Website Updates / Обновления на сайте

Manulization / Манулизация
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We decided to rebuild The Steppe. The old Steppe was based on a forum engine, and it had several problems:

  1. It was not fully integrated with the website, because the forum software did not allow that. What does this mean? It means that data published on the forum could not be used on the main site and vice versa — for example, if someone was discussing a manul or a zoo, that discussion could not be displayed on the manul’s page or the zoo’s page, and so on.
  2. There was no automatic translator. This meant that a person who did not speak English could not fully participate, because there was no way to translate all the messages in a topic into their own language.

That’s why we decided to rebuild The Steppe from scratch and write our own software which will be a bit more user-friendly.

The new Steppe is available at:

Our goal was to remove the language barrier, so that knowledge of languages would no longer limit communication. Now all messages are automatically translated into English right away, and anyone can translate posts into their own language.

The new system is also fully integrated with the rest of the website. This allows us to use data from Steppe on other pages, and to use other pages inside Steppe. For example, if you copy the link to any photo and paste it into a post or comment, the photo will be displayed natively and in a clean, beautiful way.

We moved away from the traditional forum system and redesigned Steppe as a blogging platform. Every user now has their own blog where they can write whatever they want. There is a global feed that shows posts from all users. Any post can also be marked as “news,” and in that case it will appear in the “Manul News” section. Yes, we now have our own Manul News!

This forum will eventually be phased out.

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Oh, the forum will be phased out?! I unfortunately haven’t been able to post much recently, but I still love the forum.

I didn’t know that this new system existed, so I’ve got a lot to read through now!

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We’ve always loved how the forum feels overall, but we’ve noticed one important issue — it’s mainly being used by English speakers because it lacks proper multilingual features and a reliable translation system. Of course, it could be extended — it’s just software, after all — but Roman found it very challenging to maintain. The forum software evolves quickly, and extensions written even a year ago often stop working after updates. Unfortunately, regular updates are essential by design. :pensive_face:

After careful consideration, we’ve decided to build our own communication platform. The Steppe is now something of a mix between Substack, Facebook, Medium, and LiveJournal. This design has its pros and cons, of course, but at least we’ve been able to make it much more multilingual-friendly. :slightly_smiling_face: We’ll also be adding a few improvements soon to make it even more welcoming and comfortable to use.

So — welcome to The Steppe!

We’ve read your articles about Port Lympne, and they’re amazing. Maybe one day you’ll share something like that on The Steppe as well! :slightly_smiling_face:

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