June 2026
The June 2026 release gives hosts a more personalized presence in Live Q&A events. Polls and Engagement Starters have a refreshed visual design, alongside a new anonymous voting option. Comments, meanwhile, gain rich link preview cards. This release also includes accuracy and reliability fixes across engagement analytics, avatar syncing, notification delivery, and the Assign Badge API.
Live Q&A & Events
More personal hosting for live events: Hosts can have a distinct presence for every event, and running sessions has clearer, safer controls.
- New: Hosts can now set a custom display name, avatar, and badge for each individual Live Q&A.
- Improved: Added confirmation dialogues when a host resigns from their role and when an event moves from Upcoming to Live.
- Fixed: A gap was resolved where the standard character limit was still cutting off host and staff posts.
Polls & Engagement
A fresh look and a new privacy option: Polls and Engagement Starters now feature a refreshed visual design. Audiences can now participate in polls anonymously.
- New: New poll-level setting lets audiences vote without attaching their identity.
- Improved: Upgraded visual design for the Polls widget.
- Improved: A matching visual refresh for Engagement Starters.
- Fixed: Resolved contrast issues affecting Polls in dark themes.
Comments & Conversations
Richer, cleaner conversations: There’s now a new way to share links, plus a set of polish and accuracy fixes across the commenting experience.
- New: URLs shared in comments can now render as rich preview cards with a portal setting to enable them and a control to dismiss them.
- Improved: Outbound links in the “Powered by Viafoura” logo module now use nofollow for SEO compliance.
- Fixed: Profile avatars now update correctly when a reader signs in via cookie login.
- Fixed: Replying to a comment no longer records the interaction twice.
- Fixed: Removed extra white space beneath the Ratings & Reviews widget when it has no content.
Notifications & Email
Reliable notifications, sensible defaults: Improvements have been made to how notification preferences are applied, and a fix has been made to email delivery.
- Improved: Members added via import now inherit each site’s default email-notification setting.
- Fixed: An issue where reply-notification emails were not being delivered on some sites has been resolved.
APIs & Webhooks
For integration partners: New event data and a fix for teams building on the Viafoura APIs.
- New: A webhook event now fires when a reader follows or unfollows a topic or author from the widget.
- Fixed: Resolved a 401 error returned when assigning badges through the API.