Groups.io Updates

@groups.io

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The official channel for updates to https://groups.io, the leading email groups hosting service.

Changes to the site this week: July 14, 2026: NEW: Paid membership support early-access has launched. July 16, 2026: API NEW: Added the /updatetopic endpoint to update a topic's subject and hashtags, moderation, locked and sticky states, and reply-to setting. API NEW: Added a machine-readable Groups.io API skill guide at /api/SKILLS.md. CHANGE: "Group Profile" sidebar now opens the editable form. CHANGE: Empty profile fields become actionable on your own profile; there is now a muted "+ Add" link next to each. CHANGE: In Settings, added a note next to the existing profile-sync note - _"Custom fields defined by a group (for example Organisation or Job Title) do not appear here — they live on each group's own profile. To fill them in… Subscription > Group Profile … Edit Group Profile."_ CHANGE: Added help text under "Viewable In A Member's Profile" — "When checked, members can view and fill in this field on their own group profile (Subscription > Group Profile). When unchecked, only moderators can see or edit it." DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History July 17, 2026: CHANGE: Merged Stephane Fillod's French translations. Thanks Stephane! CHANGE: Updated all translations and corrected several issues. CHANGE: The Ask feature now respects commands to only search messages/files/etc as well as better date handling. CHANGE: When someone changes their RSVP to "Will Not Attend," they're now prompted for the comment right in the confirmation dialog, so collecting a reason for not attending works naturally. CHANGE: Previously, changing an event response could silently erase a member's earlier comment. Comments now carry over. CHANGE: There's a new per-event option, "Attendee comments are visible to all members." With it checked, everyone in the group can see the comments on the event's Responses page - useful for coordinating who's bringing what, or who's filling which position or location. Left unchecked, comments stay visible only to the event organizers, as today. BUGFIX: For format=flowed text emails, we would strip trailing spaces after the -- signature delimiter. I am on vacation next week. The next #changelog will be published on July 31, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: July 6, 2026: INTERNAL: Improved our processes for ad-hoc blocking of ASNs responsible for abusive crawlers, as well as our monitoring systems for such attacks. July 7, 2026: ADMIN: Changed our SPF records from ~all to -all. July 8, 2026: NEW: Added an improved Enterprise group onboarding system. July 10, 2026: CHANGE: Much improved Ask feature: It now searches attachments, wikis, photos, files, events You can have more of a conversation with it, because it remembers what you've talked about earlier in the conversation Results are streamed as they are generated You can now easily copy an answer and also send an answer to your group Query counts are tracked and displayed on the Billing page as well as in Analytics NEW: Added new Billing Information fields to include information in invoices. The fields are accessible on the Billing page: Legal Name Billing Address Tax ID The next #changelog will be published on July 17, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: June 23, 2026: BUGFIX: Include display name if we have it in pending member notifications. beta.groups.io API BUGFIX: The /updateevent and /updaterepeatevent API endpoints were more strict in their permissions enforcement than they should have been. Also fixed the error return on inadequate permissions. beta.groups.io CHANGE: Merged Spanish language translations from luiscarlos2000. I am on vacation through next week. The next #changelog will be published on July 10, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: June 19, 2026: NEW: Add organizer attendee-management actions to the View RSVPs page. Lets event organizers remove attendees, change a member's guest count, and edit RSVP comments from the View RSVPs page. Brings along RSVP-removed and guests-changed notification emails, new activity-log entries, and guest-count invalid/over-capacity flash messages. Short week next week. The next #changelog will be published on June 23, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: June 1, 2026: BUGFIX: Monthly guidelines didn't get sent out because of malformed database query. June 3, 2026: INTERNAL: Stripe webhook hardening June 4, 2026: INTERNAL: Upgraded the jQuery library. BUGFIX: SSO/SAML login validation (accessType + org mismatch checks) BUGFIX: Calendar ICS feed correctly reflecting rescheduled recurring events from changes received from Outlook emails I am on vacation next week. The next #changelog will be published on June 19, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 27, 2026: BUGFIX: Setting 'Disable Signup' to true for enterprise groups prevented invites from working via the website. May 29, 2026: BUGFIX: For some Enterprise SSO options, the SSO Domain text field was not showing up in the /enterprise settings page. BUGFIX: Went through all the delete confirmation dialogs, ensuring the verbiage and button text/color/icons were consistent. BUGFIX: Improved error handling for invalid and empty email aliases. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: Unbanning a domain didn't work. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on June 5, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 17, 2026: BUGFIX: Several small fixes to how we handle push notifications and the process of renewing/rotating them. BUGFIX: Pasting plain text containing blank lines into the message composition window stripped the blank lines, losing paragraph separation; pastes also broke out of surrounding inline formatting (bold, italic, font, color). beta.groups.io May 18, 2026: BUGFIX: Image upload to wiki pages was broken in the app. May 22, 2026: NEW: We now support ACH payments for group hosting fees. The next #changelog will be published on May 29, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 13, 2026: BUGFIX: Accepting an invite to a subgroup would bypass approval to the main group if the main group was restricted. [beta.groups.io](https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/119285274 May 15, 2026: CHANGE: Tightened up the spacing of the recent topics display in the group home page. BUGFIX: Improved search of email addresses in activity logs. