Cookiemonsters

Imported from the pre-Redmine CookieMonsters TODO during the 2026-08-29 migration.

Original priority: P1 — Community experience and polish

• Make the personalized News Feed a central signed-in member experience and a major Home module rather than forcing it to be the only landing screen:
  • surface a useful recent slice of the member's News Feed on signed-in Home, with a clear path to the full feed; opening the full News Feed remains a first-class destination for deeper browsing;
  • put the same friendly What's on your mind? composer prominently in the full News Feed and optionally as a compact Home composer later, so a member can post text, images/photos and links without first navigating to their profile;
  • a post created from the News Feed composer is the same underlying Wall post and must immediately appear on the author's Profile Wall too; do not create duplicated feed-only and wall-only copies of the same content;
  • include the member's own Wall posts plus authorized posts/activity from other members according to feed preferences and privacy rules;
  • let members choose which activity categories they want included in their own feed and change those choices later without affecting anybody else's feed;
  • initial selectable feed sources should include Profile Wall posts, new Gallery photos, new Screenshots, new members, new forum posts/replies, new events, visible birthdays and later other useful community activity such as Show Room entries or community updates;
  • allow each category to be enabled/disabled independently; keep room for finer filters later, e.g. Friends only, selected communities, selected games/forums or selected members;
  • start with a clear chronological/recent feed rather than an opaque engagement-ranking algorithm; smarter sorting can be considered later if members actually need it;
  • show feed cards in a soft social stream with clear author/source context, comments/reactions where relevant and direct links into the original Wall post, Gallery photo, Screenshot, member profile, forum post, event or other destination;
  • only include activity the current viewer is actually authorized to discover: Wall audience, Gallery visibility, custom people/list permissions, community membership, SFW/NSFW eligibility, blocks and other privacy rules must be applied before an item enters the feed;
  • a private/hidden Wall post/folder/event, blocked member or NSFW item the viewer cannot access must leave no feed placeholder, count, title, thumbnail or metadata leak suggesting that hidden activity exists;
  • respect online-status privacy too: a News Feed item must never expose hidden live/last-active presence as a side effect of showing another activity;
  • keep feed preferences server-side/account-level so the same personalized feed follows the member across devices.

CM-TODO-ID:e6b917a9c889e3a8272d

Future notes, acceptance criteria and status changes belong in this Redmine issue.