August 2026 Newsletter

Hello!

I’m so glad I’ve been able to launch Mudhaven for all of you MUD and BYOND fans. I want Mudhaven to grow into a resource hub, hosting platform, and all-around community that everyone can use and enjoy.

With the direction the gaming market is heading, I believe people are looking for a place built around genuine fun—a place where games can simply be games. I want to support everyone who still wants to create those kinds of experiences and help them share their work with others.

That’s why everything Mudhaven offers will always be free.

Thank you to everyone who has joined, listed a world, shared a resource, applied for hosting, or helped test the site. We’re only getting started.

Mudhaven by the Numbers

As of July 31, 2026, the Mudhaven community includes:

• 15 public member profiles
• 6 community contributors
• 6 approved worlds
• 2 shared resources
• 8 forum boards
• 4 discussions and 4 posts

These are the first steps toward the lasting home for builders, hosts, and players that I believe Mudhaven can become.

Connect With the Mudhaven Community

Member profiles have been rebuilt around the ways people actually use the site. Profiles can now show a member’s projects, worlds, resources, forum activity, interests, and special community tags such as MUD Developer, BYOND Developer, and MUD Builder.

Mudhaven’s direct messaging system now makes it easier to stay connected. Members can add friends, save favorites, organize custom contact lists, search for eligible recipients, and message groups without revealing everyone else who received the message. Conversations support formatting, replies, reactions, editing, search, and read receipts. Members still control who may contact them and can block people whenever needed.

Site notifications also live inside the inbox, giving everyone one dependable place to find conversations and account activity.

A Full Forum Built for the Community

The Mudhaven forums have grown from a simple discussion area into a full community forum. They now support organized categories, subcategories, boards, permissions, moderation tools, topic prefixes, mentions, reactions, bookmarks, subscriptions, optional email updates, view and reply counts, polls, attachments, drafts, and a formatting preview.

Accepted answers, guides, related discussions, reporting tools, and moderation transparency make the forum useful for both casual conversation and long-term technical knowledge. The community knowledge area is designed to help good answers remain easy to find after a conversation ends.

Discover More Worlds

The world registry has been redesigned to give game artwork room to breathe and make important details easier to scan. Owners can add icons and banners, provide connection details, and revise a listing without taking the approved version offline while staff reviews the changes.

The optional Mudhaven Game API lets owners publish a small set of authenticated facts such as current player count, game version, or maintenance state. Worlds that do not use the API no longer receive misleading online or offline labels. MUD owners can also use the protocol information and scanner tools built around established MUD standards.

Approved games can submit desktop and mobile artwork for the featured-game banner. The homepage rotates eligible campaigns every five minutes and sends visitors directly to the action chosen by the owner.

Your game does not need to be hosted by Mudhaven to be listed. If you run a MUD or BYOND world anywhere, you can submit it to the registry.

Free Hosting for MUD and BYOND Creators

Mudhaven offers free hosting for approved MUD and BYOND projects.

MUD hosting can include SSH and SFTP access, a dedicated player port, optional MySQL, an optional static website, managed runtime controls, the Mudhaven Game API, and support for useful MUD protocols. Owners keep control of their code and their world.

BYOND hosting provides a managed project portal for source or compiled games, project files, ZIP uploads, runtime controls, logs, connection testing, backups, integrity monitoring, and recovery tools.

Hosting is community-supported, subject to staff approval, available capacity, and reasonable fair-use limits. It is built to help creators spend more time developing their games and less time fighting server setup.

A Growing Resource Library

The resource library gives creators a place to share MUD and BYOND code, tools, guides, art, and other useful material. Resource pages can include delivery details, metadata, licensing, revisions, view totals, and download counts, while search helps builders find what they need.

You do not need to release an enormous codebase to contribute. A focused snippet, a helpful guide, or a small tool may be exactly what another creator needs. If you have something useful to share, submit a resource.

Reliability and Transparency

Mudhaven now has stronger platform backups, archive verification, recovery drills, BYOND runtime and file-integrity monitoring, hosting health checks, and a public service status page.

The site can also display a weather alert when severe storms threaten the area where Mudhaven is hosted. This gives the community an early warning when local power or connectivity may be at risk.

No independent service can promise perfection, but Mudhaven can prepare carefully, communicate clearly, and keep improving how it protects the work entrusted to it.

Help Shape What Comes Next

Mudhaven is in a heavy feedback stage right now, and many of the improvements in this issue came directly from real use and suggestions. I want to keep improving the site based on what builders, owners, and players actually need.

Please use the feedback form for bugs, feature ideas, hosting questions, listing problems, or general suggestions. Small observations are welcome too. If something feels confusing or could work better, I want to hear about it.

— Liko

Founder of Mudhaven