User Guide

1. Create your account and open your dashboard.
2. Create a character, then add images and lore.
3. Create a world and link characters to organize your universe.

• Use Create Character from navbar or dashboard.
• Fill summary + lore first; refine details later.
• Attach images for visual context.
• Use edit pages anytime to update records.

• Create worlds to group related characters and lore.
• Use Atlas and timeline tools for maps and history.
• Link or unlink characters directly from world management.

• Use search to find assets by caption or creator.
• Sort options: Newest, Most Liked, or Most Discussed.
• Hover preview: Hover any image to see like and comment counts.
• Lightbox tools: Click any image to view full-size with download, share, and zoom controls.
• Upload limits follow admin site configuration.

• Trending hashtags: The sidebar shows the top 8 trending tags from the past week.
• Share posts: Use the share button to copy a direct link or open your share sheet.
• Bookmark posts: Save posts for later at /bookmarks.php.
• Tabs: Switch between Community, Following, and For You feeds.

Live room-based social spaces are available in Realms. Visit /realms/.

Getting Started

• Open Realms: Browse active rooms from the Realms hub.
• Join or create: Enter existing realms or create one with custom visuals.
• Chat in-room: Use live text chat while exploring room scenes.
• Invite others: Share realm links with collaborators and friends.

Features

• Avatar presence: Move and socialize with users in the same room.
• Room customization: Configure room visuals and interactive elements.
• Moderation controls: Realm owners can manage access and behavior.
• Integrated discovery: Find active realms directly from the platform.

Long-form discussions organized by categories. Visit /forum.php.

• Categories: General, Character Showcase, World Building, Roleplay, Art & Commissions, and Minecraft.
• Create threads: Click "New Thread" to start a discussion.
• Reply & Quote: Reply to threads or quote specific posts.
• Pinned threads: Important threads are pinned by moderators.

• Use Feed for activity updates.
• Use Forums for long-form discussions.
• Use Global Chat from the floating hub for fast community conversation, mentions, saved posts, and pinned highlights.
• Use Realms for live graphics chat.
• Check Events for community activities.

Use /quests.php for daily objectives and /season-rewards.php for the current season reward track.

• Daily Quests: Each day you receive 3 rotating objectives with Haven Coin and season XP rewards.
• Claiming: Once a quest reaches 100%, use the claim button to collect rewards immediately.
• Season Progress: Season reward XP comes from quests and supported site activity throughout the month.
• Catch-up Claims: On the season rewards page, claiming a later unlocked tier also marks earlier unclaimed unlocked tiers on that track as collected.

CharHaven uses Haven Coins (HC) to power the cosmetic economy.

Earning & Buying Coins

• Purchase: Buy packages from 100 HC ($0.99) to 6,500 HC ($49.99) via Ko-fi at /coins.php.
• Daily login bonus: 5 HC (day 1) to 25 HC (day 7) with streak tracking.
• Trivia & Gacha: Play free mini-games to earn coins.
• Navbar balance: Your HC balance is always visible in the top navigation.

Cosmetic Shop

• Profile Borders (8): Animated borders — Flame, Galaxy, Neon Pulse, Golden Frame, Frost, Void, Rainbow, Classic Blue.
• Card Backgrounds (5): Gradient cards — Midnight Sky, Matrix Rain, Holographic, Sunset, Ocean Depths.
• Chat Flair (6): Custom name colors — Crimson, Emerald, Gold, Ice Blue, Gradient, Rainbow.
• Custom Titles (5): Ink Slinger, Lore Master, World Builder, Shadow Walker, ✦ Starborn ✦.
• Realm Shop: Room decoration packs, supporter backgrounds, character particle effects (sparkles, flames, glow auras), and realm upgrades (capacity boost, featured listing).
• Rarity: Common → Uncommon → Rare → Epic → Legendary (50–500 HC).

Equipping

• Browse and buy at /shop.php. One item per slot.
• Click Equip to activate or Unequip to remove.

Visit /arcade.php to play and earn Haven Coins.

• 🪙 Coin Flip: 50/50 chance, 1.8x payout. Bet 5–500 HC.
• 🎯 Number Guess: Pick 1–10. Exact = 3x, ±1 = 1.5x. Bet 5–200 HC.
• 💡 Trivia: RP-themed questions. Earn 5/10/20 HC. Free to play.
• 🎰 Daily Gacha: Free daily pull with cosmetic drops.
• Arcade fairness: Some games validate impossible scores against session time so exploit attempts are rejected while normal close-to-threshold runs still pass.
• History: Last 10 games shown with results.

Collaborative scene writing inside worlds.

• RP Rooms: World owners create scenes/locations. Each is a writing space.
• Join: Select linked characters. Posts show your character's name and avatar.
• Post Types: 💬 Dialogue, ⚔️ Action, 📖 Narration, 💭 OOC.
• Modes: Freeform or Turn-based.
• Rewards: 1–3 HC per post (daily cap: 50 HC).

Connect your Minecraft account. Visit /minecraft/.

Linking Your Account

• Step 1: Go to Profile Settings and enter your MC username.
• Step 2: Use the verification code in-game to confirm.
• Step 3: Your MC account is now linked and visible on your profile.
• Unlink: Remove the link anytime from the same page.

Features

• Server Status: Live player count, MOTD, and server version.
• Leaderboards: Top players by XP, achievements, and play time.
• MC Trivia: Minecraft-themed trivia game in the Arcade.
• Forum: Dedicated Minecraft category for discussions.

Pixel-art style virtual rooms where characters walk, talk, and interact visually. Visit /realms/.

Getting Started

• Select Character: Choose one of your characters to represent you in the realm.
• Browse Realms: Filter by category, search, or sort by popularity.
• Enter: Click a realm card then hit "Enter Realm" to join.
• Create: Create custom realms with unique backgrounds and settings. Free users: 10 rooms, Silver: 15, Gold: 25.

