Welcome to LES v2 - Updated Please read OP again.

AnthonySmith

Last update: 00:18 24th July 2026 (UK/London)

LES v2 is live - I tried to keep it as close to the old one as possible visually; anything that was a big change at least has an option to toggle for those that hate change (myself included)

In no particular order.

Themes on header bar

You no longer need to go to your profile to switch.

Themes in general

• The dark theme, light theme and grey theme have been fixed; they all had issues, with odd colours, and they have been somewhat simplified for future changes. The layout width has also been standardised to work well with 1080p or vertical screens.

• vBulletin themes added - I made the mistake of starting on these first; it was stupid. There will be bugs, and I discovered how hard checking all the other changes would be from then on against 5 different themes for every change, i have other themes planned; they were moved down the list until the functional work is finished.

Show LES (Submit a Link)

• This will let you make a short post, it will not take up as much space, they all go into general and its a hat tip to the best part (In my opinion) of hackernews, if you find something cool and want to share it, share it, no need to make a huge post about it, you can post up to 3 per day

• You can toggle these off/on in your view with the S in the header and you can see ONLY these with the Show LES link in the header:

Thanks is now Karma & Karma system

• Thanks have been replaced with karma (and converted already) essentially works the same way, except you can up vote down cote and boost

• An upvote or downvote costs you nothing; giving karma comes off your total.

• You can give up to 10 Karma points independantly of a simple up/down vote which csts you nothing, obviously you need to have it to give it.

• If your account reaches -25 karma, it is suspended, you are warned at -10

New users & New Host Tags (Karma)

• When new users join they will go in to a new members group: https://lowendspirit.com/categories/new-members they are required to fill out a short form as part of registration, which automatically creates their first post for them, if they get +3 upvotes or someone gives them 3 karma, they become a regular member, if they get -5 they are banned, they have no rights to post in any other section until they are essentailly allowed in by the community.

Current questions are:
Favourite operating system?
Dogs or cats?
How many pushups can you do?

• New hosting providers is now also karma-based; anyone with a member tag can apply to become a hosting provider, https://lowendspirit.com/categories/provider-tag-requests again a form that is completed to request a tag, +10 gets you a provider tag, -5 rejects your request.

Karma gate:

• When posting offers hosts can now decide who sees them with a new markdown tag:

• You can require an upvote to reveal part or all of your post
• You can block users with negative karma
• You can require a minimum amount of karma to see it.

Karma Store

• Empty right now, but you will be able to essentially spend your karma/thanks on custom badges, your own titles that you make yourself and equip them in whatever order you want.

• In the future, this will also be useful for free hosts when I extend it to validate users and set conditions or provide coupon codes or links etc.

• We will also start adding hosts icons so you can show support that way.

Karma Slider & Animation level Display

• The slider has 4 levels, it allows you to set the level of the new karma animations you want to see, none or everything.

• The karma animations essentially add hype
  to popular posts and users

The side bar

• Honestly not much to say here, just removed the crap I know no one uses, I will refine it further and added some simple "top" posts based on up/down votes etc

Blog

There is a new Blog system https://lowendspirit.com/blog I am going to start populating this on a fairly regular basis with big news and little tech articles and yoinking interesting posts etc for the blog (all credits will be given)

Ignore User.

• This was already in anyway but you can now click on someone username and from their profile use the dropdown to ignore them if you do not want to interact with them, you will still see posts from people you dont ignore that quote them but you can self modderate who you interact with.

Word Filter

• Backend now has an autosed so I can s/dicks/flowers/ on post or edit, highly unlikley to ever be used but it was a quick one when I was playing about at the start, it exists, my hope is that it remains blank, but if we get persistant shitty hosts spamming their links I can also sed them to barbie.com

Opcache

• We now have opcache on the backend, making things fly a bit better

Search

• I found out about manticore, pretty cool, almost no ram, made the search a lot more useful after finding someone is searching for every letter of the alphabet on a regular basis 1 letter at a time on occasion, that takes care of that.

Turnstyle

• New registrations going forward will no longer require manual admin/mod aproval, tomorrow I will enable CF Turnstyle for registration and combine that with the new members karma requirements as above.

Flagged posts

• You, the end users, can see when a post has already been flagged and how many times, if it reaches 10, the post is then hidden except to mods, mods can also clear the flag count.

Necrogate

• Any post that has had no activity for 30 days will require the poster to also complete a justification for necro posting.

Support

• Support (HESK) has been replaced, it now is built into vanilla, support link at the top, when you open a request all mods/Admins are notified, anyone can respond.

Provider directory & Host profiles.