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on May 22, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 5, 2026: BUGFIX: The date pickers for the Custom Range in the Analytics page weren't working. BUGFIX: The editor was not shrinking after expanding and then having text deleted. BUGFIX: The /ask page on mobile had the bottom navbar obscuring the input field. May 6, 2026: BUGFIX: Fixed a couple of issues that could cause drafts to not be saved properly on iOS when there are multiple images. beta.groups.io May 8, 2026: BUGFIX: Cancelling a Photo upload in progress and then trying to navigate elsewhere caused a navigation bug. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: Uploading more than 5 files at once would cause extra upload notifications. beta.groups.io NEW: You can now delete pending subscriptions, similar to how you can delete pending messages. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on May 15, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: April 27, 2026: BUGFIX: Back button on mobile returns to the correct page between /topics and /messages. beta.groups.io April 29, 2026: BUGFIX: The Groups icon in the bottom mobile navbar was not functional. May 1, 2026: BUGFIX: Return to the current photo after editing it. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: Return to the files search results page after moving a file. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: When muting a topic, we weren't deleting any pending digest messages. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on May 7, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: April 20, 2026: BUGFIX: Fixed timeout issue with /ask taking too long April 24, 2026: CHANGE: Merged French translation updates CHANGE: Mobile/app improvements: Back button nav on most pages Removed breadcrumbs and moved the page title, group name, and search icon into the navbar Improved group home page Smoother transitions between pages Native date and time pickers Improved /groups page Improved /feed page Improved /topics page Improved /calendar page Hide the navbar on scroll on some pages /groups button on the bottom navbar for easy navigation Better display of image attachments in messages CHANGE: Chat improvements: better handling of video, thumbnail shows up immediately grouping of messages by same person typing indicator emoji picker swipe to reply added haptics on the app (vibrations) file attachments improved user name picker, displays avatars and names, does substring matching, displays the username as a pill in messages CHANGE: General UI improvements: Form restyling Panel heading restyling The next #changelog will be published on May 1, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: April 14, 2026: BUGFIX: Fixed handling MHT attachments in the web post editor. April 15, 2026: BUGFIX: Cancelling single event instances of a repeating event via email sometimes did not correctly update the database, leading to the cancelled event not being represented in the ICS file. The next #changelog will be published on April 24, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: March 30, 2026: BUGFIX: If a message hashtag had multiple # characters, we did not properly parse it. March 31, 2026: BUGFIX: In the top level /topics page, thumbnails from groups that had subgroups were broken. BUGFIX: When viewing a single page Help Center manual, sometimes clicking on a link would scroll slightly past the subject. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: In the wiki, links in the table of contents could scroll slightly past the header. beta.groups.io April 2, 2026: BUGFIX: If someone accepted an invitation to a subgroup, and that caused them to be added to the parent group as well, an activity log entry was not added for the parent group. API: Added new /getmessage endpoint. April 3, 2026: BUGFIX: In the group billing page, make it more clear which invoices were paid fully by sponsorship reserves. I will be on vacation next week. Responses to support requests will be delayed during that time. The next #changelog will be published on April 17, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: March 27, 2026: BUGFIX: Fixing more instances of double slashes in Files section activity log entries and notifications. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: If a past member rejoins/reapplies to a group, copy any existing moderator notes to the new subscription. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: Escape periods in activity log searches, so they aren't interpreted as field separators. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: Fix group hashtags duration display. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on April 3, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: March 17, 2026: CHANGE: The /topics page now displays thumbnail images similar to the group topics page. CHANGE: The default page when first going to groups.io is now the /topics page, not the /feed page. CHANGE: The mobile version of the /topics page now shows your groups as a horizontal scroll at the top, similar to the /feed page CHANGE: Various formatting tweaks to the /topcs and /feed pages. March 19, 2026: BUGFIX: Fix a double encoding issue when trying to view some Files that contained spaces. March 20, 2026: BUGFIX: When moving a file from the top level in the Files section, the Activity log entry would have a double slash //. This bug fix only applies to new activity log entries. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on March 27, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: March 12, 2026: NEW: Added a calendar date picker to make it easy to jump to a specific day. NEW: Added event search to the group and user calendar pages to search for events. March 13, 2026: BUGFIX: Cancelled instances of repeating events will now show as grey in the calendar. BUGFIX: When viewing a cancelled instance, the Edit button is now removed, and it more prominently says 'This event has been cancelled'. BUGFIX: Cancelled instances were not being represented as cancelled in the ICS feeds. That's been fixed as well. The next #changelog will be published on March 20, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: March 3, 2026: NEW: Add GrowthZone SSO support. March 6, 2026: CHANGE: When banning a domain, display a success banner. Moved the Ban Domain input field to the top of the page. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: When banning a member, keep any existing member notes. Also, in the Members page with the ban filter, show the notes icon for any banned members with notes. beta.groups.io API BUGFIX: Updating extra_member_data_columns in the /updategroup endpoint didn't work. API NEW: Added new endpoint updateextramembercolumndef which modifies the properties of a single column (name, choices, description, etc.) without sending the full columns array. API NEW: Added new endpoint updateextramembercolumn which updates a single member's extra member data value for one column. CHANGE: Merged Dutch language changes. The next #changelog will be published on March 12, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: February 17, 2026: CHANGE: Calendar ICS files now only include events more recent than one year ago. Previously, all events in the calendar were included. February 18, 2026: BUGFIX: In the Activity Log, display the subject line of messages sent to +owner addresses from banned domains. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on February 27, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: February 10, 2026: BUGFIX: For repeating calendar entries with a fixed number of instances, if the starting date/time was changed, there was a possibility that not all of the individual instances of that event would be shown on the website. NEW: Preliminary support for using Memberclicks for SSO authentication. February 13, 2026: CHANGE: Updated the Change Email help video to reflect the new change email process. NEW: Added preliminary versions of help videos for the Calendar, Photos, Files, Database, and Wiki sections. The next #changelog will be published on February 20, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: February 2, 2026: CHANGE: The Analytics page is now accessible to all moderators, not just moderators that have the billing permission. February 3, 2026: CHANGE: The Analytics page now allows arbitrary date range selection, instead of just the last 30 days. BUGFIX: The Top Hashtags display in the Analytics page would miss some hashtags. This fix is forward-looking. New messages will have their hashtags tracked correctly. February 4, 2026: BUGFIX: We now prevent the case where, if you have two windows open editing the same draft, one window could overwrite the other's changes. February 5, 2026: CHANGE: Changed the change email address flow, so that you can still log in using your old email address until the new email address has been confirmed. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on February 13, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Hi All, I've just revamped the flow for changing your email address. Hopefully it addresses the concerns expressed recently and makes things more understandable and forgiving. Here's how it now works. Changing Your Email Address When you change your email address on Groups.io, the change doesn't happen immediately. Instead, we use a confirmation process to verify that you own the new email address and to protect your account from unauthorized changes. How It Works Step 1: Request the Change From your Account Settings page, enter your new email address and submit the form. This creates a pending email change request. Step 2: Check Both Inboxes Two emails are sent: To your NEW email address: A confirmation email with a link you must click to verify you own this address To your OLD email address: A notification letting you know that an email change was requested (for security awareness) Step 3: Confirm the Change Click the confirmation link in the email sent to your new address. This verifies that you have access to the new email and completes the change. Once confirmed: Your account email is updated to the new address All your group subscriptions are updated automatically You'll use the new email to log in going forward Important Details Your Old Login Still Works: You still login with your old email address until you confirm your new email address. Expiration: Pending email change requests expire after 7 days. If you don't confirm within this time, you'll need to submit a new request. One at a Time: You can only have one pending email change at a time. Starting a new request cancels any previous pending request. Cancel Anytime: You can cancel a pending request from your Account Settings page before it's confirmed. Resend Confirmation: If you didn't receive the confirmation email, you can resend it from your Account Settings page (as long as the request hasn't expired). Case Changes: You can change just the capitalization of your email address (for example, from "john.doe@example.com" to "John.Doe@example.com") using this same process. Security Features The confirmation link contains a secure, randomly-generated code that cannot be guessed Your old email address is notified of any change request, so you'll know if someone else tries to change your email After confirming an email change, data exports are temporarily blocked for 24 hours as an additional security measure If the confirmation email bounces (is undeliverable), the pending change remains but cannot be completed until a valid email is provided If You Don't Receive the Confirmation Email Check your spam/junk folder Make sure you entered the correct email address Try the "Resend" button on your Account Settings page If problems persist, contact support Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: January 30, 2026: CHANGE: Updated the list of attachment extensions that we do not allow in emails, based on the list of attachment extensions that Gmail doesn't accept. The complete list is: .ade, .adp, .apk, .appx, .appxbundle, .bat, .cab, .chm, .cmd, .com, .cpl, .diagcab, .diagcfg, .diagpkg, .dll, .dmg, .ex, .ex_, .exe, .hta, .img, .ins, .iso, .isp, .jar, .jnlp, .js, .jse, .lib, .lnk, .mde, .mjs, .msc, .msi, .msix, .msixbundle, .msp, .mst, .nsh, .pif, .ps1, .scr, .sct, .shb, .sys, .vb, .vbe, .vbs, .vhd, .vxd, .wsc, .wsf, .wsh, .xll. These are also checked inside compressed archives (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz, .rar). NEW: Photo albums can now have sub-albums. BUGFIX: Deleted events still were represented in ICS feed files, but with STATUS:CANCELLED. This did not cause them to be removed from subscribing calendars. Now we don't include deleted events in ICS feeds. The next #changelog will be published on February 6, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: January 23, 2026: BUGFIX: In some instances, it appeared that a user was able to edit a locked event. When they tried to do so, the system prevented it, but it was still confusing. The next #changelog will be published on January 30, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: January 15, 2026: CHANGE: On the group promote page, removed Twitter and Facebook and added Bluesky and LinkedIn. CHANGE: Added wiki search to the /Ask feature. BUGFIX: Downloading past members isn't currently supported, so I've removed the Download button when viewing past members. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: Ensure the Unfollow button is displayed after replying to a message, when your subscription is to Follow Only + Auto Follow Replies. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on January 23, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: January 5, 2026: BUGFIX: In some instances of groups with lots of files or photos, the export group function would time out. January 8, 2026: CHANGE: Remove photo album description from admin email notifications. beta.groups.io CHANGE: Changed Manage Chats button to Manage Chat Members. beta.groups.io CHANGE: Changed digest and summary From lines from the group email address to instead be the group name plus "Digest" or "Summary". beta.groups.io January 9, 2026: NEW: Added 'Send as Special Notice' checkbox when composing replies, for mods/owners. BUGFIX: When adding/removing a member data image or database image, we would sometimes mix up which bucket to track the space used by it. beta.groups.io The next #changelog will be published on January 16, 2026. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: December 16, 2025: BUGFIX: In a repeating event in the calendar, if a single event had been deleted and then the repeating event was updated, the original single event was sometimes recreated. December 19, 2025: NEW: Groups now have a Two-Factor Authentication Policy setting to enforce the use of two-factor authentication by moderators and/or members. I will be on vacation the next couple of weeks. Support responses will be delayed during that time. The next #changelog will be published on January 8, 2025. I hope you have a good holiday season. Thank you for using Groups.io. Mark
Hi All, I've added a new group setting: Two-Factor Authentication Policy. It's described as "Choose who in this group is required to have two-factor authentication enabled" and has the following options: No requirement Required for moderators and owners Required for all members This setting is only available on standalone and parent groups; subgroups inherit the setting from their parent. The default is "No requirement." Owners must have 2FA enabled before they can change this setting. Additionally, users cannot disable their own 2FA if they belong to a group that requires it. This policy is only enforced on the website. If a user belongs to a group that requires 2FA, they will be redirected to a page explaining this, with the option to either set up 2FA or unsubscribe from the group. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: December 10, 2025: NEW: Premium groups can now add additional storage in 50GB chunks, for $5/month or $55/year. December 12, 2025: CHANGE: Updated the formatting and display of the group storage elements. beta.groups.io BUGFIX: In some instances, cancelling a single instance of a repeating event in the calendar generated a CANCEL ICS file that Outlook would use to remove all instances of the event. CHANGE: Updated the translations. The next #changelog will be published on December 19, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hi All, Premium groups can now purchase additional storage. You may add 50 GB blocks for $5/month or $55/year. To do so, go to Admin → Preferences → Billing. As a reminder, photos, files, and images all count toward your group’s storage quota. Premium groups can view their current usage under Admin → Preferences → Billing. Free groups can view it under Admin → Preferences → Upgrade. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: December 1, 2025: CHANGE: Drafts are now automatically deleted after 90 days of inactivity, instead of the previous 14 days. December 5, 2025: DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History CHANGE: Added a Show Password button to the New Password field on the user settings page. https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/40029 CHANGE: Changed location to Original Location in the group member page. https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/40009 The next #changelog will be published on December 12, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: November 25, 2025: BUGFIX: In the Files section, if a file was moved from the search results page, the path would be missing in email notifications and activity log entries. BUGFIX: When an account is banned from the system, all pending messages associated with that account should also be removed. CHANGE: In the Sessions page, include the date/time the session started. Also, for Firefox users, we cannot tell if they are on Windows 10 or 11, so display "Windows 10/11" instead. CHANGE: In the User Settings sidebar, include a link to the Sessions page. The next #changelog will be published on December 5, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
I spent most of the week working on internal upgrades. Changes to the site this week: November 17, 2025: CHANGE: With posts received via email, we now convert all HEIC images to JPEG. There is still not good support for viewing HEIC images in browsers other than Safari. BUGFIX: In the Files section, the Update File dialog allowed multiple files to be uploaded. The next #changelog will be published on November 28, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
I continue to spend most of my time working on internal upgrades. Changes to the site this week: November 11, 2025: CHANGE: When posting from the website, we now convert all HEIC images to JPEG. There is still not good support for viewing HEIC images in browsers other than Safari. The next #changelog will be published on November 21, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hello, The Groups.io website was generally unavailable this morning from about 6:15am to about 7:21am Pacific Time. During the outage, all Groups.io services were off-line. Our main Redis database ran out of memory. This was caused by an inadvertent configuration issue related to moving the Groups.io backend services to new machines over the past few weeks. It took me longer than it should have to figure out the problem. And then there was an initial error upgrading the Redis instance to a larger machine, which also contributed to the length of the outage. Every outage is an opportunity to learn. I've already implemented additional dashboards and checks that will make it easier to diagnose this particular failure in the future. No data was lost. All email sent to groups during the outage was queued up and should have already been processed. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: November 4, 2025: BUGFIX: In /posttosub, uploading attachments was broken. BUGFIX: In some cases, when viewing a photo album, the Upload Photos button was displayed correctly, but you were not able to actually upload photos. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39859 CHANGE: When replying to a message on the website, include more references to previous messages in the References header. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39929 The next #changelog will be published on November 14, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