In-Realm Features

• Movement: Click on the canvas to move your character sprite. Drag your own character for precise placement.
• Chat: Real-time text chat with speech bubbles, whispers, @mentions, and /commands.
• Poses & Emotes: Change your character's pose or trigger emotes from the pose picker.
• Minimap: Navigate large realms with the interactive minimap.

Portals & Sub-Rooms

• Portal Doorways: Realm owners can create invisible clickable zones that teleport users to other realms. Perfect for multi-room builds (buildings, dungeons, towns).
• Visual Placement: Click "Draw Portal Area on Canvas" and drag a rectangle directly on the background to place portals visually — no manual coordinate entry needed.
• Invisible Portals: Uncheck "Show label" to hide the floating text. The hitbox remains active, so draw doors into your background art and overlay an invisible portal.
• Sub-Rooms: Create child rooms linked to a parent realm. Sub-rooms inherit security settings (password, visibility).
• Invite Codes: Every realm gets a unique 8-character code. Share /r/{code} for direct access.

Server Time

• UTC Clock: The navbar displays a live UTC server clock. All realm events and upcoming day/night cycles follow this centralized time.
• Consistency: No matter where you are geographically, everyone sees the same time — great for scheduling realm events.

Customize how CharHaven looks with presets, color pickers, and custom CSS. Visit /themes.php.

• Presets: Choose from curated themes (Obsidian Dark, Haven Light, Ocean, Forest, etc.).
• Colors: Fine-tune individual background, border, text, and accent colors with color pickers.
• Custom CSS (Supporters): Write custom CSS to fully brand your experience. Supporter tier feature.
• Export/Import: Save your theme as a JSON file and share it with friends.
• Live Preview: Changes apply in real-time as you pick colors.

Find artists or offer your talents. Visit /commissions/.

• Browse: View open commission slots from community artists.
• Artist Profile: Set up your commission page with examples, pricing, and availability.
• 0% Platform Fee: CharHaven takes no cut from commission payments.
• Communication: Use DMs to discuss commission details with artists.

CharHaven offers three tiers. Visit the Membership Plans page for current pricing and full details.

• Standard (Free): 8 characters, 5 worlds, 15 images per character, 10 realm rooms, 3MB background uploads, 2 daily gacha pulls, and 75% Arcade HC rate.
• ✦ Silver Supporter: 30 characters, 20 worlds, 50 images per character, 500 HC monthly bonus, 3 daily gacha pulls, custom CSS/themes, chat upgrades, 20 realm rooms, sub-rooms & portals, and 5MB background uploads.
• ★ Gold Patron: Unlimited characters, worlds, and images, 1,000 HC monthly bonus, 5 daily gacha pulls, all cosmetics, full chat upgrades, 30 realm rooms, sub-rooms & portals, 10MB background uploads, priority support, and early access to new features.
• Choose a plan on the Membership page and complete the Ko-fi checkout.

CharHaven implements multiple layers of protection to defend your uploaded character art and gallery assets against unauthorized AI training datasets and general web scraping.

How It Works

• Adversarial Noise Injection: A subtle, high-frequency "noise" perturbation is applied at the server level when an image is processed. This noise is almost invisible to humans but violently disrupts neural network feature extraction (like Glaze/Nightshade, but optimized for server-side).
• Metadata Copyright: Uploaded JPEGs automatically receive embedded IPTC and EXIF copyright markers flagging the content as not to be used for AI training boundaries.
• Invisible Watermarking: A cryptographically secure watermark (LSB) embedding your account details is hidden within the artwork pixels to prove ownership if the file is copied.
• Anti-Scrape CSS: On profile galleries, right-clicking to "Save image as..." and drag-and-drop dragging are heavily restricted through invisible CSS shields and JS listeners.
• AI Crawler Blocks: Over 15 known AI scraping bots (such as GPTBot, CCBot, Google-Extended, and Anthropic) are blacklisted platform-wide. Direct access to `/assets/uploads/` is also blocked from external scripts.

What Art is Protected?

• Automatic Application: These protective measures apply automatically—in real-time—to every image uploaded through the platform (character thumb, gallery uploads, backgrounds).
• Performance Friendly: Because this happens on our image-processing infrastructure behind the scenes, you do not need to pre-process your high-resolution images prior to uploading them.

CharHaven takes content safety seriously. All mature (18+) content is gated and blurred by default to protect all users.

How It Works

• Blur by default: Any character or image flagged as mature content appears blurred across the entire site — homepage, discover, gallery, search, and collections.
• 18+ Badge: Blurred content shows a clear "18+ Content" label overlay so you know what you're looking at.
• Click-through gate: Accessing a mature character profile requires you to be logged in, aged 18+, and have explicitly consented to viewing mature content.
• Profile-level protection: Even after passing the gate, mature character profile images and gallery assets remain blurred with 18+ overlays.

Who Can See What

• Guests (not logged in): See blurred thumbnails only. Clicking through shows a gate page requiring sign-in.
• Minors (under 18): See blurred thumbnails only. Cannot access mature character profiles under any circumstances.
• Adults (18+) without consent: See blurred thumbnails. Clicking shows a consent prompt to update preferences.
• Adults (18+) with consent: See blurred thumbnails on discovery surfaces; full content on character profiles with a mature content warning banner.

Managing Your Preferences

• Consent: You can enable mature content viewing from your Profile Settings.
• Birthdate: Your age is calculated from the birthdate on your account. Ensure it is accurate.
• Flagging content: If you are a character creator, you can mark your characters as mature content from the character edit page. Please flag appropriately — failure to do so may result in moderation action.