Users can now upload a 256x256 image of their choosing and have it show on their profile, gallery pieces and palettes. It can include a link to whatever URL you desire. 

This could be used to promote your external projects, products, games, or just your personal website or social accounts. 

Check out my profile to see an example of it, where I created a link to my personal site, skeddles.com

Currently this feature is available to all patreon members, even the $1 tier. 

Patreon members of the $5 tier or higher can choose to hide other people's user ads if they don't want to see them.

To create your own, just go to your settings and look for the User Ad section where you can upload an image and set the URL. It will immediately begin to appearl on your profile and content.

Learn more on the User Ad page

This is yet another improvement to the Lospec Dailies system. I've redesigned the top of the page to be more clear and appealing, which less text and easier to find information. The tag and palette are shown in a large clear banner. We also now properly credit the palette and tag submitter. Did you know you can submit tag suggestions for Lospec dailies?

The user of the day section has been removed, as now we have a line on the homepage showcasing them, which is better for them and for the dailies page.

A few days ago I also updated the image generator we use for posting the daily to discord / bluesky, to match this new style which includes the tag.

Hopefully this makes browsing the Lospec Dailies page more appealing, and puts more of a focus onto the art below.

I made a few small improvements for when you are submitting a piece to the gallery.

First, you can now adjust thumbnails on mobile! It used to require a mouse to move the thumbnail around, but it should now work with touch screens.

Next, the form will now prevent you from submitting if your thumbnail is blank. If your thumbnail is blank you likely either didn't adjust it, or your piece is in the wrong category, or your pixel art was scaled up even though it doesn't need to be. Hopefully this ensures thumbnails come out better.

Lastly, there was a bug where uploading a filename with a percent sign in it would break the upload form. Not only do we now do a better job of catching and communicating errors like this, the file server will now do a better job of stripping out characters from filenames that might cause a problem.

This is part of an ongoing project to improve our submission process. 

On the homepage you'll see a new block at the top with a featured product from the Lospec shop. Hopefully this gets at least a few extra sales from the shop as overall it costs more to run than it makes. But I just love the idea of people being able to buy cool pixel art things. At the end of the year I may close the Shop as Shopify is rather expensive and we don't get many sales, but we'll see if this can help it pay for itself.

Next if you scroll down a bit, you'll see a new row, which shows some pieces from our already selected "User of the Day". Hopefully this gives the user of the day a bit more visibility, and makes our homepage funner to visit.

Next, I've added a toggle to the queue for the Palette List which shows us only palettes which have an example submitted. This will help us more easily approve palettes that have submitted examples. It will also mean we will be less likey to approve your palette if it doesn't have an example (which was already the reason for most not being approved), so please add examples to your pending palettes! You may also submit examples for other peoples pending palettes if you want to help them get approved.

Last, I added a support section to the bottom of the Articles page to hopefully help get a few more donations to help keep the Lospec servers running. There is also a new feature which will highlight different supporters at the bottom of each page. Thank you to all who support Lospec, currently or previously! Lospec could not exist without our Patrons and supporters!