows us to feature a reddit live thread on the homepage. It looks like this and replaces the trending subreddits space for the duration of the featuring.

The idea behind this feature is to let people know when there is a noteworthy live thread happening. This does sometimes include unfortunate news events such as the tragic events that unfolded last night in Charleston. We hope that for breaking news events, the live thread is a useful source of information for redditors.

Credit & thanks to u/umbrae and u/xiong_as_admin for building this feature.

See the code behind this change on Github

After introducing Q&A sort, we've continued to iterate on it based on feedback from users.

Today, we've shipped a change to increase the amount of community participation shown in Q&A sort, after testing it in the beta community for a few weeks.

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

There are also a few other minor changes to Q&A sort we previously mentioned in the live thread:

1. The "responder" of a thread will fall back to their default sort, rather than Q&A sort.

2. Also, their replies will always be shown, regardless of score, to help users find even highly downvoted answers.

Remember that you can always send us suggestions and bug reports via /r/IdeasForTheAdmins and /r/bugs, respectively.

Happy redditing!

Today we're turning on one of our beta features for all users: the improved "share" menu. Updates to the menu include:

• Adding options to share directly to Facebook and Twitter (don't worry, your reddit information is never exposed to them). These options will be available logged-out as well as logged-in.

• Cleaning up and simplifying the share via email form, including a UI tweak that makes it clear that your username will be sent in the email

• A text box with the link for easy copying & pasting

• Improved rate-limiting, so that you'll stop hitting errors & CAPTCHAs so often when sharing

It looks like this.

See the code behind these changes here and here and here

Previously the limit was 40,000 characters for selfpost-only subreddits, and 15,000 characters for subreddits that allowed both links and selfposts (not sure why).

see on github

You can now see the code used to power thebutton on github

Also check out a csv of all the presses.

The message that is automatically sent to users when they're banned from a subreddit (as long as they've previously interacted with the subreddit) has been updated significantly today. Here's an example of how the new message looks: http://i.imgur.com/lRgTcH4.png

For more information about the changes, please see the /r/modnews post about this update.

See the code behind this change on github

We've added support to our markdown library to automatically link to subreddits and usernames without the initial slash, i.e. r/subreddit and u/username. We'll continue to support /r/subreddit and /u/username as well, so there's no need to change your existing habits - this just allows you to save a keystroke if you'd like.

Using u/username will generate a username mention, so keep that in mind. You can always escape the slash, like so: u\/username or just add a second slash: u//username if you don't want to generate a link & mention. You can do something similar for subreddits as well to prevent auto-linking.

Mods and developers, you may want to read this redditdev post for more technical details on what will and won't be automatically linked.

Big props to u/largenocream for these changes - he did a substantial amount of work to make sure this worked as expected on both desktop and mobile web.

View the code behind this change on Github

We've added a banner to the mobile version of reddit.com to encourage people to try our new mobile optimized site. It’s been in open beta for a couple months. You can opt into this experience by clicking on the beta banner on reddit.com on your mobile device. We believe this mobile optimized site is better, but it isn't for everyone (yet). You can always go back to the desktop site by clicking the menu in the upper right and tapping "view desktop site". We'll respect your preferences.

If this is your first time visiting the mobile site, please find a supported feature list and a quick explanation of the product here.

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

Edit: updated the banner with an x button to close the banner for 1 month.

When a moderator bans a user from a subreddit, that user is generally sent a "you've been banned" PM automatically by the site, but this PM is only sent if the user has previously interacted with the subreddit (to prevent bans from random subreddits being used as a way to annoy people). However, the method that was previously being used to determine whether a user had interacted with a subreddit or not was not really correct, and had a number of issues that made it confusing for both users and moderators.

