The Instagram panel on the home page shows recent posts again. It had been switched off in the code for a long time, so the panel only ever displayed its heading and any introductory text an editor had added.
\nOnce an administrator has connected the group's Facebook Page in System Settings and turned on Show Instagram Feed, the panel now loads the account's latest posts and shows them as a grid of thumbnails, largest first. Each thumbnail links to the post on Instagram and shows the post date and caption on hover. The account name in the heading links to the group's Instagram profile.
\nVideos and multi-photo carousels used to come back without a usable picture and left gaps in the grid. These now fall back to the video thumbnail, or the first photo of the carousel, so every post in the feed has an image.
\nWhile the posts are loading the panel says so; if Instagram cannot be reached, or the Page connection is missing, the panel explains what to check instead of sitting on a spinner that never stops.
\nThe Facebook and Instagram panels on the home page have had a proper overhaul. They had not been touched in years and were showing their age: a slab of Facebook blue on one, a grey bar with a logo image floated to one side on the other, and a Facebook feed that was cut off down its right-hand edge.
\nBoth panels now share the same card design. Each has a clean header with the network's icon, the account name, and a Visit button that opens the group's page in a new tab. The two cards are the same height, the same shape, and sit the same distance apart as the action buttons elsewhere on the page.
\nThe Instagram panel shows recent posts again as a tidy grid of nine square thumbnails. Hovering a photo enlarges it gently within its tile, and the date and caption appear as a tooltip; clicking opens the post on Instagram. The account's follower and post counts now appear under the account name, matching what the Facebook panel has always shown. While the posts are loading, the grid fills with placeholder tiles so the panel keeps its shape instead of jumping about.
\nThe Facebook feed now fills the width of its panel. Facebook only ever supplies its feed at a fixed width, which is why it used to leave a gap or get clipped depending on the screen; the panel now scales it to fit whatever space it has.
\nAction buttons anywhere on the site now respond to the mouse in the same way as the Instagram photos, with the image growing slightly within its frame. This works whether or not a focal point and zoom have been set on the image.
\nFinally, the Zoom control used when setting an image's focal point is usable again. It ran from 0.2x to 10x on a straight scale, which squeezed every useful setting into the first fraction of the slider and made small adjustments near-impossible. It now moves in even steps across the whole range, has a much longer travel, and the mouse wheel zooms by the same proportion wherever you are in the range.
\nYou can now publish a walk photo album from the website straight to your group's Facebook Page and Instagram account, without leaving NGX Ramblers.
\nAfter an administrator connects the group's Facebook Page in System Settings (the linked Instagram professional account is found automatically), content admins open a walk photos page, turn on Share when the album allows it, choose Facebook and/or Instagram, pick the photos and write a caption, then publish. Instagram carousels can take a minute or two while Meta processes each image; the Share panel shows live progress so you can see what is happening instead of staring at a spinner.
\nCaptions can stay as one shared post, or you can draft different Facebook and Instagram versions. Optional AI help rewrites your walk write-up into natural UK English (including relative timing such as "Last Sunday" when the walk date is known), and you can type emoji shortcodes such as :sun: in the caption boxes. The same shortcodes now work throughout the rich text editor as well, so typing :sun in any page, article or email field offers a list of matching emoji to pick from with the arrow keys. The site records each successful post so an album is not posted twice to the same network by accident, and earlier posts remain linked from the Share panel.
Separately, inbox digest emails now tell recipients how to manage their own notification preferences on the Email Subscriptions page in their profile, rather than asking a member administrator to turn them off.
\n:name for emoji suggestions.: followed by a name in any rich text field to pick an emoji; arrow keys or mouse to choose, Enter or Tab to insert, Escape to dismiss. Code blocks are left alone.