This is a rather huge announcement that I write in a bit more of a personal tone since I feel that it deserves a level of reverence and respect.

As many of you know, DustWolf has been wanting to step into the background for a long time now. He has been the owner of tg, and thus it's face, for... I don't even know how many years at this point. Love him or hate him, he keeps the lights on, he pays the bills. He coded TG from the ground up and he is still the only person here who can take care of the site from a technical standpoint. Whether you like him as a person or not, please understand this and respect the work he has and continues to dedicate to this space. Many people in the wider therian community dislike him, but despite all of this, he still put forth that dedication to keeping this space here, so all of us can use it freely. This place is like home to many people, myself included.

I've been here since the year TG was founded, back on the old website. I remember back when Dusty joined actually, I've been here even longer than him, and lots of folks over the years already thought I was staff since I just seemed to be a fixture in the community. When TG needed new staff early this year, I felt that it was a chance to give back to this space that has been my home for these many years.

Now I come to you all, once again taking up a mantle of service for this space.

Dusty will be officially stepping down as owner of Therian-Guide. He is tired and has been trying to give the rest of us staff the tools we need to take over as much of the technical as we can. He won't be leaving the site, and still plans to keep the lights on, but he wants to fade back as much as he can to enjoy the quiet role of tech wolf. The past few days, we staff have been carefully discussing and casting our votes on who will be taking up the torch as the new owner of TG. As you may have already surmised by my winded personal speech, I have been chosen to be the new owner of Therian-Guide. Unanimously so. I was humbled to wake up this morning and see that every single staff member felt that the community would be best in my hands.

It was a lot, I'm feeling many emotions right now, and I write this announcement nervously because I'm feeling some hella imposter syndrome right now. I also want to make sure I do what is best for this community, and that isn't always easy. Being staff was already difficult. More difficult than many folks see since we try to keep much of the goings on behind the scenes, to try and keep this space tranquil. As the other staff have said during their votes though, they have seen me consistently handle issues head on, with compassion, and maturity. I know I'm not perfect and will end up making people mad at some point, but please know that I truly love this space, and will do everything in my power to do what I feel is best for it. So with that, the torch is passed. May we continue on to a bright future.

With humility,
Bagera

Hey folks, in about 16 days (September 17th-18th) there will be a scheduled server update for the website. We're currently unsure of the length of time the site may be down for while this occurs. It could be as few as several minutes, but it could potentially be much longer. The site will be down entirely during this time, but the discord server will still be up and running just fine.

So if in a bit over 2 weeks, tg seems to just be gone, you will know why. It's nothing to be concerned about. I'll post any further information we get here in the time leading up to the reset, and answer any questions I'm able to. During the downtime, if it lasts longer than expected, we will share updates on the discord server.

On behalf of the staff team, we thank you in advance for your patience, and apologize for any inconveniences.

Hey everyone,

So... Therian Guide forums have had a map feature since like... 2014. But I guess we never really mentioned it on the forums? So I thought I'd make a post now.

Here it is:
https://forums.therian-guide.com/usermap.php

It can also be accessed by clicking "Our Sanctuary" at the top and then "Therian Map".

To those of you who are accessing this page without being logged in, the user map is, for obvious reasons, only accessible to TG members.


Many of you will know that the map has not been functioning for a long time, but I finally got my act together and patched it up. I also added a few quality of life improvements, such as making it more compatible with mobile phones, and I added some descriptions onto the map itself, to clarify how it's used:

Quote:This is the Therian Guide user map. It shows the approximate location of our members, according to what they themselves entered.

To add yourself to the map, provide a city name or country name or similar into the "Your pin location" field below and click Lookup to find it. The form uses Google Maps, so whatever location Google Maps can find, should work here.

To remove your pin, simply enter nothing (or clear what's there) and click Lookup.

Remember to never share your exact location online!

So, as you can see I have also finally added the requested functionality to remove a pin. Simply change your pin location to blank and click Lookup and after you click OK your pin will vanish.

I realize a lot of this was long overdue, but please try to understand that I do the coding for this in my free time and I don't really have a lot of that.


If you have any further questions about the map, you can post them here onto this thread and I'll try to answer.

LP,
Dusty

Hey all,

As many of you likely already know we've been having a lot of incidents recently involving those attempting to access the site by lying about their ages. Up until now we've tried to take a forgiving approach to the problem by giving them the chance to own their mistakes and publicly apologize on the forum. I have spoken with some of those who did this, and I understand they wanted community and were encouraged by friends to lie to try to get in.

This issue however is quite serious for a number of reasons:

1. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires that we do not admit those under 13 onto the site. TG could be sued and/or shut down for violating it, destroying this home that we have tried so hard to give you (See: Here).

2. To prevent minors from masquerading as adults and accessing adult spaces, which could lead to innapropriate interactions or accusations and put our adult members at risk.

3. To prevent adults from masquerading as minors and putting the actual minors under our care in danger.

So these are safety issues, and it's our job to keep this place safe for all of us.

I have attempted to make it clear in the past that these attempts to bypass this aspect of our activation screening would eventually lead to others being banned over it "in the future".. Well, the future has come, and now we are banning someone over it.

If you have questions or concerns you may contact me or one of the other staff, or use the Write to Staff forum.

Regards,
-Cyg

With all of the new members here, many of which are new to forums in general, I and other staff often find ourselves digging for many links to answer member questions. So I'd like to make a big thread that has all the helpful links you'll need. And I'll try to organize them by category.

Please note that while this is an announcement that can be seen by members and guests alike, many of these links will only work for registered forum members.

Where to post if you need to ask staff about something:

Write to Staff

How the site works:

Community Rules of Conduct

The Staff Team

Why we have an age requirement

The age groups on our site

Safety for Minors

Privacy

All About Forum Points

About How Forum Code Works

The Points Shop


Becoming a Member:

How to Become Activated as a Member

How Long it Takes to Become Activated

Our Policy on Duplicate Accounts

Staff Teams:

Teams and How to Join Them


Life Issue Support For Members

Where to post if you need to vent or need support

How to join the support group

How to post in the support subforum

Our Discord Server:

How to join the Discord server

Rules of our Discord Server

Member Journals

The Journal Subforum

TG's Staff Journal

User Creativity

Where to Share Art

User Marketplace Conduct

How to sell physical goods with points

Physical Merch and Donations

The TG Budget

Donating to TG

Our Ko-Fi

Points Shop Physical Merch Designs

Let me know if there's anything you think I missed or would be helpful to add~