Updates to Putter Talk in the last week.

Five days in: what's new since the first invites

The first invites went out five days ago, and the house is already starting to feel lived in. Real gamers on the feed, real questions in the rooms, and a first ring of members who have been generous with feedback and patient with the rough edges. Thank you for that. Here's what we've shipped since you walked in, how it works, and where we're headed next.

The feed found its Home

We started the week with two tabs, Following and Discover, and we ended it with one feed that does both jobs better. Home now leads with the members and rooms you've chosen, and mixes in suggestions from around the Community, each one labeled with a small chip so you always know why you're seeing it.

You're in control of the mix:

• Show fewer like this. Every card's ⋯ menu can turn down a member, a room, or a whole post type. Your choices are listed under Settings, each with an undo.
• Your feed, explained. Settings also shows you who your feed currently leans toward and why. No mystery meat.
• The feed quietly learns from what you actually do: star someone's photos or join their threads, and their next posts surface a little sooner for you.

And when you reach the end, you'll know. A "you're all caught up" marker lands before the feed goes around again, so there's a real bottom instead of an infinite trick.

Video is live

Post clips the same way you post photos. Videos play right in the feed, tap to pause, and they sit on your profile alongside everything else you've shared. Authors can see play counts on their own posts, the same way post views work: your numbers are yours alone.

Photos got some polish

Putter people post putter photos, so this surface gets constant attention:

• Galleries hold steady. Mixed portrait and landscape shots in one post used to jog the page as you flipped through. Every post now keeps a single steady frame, and tapping through to the post shows each photo uncropped, with a full-screen zoom that does pinch, pan, and double-tap.
• Multi-photo posts let you pick several shots and rearrange them before posting, with your lead photo up front.
• Sharing is honest now. Tap the paper airplane and a toast tells you plainly: link copied to your clipboard. Links you share unfurl with a proper picture and title in texts and group chats.

Caddie is settling in

Our resident Agent is on the roof, in the rooms, and now back in onboarding, where new members get a proper introduction and a few good first questions to try. Summon Caddie in any thread with @caddie, or ask directly from the Ask surface. Every answer is labeled as machine-written, cites its sources, and says "I don't know" when the record is thin. That last part is a feature, not a bug. There's a longer introduction to Caddie coming soon.

Messages, on your terms

Direct messages are here, and they open politely. A first message from someone you don't follow arrives as a request; reply and the conversation opens, decline and they're none the wiser. Blocking someone closes every door in both directions. There are sensible limits on new threads and links from new contacts, because we've all seen what unmoderated DMs become elsewhere.

Your account, your controls

• Change your password from Settings. Doing so signs out your other devices, because that's what you'd want it to do.
• See every signed-in session on your account and revoke any of them.
• No more surprise sign-outs. Stay active and your session stays alive.
• Every password field has the reveal eye, because typos in the dark help no one.

Safety the Community runs

We built the enforcement rails this week, and the design principle throughout is that people, not machines, make the calls:

• If enough different members report a post, it's set aside automatically and a human reviews it. The Community raises its hand; a person decides.
• Blocking someone now holds everywhere: feed, threads, search, profiles. Both directions.
• Account deletion is real. If you ever choose to leave, there's a cooling-off window, and then your data actually goes.

Twenty years of links work again

Putter Talk has been at this address since 2006, and the professional review archive, more than forty reviews with their original dates and photography, lives in Reads. This week we reconnected the past to the present: old puttertalk.com article links from two decades of forum posts, bookmarks, and blog mentions now land on the right piece in the archive instead of a dead page. If you ever bookmarked a review in 2007, try it.

Under the hood

Less visible, but you'll feel it: pages load faster on phones because images now arrive at the right size for your screen, the whole surface passed a full accessibility audit (contrast, screen readers, tap targets, reduced motion), and the plumbing that lets search engines understand putter pages, reviews, and discussions is in place for when the doors open wider.

What's next

• Window shopping. Very soon, the surface becomes publicly viewable. Reading will be open to everyone; joining stays invite-only, with a waitlist for friends who want in.
• More invites, in waves. Every member holds invitations. Use them on people who will post, not just scroll.
• The Marketplace. It's browsable today, and buying and selling opens carefully, built around identity-verified buyers and sellers and honest listings. More on this soon.
• A smarter feed. Next up, the feed starts understanding gear: tag a putter you love and the feed learns what you're into, not just who.
• And we're building toward something special for the twentieth anniversary this fall.

Found something broken? Something you'd change? Post it. The first ring shapes this place more than any spec does. That's the whole idea.

-Doug