RESET

This server primarily serves as a general space for content creation and community interaction. Whether you create art, music, or something else entirely, you're welcome to share your work here.

When you have a moment, please introduce yourself to the community. Tell us a little about yourself, your interests, and what brought you here.

Before participating, 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. Please 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, voice chat, notifications, moderation, update and sign-out. Tap a chat to open it.

On a phone you can also swipe between the three panels:

• Swipe right in a chat — back to your list of chats
• Swipe left in a chat — the list of who's here
• Swipe right in the users list — back to the chat

The buttons still work exactly as before — the arrow at the top left and USERS at the top right do the same things. Swiping is just quicker with one hand.

/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.

Hold Shift and press Enter for a new line instead of sending. The box grows as you write and shrinks back once the message is gone.

While somebody is writing, a line under the conversation says so. It only reaches the people in that chat, and nothing about it is stored.

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.

Every message has a small + at the end of it — on a phone it's always there, on a computer it appears when you hover. Press it for the actions. 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.

/FORMATTING

Markers at the start of a line change its size. Each needs a space after it, so #1 on the list and a bare - are left alone.

• # Heading — largest
• ## Heading — medium
• ### Heading — small
• -# Heading — smaller than normal text, and dimmed

Asterisks around words change how they read. They have to sit against the text, so 2 * 3 = 6 stays as typed.

• *word* — italic
• **word** — bold
• ***word*** — both

These combine. A heading can hold bold, and bold can hold italic inside it. Links, @handles and custom emoji keep working inside any of them.

/me followed by something prints an action rather than a line of speech — /me goes to the store appears as your name and what you're doing, in italics, with no avatar or timestamp beside it. It's the old IRC way of describing something happening rather than saying it.

An emoji sent on its own, with no words, is drawn larger. Put one in a sentence and it stays the size of the words around it.

/ATTACHMENTS

The picture button attaches an image, GIF, video, audio file or a zip, and you can paste one straight into the box instead. Archives arrive as a card showing the name and size — tap it to download. Select several pictures at once — up to six — and they're sent as a single row you can tap through, rather than six separate messages. 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. RECENT comes first — the last fourteen you used — then CUSTOM, then the ordinary categories including TEXTMOJI for text faces. Your keyboard's own emoji work too.

Reactions can be any emoji, not a fixed set. REACT shows eight to start with, led by the ones you actually use; the … beside them opens the full picker on your recents.

Custom emoji are pictures added to this chat. Type them between colons — :name: — in a message, or use one as a reaction. Anyone can use them; only moderators and admins can add them, through EMOJI UPLOAD in the menu. Still pictures are scaled down automatically; animated GIFs are kept as they are and so have to be small to begin with.

/DISPLAY

DISPLAY in the menu holds two sliders: the size of chat text, and how much space sits around messages. A sample under them changes as you drag, so you can judge it without closing the panel. RESET puts both back.

Both are kept on this device only. Nobody else sees what you choose, and choosing a huge size doesn't shout at anyone but you. Headings and enlarged emoji scale along with it rather than ignoring it.

/THEMES

THEMES in the menu changes the colours and nothing else — everything stays exactly where it was. Eight to pick from:

• DEFAULT — white on black, no colour at all
• SKINSURF — mint on black
• AMBER — the old phosphor monitor look
• INVERTED — black on white
• COLORBLOCK — turquoise, mustard and magenta
• COMMODORE — cream on blue
• HOTPINK — pink on black
• MOONSWORLD — cream on purple
• FRUTIGER — Cybr Corp. Exclusive. Glass and water, the Aero look
• FRUTIGER PINK — Frutiger Aero, but cute. The same glass, lit pink
• METALHEART — chrome and smoked glass, the Y2K look
• DIAMONDHEART — gdiamond exclusive. The same, lit green
• DIAMONDHEART-2 — gdiamond exclusive. The same again, in teal

Your choice is remembered on the device you set it on, so your phone and your computer can look different if you want.

/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.

/VOICE CHAT

VOICE CHAT opens a real-time voice, video and screen-sharing room inside Surfnet. The menu shows how many people currently have it open, so you can see at a glance whether anyone's there. 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 VOICE CHAT, 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 VOICE CHAT 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 Surfnet'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 and allow notifications when your browser asks. Without that nothing can reach you, whatever else is set.

You're never interrupted for the chat you're already looking at, and never for your own messages.

/ALERTS

ALERTS in the menu opens a panel with two separate settings, because channels and private messages are different problems.

Public channels — everyone with an account can see them, so one message reaches everybody. Three choices:

• Every message — every message in every channel. Busy.
• Only when named — just when somebody types your @name. This is the default, and it's the one most people want.
• Never — no channel alerts at all.

Private messages — every message, or never. Somebody writing to you directly is usually worth knowing about, so this starts switched on.

One difference worth knowing: if you silence private messages, being @named still gets through, because that's somebody addressing you directly. Silencing a channel silences it completely — that's the point of switching it off.

These are kept on the device you set them on, so your phone and your laptop can behave differently.

/UNREAD

Unread counts show on the chat and on the browser tab. When a private message is waiting, the PRIVATE tab flashes until you open it — channels don't do this, since a tab blinking all day is one you stop noticing.

The speaker button in the menu mutes the notification sound, remembered on this device.

/WHEN THE APP IS CLOSED

Notifications reach you even with Surfnet fully closed, as long as you've allowed them. Your ALERTS choices still apply.

On iPhone and iPad this only works if you add Surfnet to your home screen. Apple doesn't allow notifications for an ordinary Safari tab. Use the share button, then Add to Home Screen, and open it from there. Android and desktop work either way.

If you've been away a while and something looks out of date, the app checks for what it missed when you come back to it. UPDATE in the menu forces a full reload if anything ever looks stuck.

/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.

Paste a link in your bio and it comes alive: a YouTube video, a Spotify track or album, a SoundCloud track, a Tenor or Giphy GIF, or a direct link to a picture all appear on your profile. The first one shows as a player; any others stay as links.

You can also place things exactly where you want them with tags:

• [img]https://…/picture.png[/img] — a picture, as many as you like
• [b]bold[/b], [i]italic[/i], [u]underlined[/u]

Picture addresses have to start with https. Anything else, or a tag that isn't closed, simply shows as the text you typed.

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.

/UPDATE

UPDATE in the menu reloads Surfnet, 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.

On iPhone and iPad it's also the only way to get notifications while Surfnet is closed, so it's worth doing.