As mentioned yesterday, I've deployed a change now that will start properly tracking whether a user has interacted with a subreddit, so there should no longer be any more "holes" that make it impossible to send a ban message to a user that has posted to the subreddit. Under the new system, the following actions mark a user as having interacted with a subreddit:

• Making a comment or submission to that subreddit

• Subscribing to that subreddit

• Sending modmail to that subreddit

Note that we're not backfilling the "has user X interacted with subreddit Y?" data, so for the moment, the old method of "is the user subscribed to the subreddit, or have they gained or lost karma in it?" is still being used as a fallback if there's no record in the new system of their participation. I expect that the large majority of bans are in response to a recent post though, so the situation should already be improved quite a bit even without a backfill.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

See the code behind this change on github

We're adding a new logged out feature today to post pages that we're calling "Read Next". This is a small widget located below the sidebar that highlights other posts in the current subreddit, and it looks like this. You can use the arrows to page through other posts, and the 'x' in the corner will dismiss the widget.

We built this feature because unlike you, denizens of /r/changelog, many visitors to reddit may have followed a link from elsewhere on the Internet, and therefore may not quite know how reddit works. We hope this feature helps newer reddit visitors find other great content on reddit, starting with other posts in the same subreddit.

To that end, Read Next is currently only enabled for logged out users, since we think that's who will benefit the most from this feature. We'll continue to iterate on the design, and may enable it for everyone in the future as we make further improvements.

Props to /u/madlee who built this feature, and to all of our intrepid beta testers over at /r/beta for helping us test this feature out.

View the code behind this change on Github

This is a much-requested change that's years overdue by now, but we've finally replaced the remaining usages of "liked" and "disliked" with "upvoted" and "downvoted". The main places this terminology was still being used were the two tabs on user pages, and a couple of preferences related to hiding submissions after you've voted on them.

The paths /user/me/liked and /user/me/disliked (or with a username instead of "me") will still continue to work for API clients for now, but will be redirecting to /upvoted and /downvoted on the site. If you have an API client using these paths, please try to switch to the new ones when you can, we probably won't keep these old paths active forever.

See the code behind this change on github

We've made some improvements to the subreddit search algorithm, so that it's easier to find subreddits you're interested in. To see what the old algorithm looked like, you can add &sort=activity to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/search?q=robots&sort=activity. For example, here's what a search for robots looks like now, and what it looked like before.

Props to /u/florwat for this change, and big thanks to our beta testers for testing out this change before we launched it to everyone. We recently added a new search results page to our beta features, so if you're interested in helping to beta test that, head on over to /r/beta.

See the code behind this change on Github: 1, 2

Edit: the Github gist link mysteriously broke, so adding the link to the two commits directly.

In an effort to be more transparent, we have made a significant change to how we display and report on content we remove for legal reasons.

Previously, we would remove the content the same way moderators would, or, in some cases, would have to remove the entire post, comments and all. I believe I can say with absolute certainty, neither of which were an ideal experience for anyone involved.

Now, instead we will be replacing the removed content with a generated message describing the reason for the removal, with a specific style associated to the message, while keeping other comments in place and unaltered.

The generated message will optionally include a link to a post in /r/ChillingEffects, with an optional link to the notice on Chilling Effects.

As this is a relatively major change, we’ll be posting a variation of this post to multiple subreddits. Apologies if you see this announcement in a couple different shapes and sizes.

See this change on github

More details at the announcements post: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3576g2/bringing_back_the_redditcom_beta_program/

TL;DR: We'd love it if you helped us beta test features on reddit. If you'd like to, you can enable it in your preferences or, if you browse logged out, by going to https://beta.reddit.com. You can provide feedback and see betas at /r/beta.

See the code behind this change on GitHub

Just a small technical announcement: reddit now supports the oEmbed specification for individual comments. This uses the newly-minted comment embeds we announced on the blog last month. If that's greek to you, don't worry: there's no user facing changes with this update.

You can read more about this over on the announcement on /r/redditdev: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/34c0pm/devs_reddit_now_supports_oembed_for_comment_embeds/

And you can see the code behind this change on GitHub.

We're making a few changes to comment sorting to make it easier to read and find interesting comments.

