Finally, after the initial commit(s) in April 2020, months of coding and preparation later, we are proud to say we're ready for an alpha of WidgetBot v3. We expect there to be lot of bugs during the first week(s) of alpha since it has been a whole rewrite.

We will all be actively working on v3 during the alpha to ensure any bugs that arise are promptly fixed and pushed live. Any suggestions that are made during the alpha will be added to our new roadmap!

v3 adds support for displaying new Discord chat features, including:

• Slash command messages
• Stickers
• Replies

WidgetBot's backend was completely rewritten, which should lead to a much more stable service. You should see faster loading embeds and shouldn't see "upgrading backend" errors anymore.

v3 also has some new widget-specific features:

• Dynamic Usernames! Sites can now set a name and the widget will automatically be logged in as that name. This is useful for forums and sites with their own account systems, as users won't have to provide a name twice.
• Banning! You can now easily ban spammers and unban users with bot commands.

You can try out v3 now by clicking the Crate button in the corner of this page.

FAQ

How do I get access to this alpha??

The alpha is restricted to WidgetBot Emerald Patrons and will likely stay that way until it's fully released to the public although we will make exceptions for big sites as it will help contribute towards the "load-testing" of v3.

Why did it take so long?

Because I rewrote all 3 of our core services into Scala from TypeScript, without getting into detail (there will be a post about this for the nerds), moving all of these services to Scala took a while because I had to make things that were readily available in the TypeScript ecosystem, but this allowed us to make things more optimized compared to the old system.

When will it be released publicly?

Hopefully by the end of March but, as said above, you can get access to the alpha if you are a Emerald Patron or if you have a large site; depending on how well the alpha goes, it will open up to our other levels of patrons before moving to the public!

If you don't fit the criteria above but you are unable to wait and are willing to pay for a custom instance, you can DM Daave on Discord or email him to trial one of our new custom instances which allows you to have your own bot user in your discord rather than "WidgetBot"!