• https://lowendspirit.com/registered-providers this now shows a proper directory of hosts along with a filter for services offered.
  

• Reviews will also soon be pinnable to hosts profiles.

• Hosts are listed according to karma (Highest first)

• Hosts will see a red exclamation on their icon on the top: this is so that they know to go and complete their profile, a basic profile is shown if they dont.

• I am going to start removing provider tags after 1 year of inactivity, first I will be sending a PM to all hosts to invite/remind them we are here, if they don't care, or don't exist anymore, no problem.

• Hosts can add their staff and role to their company/profile.

• Host profiles look different once complete and all socials get linked, great example already from @oloke https://lowendspirit.com/profile/oloke

• This section is only a framework right now, I am going to significantly build on this over the coming months.

HOST YOUR IMAGES HERE!

• You no longer need to use imgur etc, please, stop using them

• Just right-click or screenshot and copy-paste the image into the comment box and it will auto-upload and convert to a forum-optimised WebP file (Gifs included) max filesize 5MB

• You can also upload using the picture icon on the comment box and even give the image whatever alt tags you want (Optional)

• External image links still work too.

Offer Posts & Auto sink (Up/Down votes)

• Offer posts now can get hype and karma like other posts the more hype they get the more visible they become (unless you turn all that off)

• Posts now also go less visible and lose colour if they are downvoted, and they start to auto-sink

• If any post gets -20 downvotes, it is hidden.

VPS

• VPS moved from Hetzner to OVH because Hetzner is not LE* Friendly anymore, for half the price I got the same specs in Vint Hill, VA, USA, with a rolling 7 days auto backup and snapshots and an extra 50GB disk, given that over 70% of the traffic is from north America, hopefully thats going to be ok.

• We are now on PHP 8.4 on Debain 13 and MariaDB 11.8, I spent a full day optimising everything as much as I can; the VPS is the same spec as the Hetzner one, 2 vCPU, 4GB Ram, 40GB Disk + 50GB disk for user uploads which I can extend if required in the future.

Other

• I am still a long long way from done. I know there are a ton of issues to fix, but that is the cost of progress; the core is working, that's the main thing and over the coming weeks I will bug-fix daily until we get stable before adding much else.

• I appreciate all the bug reports and general feedback, when possible, add as much info as possible: screenshots, URL's, platform, browser it really helps.

• My main goal was to lay a framework to build on, and I think I did that; everything was based on the notes when I asked for opinions and some of my own perspective, having been on every side in every role. on both green forums.

• Please, if possible, respect the fact that I am trying, even if you don't like it, that I have limited resources and this is not full-time for me; I will take criticism if it's constructive. This is personal to me I am personally invested in LES.

Self Moderation

• I have done and will continue to do as much as possible to turn this place self moderating, via tools or rules, if you dont like a person or a host, you now dont have to see them, if you dont like something, you can impact it with negative karma, community flagging takes down posts, you decide who is here now, and who you have to interact with, many of the new features simply either can be turned off or ignored if you really dont want them.

• The mod role will stay we always need humans to ultimately step in for certain things, but hopefully with less pressure.

Thats all for now folks, rough day, did not go to plan haha.

Jab

ADMIN NOTE - Fixed

FIRST EVER COMPLAIN:

Why show cog next to topic if I can't do anything?!

Jab

ADMIN NOTE Fixed

Bookmarks seems to be broken - clicking the right upper corner the start ends with
in lower left corner and empty box

// This also need proper theming on dark mode it seems as it looks like a combo of 3 different styles.
The style selector also could go - I would bundle it all into that ThemeSwitcher-extras-toggle - people changes theme like once and they never do it again, no need to have 4 icons dedicated to this and this would. Tbh I would move everything to some kinda of sub-menu - karma, styles, etc.

david3

It would be nice if the "More themes" icon on the top would let you select from all of the themes, without having to go back into the profile and enter your password to change back to the old ones.

Is there a way to get a flat view of the forum posts with the vBulletin themes? It's a nice theme, but awkward having it only by category. Clicking on "Discussions" just brings you back to Categories.

SocksAreComfortable

I demand purchasable items in the Karma store! Maybe a yeti?

Jab

@david3 said:
It would be nice if the "More themes" icon on the top would let you select from all of the themes, without having to go back into the profile and enter your password to change back to the old ones.

Works for me, must be you (or cache) problem. I can switch all the themes without giving password.

david3

@Jab said:

@david3 said:
It would be nice if the "More themes" icon on the top would let you select from all of the themes, without having to go back into the profile and enter your password to change back to the old ones.