I spend most of the week working on internal upgrades. Changes to the site this week: October 25, 2025: CHANGE: As a security measure, do not allow group or user data exports for 24 hours after you change and confirm your email address. The next #changelog will be published on November 7, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: October 20, 2025: NEW: Passkeys now appear as suggestions in the email field of the login page; there's no more need for a separate Sign in with Passkey button. CHANGE: We now provide a flow to create a new passkey when using a passkey from another device. CHANGE: We now support recovery codes with passkey enabled accounts. BUGFIX: In the new Sessions, fix identification of Microsoft Edge browsers as well as Windows 11 (only for new sessions). CHANGE: Prevent signups from 3 additional temporary email services. October 21, 2025: BUGFIX: When viewing invitations, we were showing when an invite was last updated but we were sorting on when the invite was created. October 22, 2025: CHANGE: Chat DMs are no longer rate limited. October 23, 2025: NEW: Chat now supports audio on the web. The app requires an update to support recording audio, which will be released later. NEW: In chat, if you are an owner, moderator or the creator of the chat, you can remove someone from the chat. CHANGE: On narrow screens, the navigation breadcrumb is back on the chat page. CHANGE: In chat when you type @ to bring up the username selector, as you type it now narrows the selection. BUGFIX: Emojis in chat notification messages weren't displayed correctly. NEW: In the Members page, the Action drop up now has an option to Change Member Notifications October 24, 2025: NEW: On the Chats page, for moderators and owners, there's a new Manage Chats button that brings up a page that lets you add and remove people from chats. The next #changelog will be published on October 31, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: October 17, 2025: DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History NEW: Logged in session tracking system, mostly internal at this point, but can be viewed at https://groups.io/settings/sessions The next #changelog will be published on October 24, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: October 6, 2025: CHANGE: The WYSIWYG editor now uses the Dropzone widget for uploads, as is consistent with the Files section. NEW: Inline images in messages in the archives can now be clicked on to bring up a lightbox to view/download the images. October 8, 2025: INTERNAL: Rolled out new internal anti-spam tracking systems. October 10, 2025: CHANGE: Changed all instances of 'wish' to 'want' in the UI. BUGFIX: When a group was set to Plain Text Only and to moderate attachments, the attachment icon did not display in the editor. DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History The next #changelog will be published on October 17, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: October 1, 2025: CHANGE: Now when attempting to subscribe to a subgroup and you are not already subscribed to the main group, it handles it correctly. If the main group is restricted, you will be subscribed to the subgroup after your main group subscription has been approved. When viewing pending members in the parent group that also have pending subscriptions in one or more subgroups, those will be listed as well. https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/39749 BUGFIX: We keep the HTML img tag width and height attributes if they are smaller than the original image. Previously we were setting them to the dimensions of the image. October 3, 2025: DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History NEW: Added support for Passkeys, which can be configured by going to Setting The next #changelog will be published on October 10, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hi All, I've just released a new feature that will hopefully make it easier for people to join subgroups when they're applying to your parent group. This is especially helpful if you have a parent group that requires approval. What Changed? Before: When someone applied to join your restricted parent group and then tried to join a subgroup, they'd get an error message telling them they couldn't subscribe to the subgroup until they were approved for the parent. They had to wait for approval, then remember to go back and join each subgroup separately. Now: When someone applies to your parent group and also tries to join subgroups, the system remembers which subgroups they want. When you approve their parent subscription, they're automatically subscribed to those subgroups too. What You'll See In Email Notifications: When you receive a pending member notification, if that person has also tried to join subgroups, you'll see a section like this: This member has also requested to join the following subgroups: Announcements (announcements@example.groups.io) Events (events@example.groups.io) When you approve this member, they will automatically be subscribed to these subgroups as well. On the Website: When viewing a pending member on your members page, you'll see: A badge showing "+2 subgroup(s)" if they've requested to join subgroups Hovering over the badge shows which subgroups they want to join When you click through to view the individual member, you'll see a new panel showing all the subgroups they've requested, with checkboxes next to each one. You can: Leave them all checked to approve everything (default) Uncheck specific subgroups if you don't want to approve those Uncheck all of them to only approve the parent group How Approval Works Email Approval: Just reply to the notification email like you normally do. The member will be approved for the parent group AND automatically subscribed to all their requested subgroups. Website Approval: Click Approve on the individual member page. They'll be subscribed to all checked subgroups. Or use bulk approval on the members list - it works the same way. Email Rejection: Forward to the reject address like you normally do. The member will be rejected and all their pending subgroup requests will be deleted. Note: If you do not have subgroups, nothing has changed for the join process for your group. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: September 22, 2025: BUGFIX: Some API endpoints weren't working properly with the new API key authentication method. September 23, 2025: CHANGE: Updated the examples in the API docs to use the new API key authentication method, and also included sample Go and Javascript code. BUGFIX: Made the export group and export user code smarter about properly dealing with filenames, which I am hoping will fix an issue with unzipping these files on Windows. September 25, 2025: CHANGE: We now resize inline images only if they have a dimension larger than 2048 pixels. CHANGE: We no longer restrict individual messages in a digest to showing 2 images. September 26, 2025: DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History BUGFIX: In some instances, we were not parsing From lines correctly when names had > characters in them. The next #changelog will be published on October 3, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: September 15, 2025: CHANGE: When approving pending messages on the web, disable the Approve button once it's been clicked, to avoid double clicks. September 18, 2025: INTERNAL: We're now dumping all incoming email connections with IP addresses that reverse to *.bc.googleusercontent.com, which should not be sending email. September 19, 2025: BUGFIX: Pagination was broken in the Banned Domains list. I also cleaned up the formatting on the page. BUGFIX: When pasting an image into the editor, we were not properly setting the width and height attributes of the image tag, which in some circumstances would cause the image to look blurry. DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History The next #changelog will be published on September 26, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: September 7, 2025: CHANGE: Changed how we DKIM sign emails, changing from relaxed/simple to relaxed/relaxed and also changed which header fields we sign, in order to address some spurious DKIM signing errors we were seeing. BUGFIX: Fixed various issues with Github Oauth token refreshing. BUGFIX: Improved parsing of invite email lists. September 8, 2025: BUGFIX: For Reply To Sender groups, if a message subject line was encoded, the link in the footer of the message did not properly decode the subject for replies. NEW: For Enterprise groups, we now support SAML-based SSO services, including specifically Microsoft Entra. CHANGE: In the post editor, we now handle pasted inline images differently as the message is entered; we now remove/resize the inline images immediately instead of when the message is posted to the group. September 9, 2025: NEW: The API now supports API keys, configurable at https://groups.io/settings/apikeys September 11, 2025: NEW: Added new event creation and modification endpoints to the API. BUGFIX: Fixed a couple of dark mode color issues with the API documentation. September 12, 2025: NEW: New database column type Github Identity, which does an Oauth authentication step to fetch a Github profile. CHANGE: Updated/cleaned up several database and group profile pages, so that they hopefully look and work nicer now. BUGFIX: In some cases, the notification email to moderators about group sponsorships had an incorrect amount listed. The next #changelog will be published on September 19, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: September 4, 2025: BUGFIX: We were not checking whether a user had permission to edit a photo album. Security hole with Photo Albums September 5, 2025: CHANGE: On the Drafts page, the Date column has been changed to Updated. DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History BUGFIX: There were certain instances where, after pasting an image into the new post or reply editor that drafts would stop being saved. Groups.io clears out "Drafts" in batch after a random number of days. Why? The next #changelog will be published on September 12, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this month: July 28, 2025: NEW: Login demonstration video, at Help Center CHANGE: Added some text to the Pricing page about Direct Add not being included in the free trial. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39419 August 5, 2025: DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History August 8, 2025: CHANGE: To comply with the new UK Online Safety Act, when creating a new group or subgroup, you will be required to check a box acknowledging compliance with our safety policy, which is at: Online Safety at Groups.io API CHANGE: The /creategroup and /createsubgroup endpoints have a new required parameter, accept_policies which must have the value of true and signifies that you agree to our safety policy and terms of service. This requirement will go info effect on Monday, September 8th. CHANGE: Changed objectionable -> inappropriate in the report notification emails. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39454 BUGFIX: Changed /editthread URLs to /edittopic. NEW: Improved the Admin / Subgroup / Members page to show member labels and to allow filtering by member labels. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39455 NEW: Improved the Admin / Membership / Direct Add page to show parent member labels and to allow filtering by those labels. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39455 August 10, 2025: CHANGE: Updated the Login demonstration video, minor tweaks and polish. August 18, 2025: CHANGE: Hardened our Oauth login flows. August 21, 2025: CHANGE: When deleting a wiki page, you now must type 'I understand' before the deletion will occur. August 22, 2025: CHANGE: You can now include much more information when direct adding members. August 23, 2025: CHANGE: We are currently blocking access to the website and API for all Mississippi IP addresses. Mississippi Access Update (HB1126) August 28, 2025: CHANGE: Added show password buttons to the login and register pages. August 29, 2025: CHANGE: Added new videos to the help center showing how to change your email address and how to merge two accounts. Help Center Starting next week, I will return to publishing the #changelog weekly. The next #changelog will be published on September 5, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this month: June 30, 2025: CHANGE: We now greylist non-member messages to groups and we are more strict about DKIM enforcement, to cut down on spam. July 7, 2025: NEW: Added new link 'Home' from the sidebar to the logged out home page. NEW: New Email Weather Report, at https://groups.io/email-weather, showing recent delivery metrics to the largest email service providers. CHANGE: Updated the event notification email to make it a bit more like the /viewevent page. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39381 July 9, 2025: BUGFIX: In rare cases where an HTML message has elements with IDs that start with 'msgbody', when viewing those messages with other messages in the same topic, that could cause the highlight/quote reply function to not work. BUGFIX: Updated the Group Analytics page to better handle resizing. July 10, 2025: CHANGE: Renamed the Email Weather Report to the Email Provider Status page. July 18, 2025: NEW: Member labels are now available for premium and enterprise groups. NEW: We now have a Videos section of the Help Center, and the first two videos are a Groups.io Overview and a video demonstrating how to use member labels. We also now have a YouTube channel, that contains the same content, at Groupsio - YouTube. July 21, 2025: BUGFIX: Fixed group sidebar highlighting issue when viewing the Subgroups page when there are no subgroups to subscribe to. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39426 BUGFIX: Fixed the 'Members' group sidebar item jumping to indented when a non-moderator clicks around. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39426 July 22, 2025: BUGFIX: Fixed member label sorting issues. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39435 July 23, 2025: CHANGE: Updated the Groups.io Overview video CHANGE: Now features the Groups.io Overview video on the home page. July 24, 2025: NEW: Added a table listing the top reasons why email isn't being delivered on the Email Provider Status page. The next #changelog will be published on August 29, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hi All, I've started a Videos section in the Help Center, at https://groups.io/helpcenter/videos. Currently it has two videos, the previously announced Member Labels video and a new Overview video that gives an overview of the Groups.io service. It's my plan to populate this section with additional videos demonstrating various aspects of the Groups.io service. I'd appreciate your feedback on the videos as well as suggestions for what I should prioritize in terms of content. These videos take some time to develop, so this will be an long term, ongoing process. I've also created a YouTube channel, with the same content, here: https://www.youtube.com/@Groupsio Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Mark
Hi All, Member labels are now available to premium and enterprise groups. Member Labels let you visually organize and categorize your members using customizable tags—such as "Board Member," "Volunteer," or "Premium Subscriber." You can filter the member list by label, apply labels in bulk, and manage all labels from a dedicated admin page. Labels are inherited across subgroups, making it easy to maintain consistent organization throughout your entire group structure. This feature gives group owners more control, clarity, and flexibility when managing their communities. I've created a demonstration video walk through of the various aspects of how member labels work. You can view it here: https://groups.io/helpcenter/videos/member-labels Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for improvements. Thanks, Mark
Hi All, I've put up a status page that shows, in near-real-time, how the big inbox providers are behaving. It's called the Email Weather Report. What's on it? A quick table for Gmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo/AOL, Outlook.com, iCloud, Comcast, and GMX/WEB.de. Latency and retry-rate numbers that refresh every five minutes. Click any row and you'll see the last 24 hours of graphs, so you can tell if a bump is new or ongoing. It's at https://groups.io/email-weather Cheers, Mark
Changes to the site this month: June 4, 2025: NEW: Added Hourly Email Latency graph to https://status.groups.io June 9, 2025: CHANGE: Changed minimum supported versions of Chrome to 80, Firefox to 60, and Safari to 15. Also blocking Internet Explorer. June 10, 2025: CHANGE: Increase the max file size limit for Files uploads to 2GB. June 11, 2025: CHANGE: Due to a policy change by Microsoft, we now have to re-write the From lines of all emails to Microsoft properties (hotmail/outlook/etc). NEW: Reporting automated API uptime percentage to https://status.groups.io June 12, 2025: BUGFIX: Add missing Reply To settings to the group home page. Some reply-to settings don't show up on home page BUGFIX: Fix URL parameter encoding issue with sendloginlink redirect. Missing + from email alias address in the Send Log In Link page BUGFIX: Fix old /account link in account bounce notification messages. Stale link in You're Bouncing message NEW: Premium and Enterprise groups now have access to a new Analytics page, which tracks various metrics for your groups. June 13, 2025: SYSADMIN: Rotated DKIM keys and created a system to automate this. June 16, 2025: NEW: Enterprise groups can now set individual DNS records instead of having to delegate a subdomain in order for us to white-label. Some DNS services don't allow subdomain delegation, so this was a problem. BUGFIX: Display the full subscriber name on the moderator rejoin notifications. View/Reply Online (#39358) June 17, 2025: NEW: Implemented a new bot detection and prevention system on the website, and rolled it out to a limited set of countries. June 18, 2025: NEW: We now greylist emails to +owner addresses for Improved spam filtering. June 19, 2025: CHANGE: Rolled out the bot detection and prevention system to all traffic. CHANGE: Changed the layout of the Analytics page. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39354 NEW: Add a page that's displayed when accessing the website with an out-of-date browser. BUGFIX: Fixed links to authors in groups with subgroups in the /topics page. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39367 BUGFIX: When following a topic, we send out existing emails in the topic. Those emails were missing some headers that we normally add, and contained some headers that we normally strip out because they cause delivery problems. June 23, 2025: BUGFIX: Fix escaping issue with the resub notification email. beta.groups.io/probe?r=https%3A%2F%2Fbeta.groups.io%2Fg%2Fmain%2Fmessage%2F39383 CHANGE: Due to a change in policy, we now have to re-write the From lines of all emails to Virgin Media properties (ntlworld.com,blueyonder.co.uk,etc). June 26, 2025: NEW: In the groups analytics page, we're now tracking number of replies per day, member status distribution, email delivery preferences, and we're listing the top posters. June 27, 2025: CHANGE: Fixes to the Analytics page to the X-axis alignment of the graphs. The next #changelog will be published on July 25, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hi All, The Analytics dashboard is now available for premium and enterprise groups. The dashboard provides comprehensive insights into your group's activity and growth patterns. It displays key metrics across different time periods to help you understand engagement trends and member behavior. It can be accessed by owners and moderators, from Admin -> Preferences -> Analytics. Time Period Controls At the top of the page, you'll find three time period buttons: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. Clicking these buttons updates all