Social Features

Social Features

hailsDotGO has a lightweight social layer built around the raid community. This page covers the five areas: Friends, Connections, Notifications, Blocked Users, and Community Feedback.

All social features require an account. Visit a trainer's dedicated profile page (/trainer/{username}) to interact with them, cards in the Trainer Directory link directly to these pages.

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Friends

Following is one-directional: you can follow any trainer without them following you back.

When two users follow each other, they are considered Friends. A mutual indicator appears on both profiles when this is the case.

To follow someone: visit their profile page at /trainer/{username} and click Follow. The button is only shown when you are logged in, you are not viewing your own profile, and neither party has blocked the other.

To unfollow someone: visit their profile page and click Unfollow.

Raid notifications fire when trainers you follow open a lobby, not only mutual friends.

Your own profile (/trainer/{yourusername}) shows a preview of your five most recently followed trainers with a View all link to your Connections page.

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Connections

The Connections page at /social/{username} shows a trainer's social graph across three tabs:

• Friends: trainers who mutually follow each other (both follow both)
• Followers: trainers who follow this person
• Following: trainers this person follows

The page is publicly accessible; no login is required to view any trainer's Connections page.

Follower and following counts shown on trainer profile pages are clickable and link directly to this page.

When viewing your own Connections page, the Following tab includes an Unfollow button on each entry.

The old /friends URL redirects automatically to /social/{your-username}.

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Notifications

When someone you follow opens a raid lobby in the Raid Finder, you receive a notification. Notifications surface in two places.

In-page toasts

A small toast slides in from the bottom right of the screen while you are browsing the site. It shows:

• The boss name and raid tier
• The friend's trainer name (and username)
• A Join link that goes to /raidfinder

Toasts dismiss themselves after 7 seconds or when you close them manually. Each lobby only triggers one toast per browser session; a toast does not reappear if you navigate away and return.

Notifications page

The bell emoji 🔔 in the nav sidebar links to /notifications. This page shows all currently active raids from trainers you follow, only raids still in the open, full, or raiding state.

• Click × on a card to dismiss it from the page.
• Click Clear all to dismiss everything at once.
• Visiting the page marks all shown notifications as seen, so the badge resets to 0 on the next poll.
• If there are no active raids (or you have dismissed everything), the page shows a "You're all up to date" message.

Badge counter

The 🔔 icon shows a badge with the count of notifications you have not seen yet. The badge is driven by a 30-second poll of GET /api/notifications; it counts only raids whose lobby ID has not yet been marked as seen in your browser's localStorage.

Notification sound

A short ding plays when a new toast appears. Volume is controlled in Settings > Notifications with a 0-100% slider. The slider is visual-only; the audio gain is capped at 50% of the Web Audio API maximum to prevent accidentally loud alerts. Default volume is 30%. Set the slider to 0 to mute the sound entirely.

Volume is saved to localStorage (notif_sound_volume) and is per browser.

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Blocked Users

Blocking prevents someone from interacting with you socially. It also removes the friendship in both directions.

To block someone: visit their profile page and click Block. Or go to Settings > Blocked Users, search by username or trainer name, and click Block next to a result.

To unblock someone: visit their profile page and click Unblock, or go to Settings > Blocked Users, find them in your current blocked list, and click Unblock.

Effects of blocking:

• The friendship between you and the blocked user is removed in both directions.
• The blocked user cannot add you as a friend.
• On each other's profile pages, the social action buttons are hidden (you see Unblock; they see no social options at all).

Blocking is not visible to the blocked user, their profile just has no social buttons when they view yours.

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Community Feedback

Every public trainer profile at /trainer/{username} has a Community Feedback section. Logged-in users can leave one piece of feedback per trainer (positive, neutral, or negative), chosen from a curated list of options managed by admins.

Leaving feedback

While viewing another trainer's profile:

1. In the feedback section, pick an option from the dropdown (grouped by sentiment: Positive, Neutral, Negative).
2. Click Submit.

You can update your feedback at any time by re-submitting a different option. Only one entry per author/target pair is stored; re-submitting replaces the previous one.

To remove your own feedback entirely, click Remove my feedback below the form.

Viewing feedback

All feedback entries for a trainer appear publicly on their profile page. Each entry shows:

• The reviewer's name (linked to their own profile)
• The feedback phrase
• The date last updated

Moderation

Moderators can delete any feedback entry from a trainer's profile page. Admins manage the option list itself under Admin > Feedback Options: add, edit, or disable options, and control the sort order and sentiment label.

API

The feedback data is also available through the API; see API-Reference for the endpoints.