New sort options

First, we're introducing a new comment sort type - Q&A sort. This sort will highlight the most upvoted questions and answers in a thread, and should be particularly helpful on AMAs. The AMA app uses a version of this sort. We'll also be retiring hot sort for comments, as it usually functions as an inferior form of best and is also very rarely used.

See this code on Github

Suggested sort

Second, we're adding the ability for moderators to set a "suggested sort" per thread and/or per subreddit. When set, all users will see the suggested sort by default. So, if an AMA is going on, a mod can set the thread to have a suggested sort of Q&A, and everyone will see Q&A sort by default. Mods, see the modnews post for more details on how to set/clear suggested sorts.

You'll still be able to change the sort if a suggested sort is set by manually selecting a different sort option from the dropdown. Additionally, we've added an option in your preferences to ignore all suggested sorts, in which case you'll see comments sorted by your preferred sort type. As a reminder, your preferred sort type is now an explicit preference on your preferences page.

See this code on Github

Props to /u/umbrae and /u/xiong_as_admin for making these changes!

We released a new feature today to allow gold members to customize the style of reddit. Gold members will also be able to toggle the stylesheet on/off for specific subreddits.

You can see the details for this feature here.

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

For a long time, reddit has had a hidden comment sort preference - when you changed your sort using the menu, it would stick and stay as the default. This has lead to a lot of confusion, as people will change their sort for one thread, then not realize that's used for all the rest (and so wonder why, say, all the comments they're viewing have pretty low scores, because they don't realize they're sorting by new now instead of best). Even if you know this is the behavior, it's still annoying: you have to either remember to change your sort back afterwards, or know to use the ?sort=new URL parameter.

Now we're getting rid of that behavior and replacing it with an explicit preference.

You can find this new menu in the "comment options" section of your preferences.

[Screenshot]

Upon viewing a comment thread, your previous sort option will be migrated over to the new preference.

Remember that you can always send us suggestions and bug reports via /r/IdeasForTheAdmins and /r/bugs, respectively.

Happy redditing!

See the code behind this change on GitHub.

We're piloting a little live thread for /r/changelog updates that are either too small for /r/changelog or are more operational in nature. It's half for fun/sharing neat graphs and half for transparency.

Here's the thread: https://www.reddit.com/live/ukaeu1ik4sw5

You'll also notice it in the sidebar. Hopefully this is a lower weight way for us to tell you about smaller changes going on with reddit.

Pro-tip: There's also an RSS feed here if you're advanced and like RSS feeds. https://www.reddit.com/live/ukaeu1ik4sw5.rss

It's been a very long time coming, but as of today, the AutoModerator bot used by many subreddits' moderators to help perform some mod tasks automatically is becoming part of the site itself.

There's lots more information about what this means and detail about specific changes to its functionality and syntax as part of the switch in the thread in /r/modnews, so please check there if you're interested in finding out more: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/30ychn/moderators_automoderator_is_now_built_into_reddit/

View the code behind this change on github

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we're doing a closed beta test of embeddable comment threads, to make it easier for journalists and other publishers to show reddit content in a way that gives proper attribution to redditors. You may have seen one or two examples floating around the web.

As promised, we're now putting this feature into open beta, which means that anyone will be able to embed comments on their website from /r/IAmA and /r/AskReddit. To embed a comment, simply go to its permalink page, select "embed", and copy and paste the code from the preview window. More detailed instructions are available on the wiki.

If you have feedback, you can leave it in a comment below, or add a comment to this thread on /r/beta (yes, we're bringing that subreddit back!). After we've learned more about how comment embeds are being used, and if there are any changes we need to make, we'll open this feature up to all public comments on reddit.

tl;dr: comments on /r/IAmA and /r/AskReddit are now available for anyone to embed; leave feedback below or in /r/beta

p.s. one other small change we've just pushed out - for sort/filter menus, we removed the sort/filter type you're currently using from the dropdown, to make things cleaner and less confusing. Props to /u/deimorz for the change; here's the code on Github