Works for me, must be you (or cache) problem. I can switch all the themes without giving password.

I cleared the cache and LES cookies and logged in again, still the same for me. It just has the vBulletin themes.

Jab

I also have no idea what Hide Show LES links from this list does.
It changes nothing for me except the order in Trending Today

david3

@david3 said:

@Jab said:

@david3 said:
It would be nice if the "More themes" icon on the top would let you select from all of the themes, without having to go back into the profile and enter your password to change back to the old ones.

Works for me, must be you (or cache) problem. I can switch all the themes without giving password.

I cleared the cache and LES cookies and logged in again, still the same for me. It just has the vBulletin themes.

I see, I still have to go to the profile to switch to the old themes, but it doesn't require the password now.

Jab

ADMIN NOTE: Fixed

Drafts seems to be gone, I can't remove this text that forum auto-saved and it's here every damn time I try to complain more.
HELP.

Two links in profile edit are dead - missing current logged user in URL
https://lowendspirit.com/profile/signature
https://lowendspirit.com/profile/quotes

should be
https://lowendspirit.com/profile/signature/Jab
etc.

Alyx

The provider profile is a really cool idea.
But omg, please reconsider the fact that everything is an glowing animated annoyance 😭

Jab

@AlyxUser said: But omg, please reconsider the fact that everything is an glowing animated annoyance 😭

You can adjust that in Karma flair - from full 80 vibes to just colors to nothing

AnthonySmith

Guys, lots of things are still broken, I am working on it, I appreciate the bug reports, though.

Jab

@AnthonySmithPlatinum said: Guys, lots of things are still broken, I am working on it, I appreciate the bug reports, though.

Testing on production, true Low End spirit. Respect

AnthonySmith

@AlyxUser said: The provider profile is a really cool idea.
But omg, please reconsider the fact that everything is an glowing animated annoyance 😭

please read the 2nd of 2 sentences on the post you replied to

@AnthonySmithPlatinum said: the karma toggle is on the top right @Not_Oles, as I know the flashing mortally wounds you.

Alyx

Thanks, that is better.
Tho maybe still worth an consideration to have a little more moderate default 🫣

Also, that I need to click the toggle 4 times, each time connected to a page reload just to turn it off is still pretty bad UX.

AnthonySmith

@Alyx said:
Thanks, that is better.
Tho maybe still worth an consideration to have a little more moderate default 🫣

Also, that I need to click the toggle 4 times, each time connected to a page reload just to turn it off is still pretty bad IX.

There are 4 different levels to pick from, you only need to do it once ever, I figured it was not worth the concern of ajax for the sake of this given the overall scope.

Hitori0221

That’s quite a lot change!

AnthonySmith

@david3 said:
It would be nice if the "More themes" icon on the top would let you select from all of the themes, without having to go back into the profile and enter your password to change back to the old ones.

Is there a way to get a flat view of the forum posts with the vBulletin themes? It's a nice theme, but awkward having it only by category. Clicking on "Discussions" just brings you back to Categories.

going to make a blue version of the classic theme, I really like it too but would prefer it with standard vanilla.

I started writing a MASSIVE post about all the changes and the explinations but then memcached screwed me and it turned out the php 7>8 was not as simple as I first thought, because I am an idiot and used docker locally and on dev but not here and did not perfectly match versions.

Now I have to go help a friend, so we will need to live with almost working for a while and I will finish that post when I get back.

I probably should have backed out instead of spending 3 hours troubleshooting... but I am stubborn haha.

AnthonySmith

I am aware of the annoying drafts issue, working on it.

MichaelCee

Hello LES!

Not_Oles

LES v2! Yaaay!

Not_Oles

Chrome browser screenshot,150% zoom (myopia + astigmatism + mature cataracts):

Falzo

Which color do you want?

@AnthonySmith : YES

Wonder_Woman

Tried to post this way earlier and got an error. Trying again now.

yoursunny

Greetings v2.

iOS layout needs work: logo overlaps the menu button; modal dialog exceeds left edge.

_MS_

AnthonySmith

Thanks for all the feedback, will grab my iPhone and iPad tomorrow and check things out, dunno why I never thought of that, assuming they even still power on haha.

I will continue with my what's changed post for tonight just got home and need a rest first.

AnthonySmith

@Not_Oles said:
Chrome browser screenshot,150% zoom (myopia + astigmatism + mature cataracts):

I will get that sorted

tentor

Btw, how does new karma or whatever system works? Why this comment has 4 points but only 2 thanked persons?

arirang

What's the gradation on the posts?
Where's the tutorial? I dont get the new features.