RESET

Hello and a warm welcome to all of our new members! We're thrilled to have you join our community. This server is geared towards art and music production, but we like to consider it an open content creation community and hangout. Got art? Share that shit! We want to see it!

Please, take some time to introduce yourself to the community — share a bit about yourself, your interests, and what brings you here.

Before you dive in, please take a moment to read through our server rules below. We want everyone to have a great time here, and following the guidelines helps create a positive environment for everyone.

We're excited to have you here, and we can't wait to get to know you better. Enjoy your stay!

/SERVER RULES

1. Treat Others With Respect Don't be a jerk. Treat other members with the same basic respect and courtesy you would expect in return. If you have to ask what this means, this may not be the server for you.
2. Keep Your Profile Appropriate Please keep usernames, profile pictures, bios, statuses, and other profile content appropriate for the community. Racist, Nazi, extremist, or otherwise hateful content is not permitted.
3. No Spamming Please do not spam messages, images, mentions, reactions, or other content. Keep conversations readable and be respectful of everyone's time.
4. No Sexual Harassment or Unwanted Sexual Content Do not sexually harass, pressure, or otherwise make other members uncomfortable. This includes unsolicited requests for nudes, sexual messages, images, or other inappropriate content sent publicly or through DMs. Consent matters. If someone has not invited that kind of interaction, don't send it.
5. Keep Self-Promotion in Designated Channels Please keep self-promotion, works-in-progress (WIPs), demos, commissions, services, projects, and similar content within the designated promotional channels. This helps keep the rest of the server focused and organized.
6. Do Not Share Personal Information Without Consent Never share another person's private or personal information without their explicit permission. This includes real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, private accounts, photographs, or other identifying information. Violations of this rule will result in an immediate ban. No exceptions.
7. No Hate Speech or Harmful Language Racism, homophobia, transphobia, slurs, discrimination, or other hateful or demeaning language will not be tolerated. Use common sense and treat people with dignity and respect.
8. No Political or Religious Arguments Political and religious discussions are not permitted in this server. These topics have a tendency to create unnecessary conflict, so please keep them elsewhere.
9. Keep NSFW Content and Discussions to a Minimum Please use good judgment when discussing or sharing mature topics. Keep the General channel safe and comfortable for everyone, and avoid posting unnecessary NSFW content. When in doubt, consider whether it actually needs to be posted.
10. Use Common Sense These rules are not intended to cover every possible situation. Please use your best judgment and consider how your behavior may affect the rest of the community. Staff reserve the right to address behavior that is clearly disruptive, inappropriate, or harmful even if it is not explicitly listed above.

Bottom line: Be respectful, use common sense, and help make this a community people actually enjoy being part of.

/NAVIGATION

The three bars in the top corner hold everything: your profile, themes, pins, the player, live chat, notifications, moderation, refresh and sign-out. Tap a chat to open it. On a phone, the arrow at the top left takes you back to the list.

/PUBLIC

Channels beginning with a slash are open to everyone with an account. You don't join them — they're simply there when you sign in, and anything posted stays for whoever arrives next. Tap the i beside a channel's name to see what it's for.

/PRIVATE

The PRIVATE tab holds your one-to-one and group chats. Only the people in them can read them. Hit + NEW to start one:

• Direct — type someone's username
• Group — name it, then list usernames separated by commas

/SEND

Type at the bottom and press Enter. Messages appear on everyone's screen immediately — no refreshing. A chat opens on the newest message; LOAD OLDER at the top fetches further back.

Several messages from the same person within a minute are grouped together, so a burst reads as one turn rather than a stack of repeated names.

Hover a message, or tap it on a phone, and a small + appears at the end of it. Press that for REPORT, REACT and REPLY, plus PIN in public channels and EDIT and DELETE on your own. Edited messages carry a small "edited" marker, so nobody can quietly rewrite something after you've read it. Delete asks twice.

A reply shows the message it answers above it — tap that to jump back to the original, which flashes briefly so you don't lose your place. Hover any reaction to see who left it.

/ATTACHMENTS

The picture button attaches an image, GIF, video or audio file, and you can paste one straight into the box instead. Audio arrives with a player: play, pause and a seek bar. Photos are resized on the way up; GIFs, video and audio are left untouched, so those have size limits — 5MB for GIFs, 50MB for video, 25MB for audio.

/EMOJI

The face button opens the picker, with ten categories including TEXTMOJI for text faces. Your keyboard's own emoji work too. Reactions can be any emoji, not a fixed set — press REACT for the quick options, or open the full picker from there.

/THEMES

THEMES in the menu changes the colours and nothing else. DEFAULT is mint on black, MSDOS is white on black with no colour at all, and AMBER is the old phosphor monitor look. Your choice is remembered on this device.

