PHNX (Phoenix) is our new and current site design.
Legacy (as mentioned below) is our old site design that was used up until 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback on bugs, UI, and important needs from our partners. We look forward to continue to improve as time passes.
Below is a list of recent changes that our PHNX dev team has made to the DriveThruRPG site’s frontend or backend. Below, as we update this changelog, you’ll find older entries.
Changelog (2025-01-17)
Customer-Facing
- Login Lockouts: We have raised the lockout limit for failed login attempts to 10; and now show the user a specific message if they've locked themselves out from too many failed attempts to login.
- Card Shipping: Fixes to shipping time estimates for card products
Publisher-Facing
- Publisher Categories related to Community Content: The Community Content title strips will show up first instead of last.
Backend
- Sales Guide: Text update on the Salesguide page - "Countdown timer" changed to "Sale ends in"**
- Bug Fix: Mobile portrait screen size gets text/ui shoved off screen; we've taken steps to fix this.
- Bug Fix: Internationalized title strips for Japanese, Korean and Portuguese were not properly language-filtered; this is fixed
Changelog (2025-01-17)
Customer-Facing
- Foreign Language Hottest Title Bar - Now when a user comes to DriveThruRPG while having a non-English language selected, they will see a special Hottest Title ribbon that shows the best selling titles in that localized language.
- We have added the Medals page to PHNX; it can be found at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/bestsellers
- AI Toggle is now translated.
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Bug Fix File downloads hidden behind "Show All" do not download on Library page
Backend
- Faster Search - the search bar has had it's load time decreased, suggested products should appear much quicker.
Publisher-Facing
- Reply-To Tool - A new tool for Partners to quickly sort and reply to product comments and reviews.
- FIXED Bug preventing some users from leaving star only ratings.
Changelog (2024-12-10)
Customer-Facing
- Discount Links: When discount links were being clicked, sometimes the cart would refresh and the discount link would be invalid. Now, discount links should properly work without the customer having to get a new discount link.
- Update to our site footer: We now have all our platforms with quick links at the very bottom of the screen, making it easy for you to navigate between the different sites.
Backend
- Product Pages with large comment threads: Previously, if there were large comment threads, this would generate slowly. Now, the page should load per normal.
- Wishlist Load Times: Wishlists should load a bit faster and are can be sorted by price again.
- Cart Fix: PHNX Team has implemented a new fix that should mitigate lingering cart oddity (duplication) and checkout (periodic bugs)
Publisher-Facing
- Clicks/Impressions are turned on once more: We were aware the impressions and clicks were not generating properly but this is adjusted and should be working now.
- Fixed creator name attribution: Previously, when a creator responded to comments, it would not have their name chosen on their Account Page and instead showed up as the Publisher. Now, the label is changed the Community Content Creator's chosen name on their Account Page will appear.
- Fixed a price display glitch in a publisher sales notification: When PHNX emailed a Publisher to let them know of a sales notification, the cost would show up as just a number, and not the intended currency. Now, this is showing the currency properly.
- Coming Soon: Medal Ranking Search; As PHNX moves the medal ranking page from Legacy to PHNX interface, the medals ranks will be searchable. The team is deciding if they will offer it as a browse option in the near future.
Changelog (2024-10-30)
Customer-Facing
- Improved page load times: The team worked to improve the speed of the site, and reduce the amount of time customers spent waiting for data to load. Through those efficiency gains, the new site loads twice as fast as it did previously.
- Fixed DotD Banner display: The banner on the PHNX product page for DotD now properly shows both the item discount and the time remaining for the offer.
- Fixed feature page display: Feature pages (used for sitewide promotions) on PHNX now properly display the correct number of items without blank spaces.
- Bestseller medals show correctly: Product bestseller medals were not showing for titles if they had earned that medal on a sister site; this has been corrected.
- Fixed title strips on browse pages: Browse pages now all have the four correct carousels, which include relevant community content.
- Fixed search results ordering: For a short time, the quick search results were showing in a different order on Phoenix than they were on Legacy, but that has now been rectified.
- Numeric order visible on title strips: PHNX now shows the numerical ordering for products on carousels, as on legacy sites.
- PHNX displays custom and full preview: Previously, the site would show only one or the other if a product was set up with both a custom preview and also a full preview. Now, if both exist, the site displays both.
- AI-Generated products can be toggled off: Customers have a new tool that allows them to toggle off all titles on the site that have been self-reported as AI-Generated by publishers, as they can for Adult titles.
- Non-English language product reviews are displayed beside all other Reviews: PHNX was displaying only reviews written in whichever language the customer had set for browsing the site.
- All reviews now show in all languages, as on legacy.
- Fixed opt-out setting for PHNX: The “opt-out” toggle on a user’s Accounts page now properly lets them opt out of PHNX and return to legacy.
Publisher-Facing
- Private titles show as such for publishers: Previously, titles that had private formats (for example, if a hardcover book option was ready but not yet public) were not showing up correctly when viewed by that publisher on PHNX. Now they do.
- Download file names show properly on PHNX: On legacy sites, a publisher can apply an alternate name for any file when uploaded, and our site shows that alternate name to customers; on PHNX, that feature was not working correctly, so the customer was always seeing the file’s actual name. That has now been fixed.
- Fixed comments on reviews: Partners can now comment on product reviews directly from the Review and Discussion section of Product Detail Pages.
- PWYW titles always charge $0 for publisher or admins: Titles set to PWYW (pay-what-you-want) pricing were erroneously charging their own publisher or admins whatever suggested price they entered for that title. They now always properly charge $0 for those users.
- Source codes (SRCs) remain in URL: Reference codes used in URLs to backtrack attribution sources no longer get scraped from the URL.
- Fixed HTML styling on product edit page: Early CSS fixes on PHNX disabled many legitimate uses of HTML on product pages. This has been rectified so that partners can properly style text on their product description pages.
- Product Cover Image and description text included in Social Media: When sharing products to Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Discord, and other social media platforms, the post now automatically includes a product cover image and basic description text to help drive awareness about products. We’ve made sure those pages look their best when shared in social network posts.
- Missing partner logos no longer show as a pink square: Previously on PHNX, if a publisher had not uploaded a logo image for their account, the site would render an unattractive pink square in its place. That no longer happens.
Backend
- SSR improvements: Bot traffic to the site is now redirected to a SSR (server-side rendering) server to improve security, SEO results, and page load times.
- Enhanced code structure for better search engine optimization: Product pages, Publisher pages, and Category listing pages have better structure to help search engines make the most out of every place your products appear on DriveThruRPG.
- Preview file is generated on load: In the past, our Title Preview files were generated the first time anyone visited a Product Detail page. Now, we generate the Preview when the Title Creation is saved, so there’s no waiting for new products to generate the preview.
- CSS improvements for UI: Aggressive early SEO work removed some good CSS from product pages that should not have been stripped. That has now been resolved.
- Featured promotion page accepts HTML formatting: PHNX CSS fixes were too strictly limiting the amount of editing that could be done on featured promotion pages by admins. This has been resolved.