metrics and charts to show data for the selected timeframe: Daily: Shows metrics for individual days Weekly: Aggregates data over 7-day periods Monthly: Aggregates data over 30-day periods When you switch between time periods, the metric cards at the top update to reflect the corresponding values (e.g., daily active posters vs. weekly active posters), and all charts refresh to display the appropriate data granularity. Dashboard Components Key Metrics Cards: Display essential group statistics including total members, active posters, median reply times, median approval times (if applicable), and message counts for the selected time period. Member Growth & Activity Trends: A dual-axis chart showing both total member count and active poster activity over time. The left axis (blue) tracks total membership growth, while the right axis (green) shows active poster engagement. Storage Usage: A donut chart breaking down how your group's storage is allocated across attachments, files, photos, database images, member data images, wiki images, and chat photos. Messages & Content Creation: Bar charts showing message volume and content creation activity (files, photos, events, wiki pages) over the selected time period. Top Hashtags: A ranked table of the most frequently used hashtags during the selected time period. Member Churn Analysis: Tracks new member joins versus member departures to show net growth patterns. Important Note About Data Availability Limited Historical Data: This analytics system was recently implemented, so we currently only have historical data going back to May 25, 2025. This means: Monthly views will show incomplete trends since we don't have a full 30-day dataset yet Charts may appear sparse or show shorter trend lines than expected Comparative analysis will become more meaningful as we accumulate more historical data over time As the system continues to collect data, the monthly views will become increasingly comprehensive. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for improvements. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 29, 2025: CHANGE: Don't permit exclamation points in email addresses. They're technically allowed, but in practice they indicate spammers only. CHANGE: For SMTP TLS negotiations, only use TLS version 1.2 as 1.3 is not yet widely supported. This was causing email to some servers to bounce. I have pro-actively looked for affected domains and unbounced affected accounts. NEW: Added hourly web uptime and latency statistics to the Groups.io status page (https://status.groups.io) and changed the formatting to include uptime stats. May 30, 2025: CHANGE: Remove the Promote tab from the Group sidebar for Invite Only groups. Re: Option to disallow join applications The next #changelog will be published on June 27, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 19, 2025: BUGFIX: The Help Center mistakenly required being logged in to access. CHANGE: Added permalinks to individual Help Center FAQ entries. May 20, 2025: BUGFIX: On the /static/pricing page, the link to group sponsorship information was outdated. (Thanks Nina!) May 23, 2025: BUGFIX: Fixed several minor spacing issues in activity log entries. NEW: Added a new Invite Only mode for groups, which when toggled, prevents people from applying or joining the group. Option to disallow join applications INTERNAL: We are now storing data needed for our upcoming group analytics dashboard. DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History The next #changelog will be published on May 30, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 15, 2025: NEW: Apple Pay and Google Pay are now supported for paying group hosting fees. CHANGE: When sponsoring a group, you now have the option of using the card on file instead of always having to re-enter it. BUGFIX: If a group has an overdue invoice but has enough sponsorship reserves to pay it, the invoice can be paid without a valid credit card needed. CHANGE: Removed the i=1 parameter when starting a new Ask chat. Re: Ask is live for testing May 16, 2025: CHANGE: The Member and Owner FAQs in the Help Center now show all entries and answers on one page, instead of having to click through each FAQ. CHANGE: Increased the maximum email size for premium and enterprise groups to 200MB from 100MB. The next #changelog will be published on May 23, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hello, The main database machine froze up at 3:03PM Pacific Time today. It was rebooted and came back on-line at 3:16PM Pacific Time. During the outage, all Groups.io services were off-line. No data was lost. All email sent to groups during the outage was queued up and should have already been processed. Thanks, Mark
Changes to the site this week: May 7, 2025: CHANGE: The trial length for new premium group trials is now 30 days. This change does not apply to existing premium trial groups. NEW: New intergration, Bluesky Cross-Posting. You can automatically share the first message in a new topic to your linked Bluesky account - if it includes one of your selected hashtags. New Feature: Bluesky Cross-Posting May 8, 2025: CHANGE: Changed some of the canonical links on message pages and added DiscussionForumPosting structured data headers to improve SEO and archive appearance on search engine result pages. May 9, 2025: NEW: We will now send out emails to group owners when their free groups approach 100 members, alerting them to this and the fact that free groups are capped at 100 members. CHANGE: Updated the Move button icon on the group photo page to match the move icon in the Files section. DOCS: Updates from Nina. Revision History CHANGE: Merged in French language translation fixes. Thank you seranpion for your help! The next #changelog will be published on May 16, 2025. Take care everyone. Mark
Hi All, I've added a new integration for premium and enterprise groups: Bluesky Cross-Posting. With Bluesky Cross-Posting, you can automatically share the first message in a new topic to your linked Bluesky account - if it includes one of your selected hashtags. Replies and follow-ups won't be posted, and messages without a selected hashtag will stay within your group. We're already using this ourselves on the Groups.io Bluesky account. Messages with the following hashtags will be shared: #changelog – Weekly summaries of changes and improvements #releasenotes – Announcements of new features and updates #downtime – Notices about scheduled maintenance #outage – Details about any unexpected service disruptions To enable this in your own group, go to Admin → Preferences → Integrations → Bluesky Cross-Posting and configure your hashtags. You must be on a premium or enterprise plan to use this feature. Please let me know what you think. Mark