/SURFAMP

SURFAMP in the menu opens the player as a window. Close it with the × and the music keeps playing — reopen it from the menu whenever you want the controls back. It loads the first time you open it and stays loaded after that, so you return to the same track where you left it.

/LIVE

LIVE opens a real-time voice, video and screen-sharing room inside Surfchat. It's a separate system to the chat around it, built on a direct browser-to-browser connection rather than a server.

It needs at least two people. Because the connection is made directly between participants, nothing starts while you're the only one there — there is no second party to connect to. The room will simply sit idle. As soon as somebody else opens LIVE, the connection is negotiated automatically and you'll see and hear each other. If you're first, leave it open and wait, or arrange a time with someone in the chat.

Three controls sit along the top of the room:

• Microphone — turn your voice on or off
• Camera — turn your video on or off
• Screen — share what's on your screen with the room

All three start switched off, and your browser will ask permission the first time you use each one. Files can be shared from inside the room as well, and are encrypted before they're sent.

Nothing said in LIVE is stored anywhere. Messages exist only in the browsers of the people present and are gone the moment everyone leaves — so it isn't the place for anything you'll want to find later, and Surfchat's moderators can't see or recover it. The room stays connected while you're back in the chat, so you can move between the two without dropping out.

/PINS

In a public channel, open a message's + and choose PIN to keep it. Private chats can't be pinned — the pin board is visible to everyone with an account. Pinned messages appear under PINS in the menu, showing which channel they came from and who pinned them. Whoever pinned it can unpin it, and so can a moderator.

This matters: messages are cleared after 90 days, public and private alike. Pinned messages are kept indefinitely, so anything worth holding on to should be pinned.

/LEAVING

In a private chat, the ⋯ next to USERS lets you leave a group or delete a one-to-one for both people. Leaving takes only you out and leaves the conversation for everyone else; deleting removes it and every message in it, permanently.

/BLOCKING

Open someone's profile and tap BLOCK to stop seeing them. Their messages disappear from channels for you, any one-to-one between you closes, and neither of you can message the other. They aren't told. Your list of blocked people is in your own profile under EDIT, with an unblock button beside each.

/USERS

The list shows who's here now and, below that, everyone else with an account. In your profile you can set yourself ONLINE, AWAY or OFFLINE — choosing offline hides you from the online list while you carry on reading normally. Your choice shows on your profile.

/MENTIONS

Type @ and a few letters to bring up a list of handles, then Enter or Tab to pick one. Being mentioned always notifies you, even in a chat you're already reading, and mentions of you are highlighted so they're easy to find when scrolling back.

/NOTIFY

Tap NOTIFY in the menu to let Surfchat alert you. You'll only be interrupted when the window isn't focused, or when it is but you're reading a different chat — never for the chat you're already looking at, and never for your own messages.

ALERTS controls what's allowed to raise a full notification while the tab isn't focused — tap to cycle through ALL, MENTIONS only, or REPLIES only. Being mentioned always gets through whichever is chosen.

Unread counts show on the chat and on the browser tab. Private messages get a bright ! so they stand out from channel traffic. The speaker button mutes the notification sound, and both choices are remembered on this device.

Notifications need Surfchat running somewhere: a background tab is fine, fully closed is not.

/PROFILE

Tap PROFILE in the menu to edit yours, or click anyone's name — in the users list or beside their messages — to see theirs.

Add a picture, write whatever you like in BIO, and put your socials under LINKS. Your picture shows next to everything you post.

A banner sits across the top of your profile — a still image or an animated one, 1200 × 400 works best. You can also pick a colour for your username, or two if you want it to fade from one to the other. Very dark colours are refused, since they'd be unreadable against the black.

/REPORTING

Open the + on anyone else's message and choose REPORT. A moderator sees it; the person reported doesn't learn who reported them.

There's also a word filter and limits on how fast you can post — if a message is refused, it will tell you why.

/ROLES

You may see small coloured badges beneath someone's name on their profile — ARTIST, PRODUCER, and so on. They're labels the server hands out, and they're decoration: a badge carries no special powers.

/HOME

HOME and SURFAMP in the menu lead back out to skinsurf.net. UPDATE reloads Surfchat, which is worth trying first if anything ever looks stuck.

/ACCOUNT

Your username is how people find you — 3 to 16 characters, using letters, numbers and underscores. Your email is only for getting you back in if you forget your password. Tap the eye in any password box to check what you've typed.

Forgotten it? On the SIGN IN tab, enter your email and hit Forgot your password? for a reset link.

Install it

On a phone, use your browser's Add to Home Screen. It opens fullscreen with its own icon, like any other app.