The friend system
The friend system on Whisthub is designed to make playing the various card games more enjoyable by allowing you to create a list of players that you consider to be your friends. These can either be your real-life friends, or people that you have met during your journey on Whisthub. This page aims to give an overview of what features the friend system offers, and how to effectively use them.
Adding players to your friend list
The easiest way to add someone to your friend list, is by giving them a thumbs up at the end of a game, after which the button will appear. Click this button to add the player to your friend list.
If you already know which players you want to have on your friend list, then you can go directly to your settings and look up players by their username. Alternatively, you can also add someone as a friend by clicking the button " Add as friend" on their profile page. You can add a maximum of 128 friends.
Note that adding friends is a unidirectional operation. There is no concept of friend requests that you have to accept or decline. For example, player Monica can add Chandler as a friend, but that doesn't mean that Chandler will have Monica on his friend list too. This also means that there is no simple way of knowing which other players have added you as a friend. This is intentional and meant as a measure to protect the privacy of the players: if you want to remove someone from your friend list again, you should be able to do so without the need to give an explanation.
Reserving a room for your friends
Once you have a list of friends, it becomes possible to reserve a room for your friends, if you have a premium subscription. You can do this by clicking the button " Access control" after creating a room, and subsequently enabling the checkbox "Friends only ". An icon will appear, indicating that the room can now only be accessed by players on your friend list. If you wish to change this, you can always go back to access control and uncheck "Friends only ", which will make the room accessible to all players again.
Beware that limiting a room to your friends might make it harder to quickly find sufficient players, especially for less popular games, or if you don't have a lot of friends on your list. It is therefore advised you to use this functionality with caution, and preferrably only in combination with the invitation system, which is explained below.
Inviting friends to your rooms
The most powerful feature of the friend system is the ability to invite your friends to your rooms, even if they have not opened the website at that time! To do this, you can use the button , which you can find in the top left corner of the room dashboard once you have created the room. This will show a list of your friends that are available to be invited. To send an invitation, click the friend you wish to invite and a green checkmark will appear, indicating that the invitation has been sent. This feature also requires a premium subscription.
Note that you don't have to reserve a room for your friends to be able to invite your friends. You can invite your friends to your public rooms as well, and every invited friend will be able to join the room regardless of any requirements set, such as reputation or a password. In other words, if you have set a password for a room, the invited user can join the room without entering the password! Invited users can also see which rooms they are invited to in the lobby by a pulsating icon in the bottom right corner of the room.
Setting your status and receiving invitations
Closely related to sending invitations to your friends, is the ability to receive invitations from them. Invitations leverage push notifications, which allow Whisthub to send you an invitation, even if you don't have the website opened. Push notifications need to be explicitly enabled per device, which can be done in your settings.
Don't worry, we don't want to bother you with invitations all the time, for example when you're at work, which is why a system has been developed that allows setting your status. This way you can set a certain period, during which you allow your friends to send you invitations. Your status can be set by clicking your name on the homepage, and then clicking status. This will open a popup that looks like
Subsequently you can select one of the predefined time periods you want to remain available for, and you can also choose who can send you invitations. By default this is set to your friends only, but you can also set it to "everyone". This means that anyone who has added you to their friend list will see that you are available and hence can send you invitations.
Last but not least you can also specify which games you want to be available for. Whisthub currently offers 5 different card games, so it's only logical that you don't want - or even know how - to play all of them. Just select the ones you want to receive invitations for from the list.
If you want to clear your status, just open up the popup again and choose "Clear status". You can also change the time period or games you want to remain available for, if you like. As long as you are available, you will see the badge Available in the menu, as well as a pulsating green bullet next to your name on the homepage.
Obviously your friends won't be available for playing all the time, which is why you also have the option to receive a push notification when any of your friends becomes available. This can be enabled in your settings, and you can choose to only receive a notification when you are available yourself, but if you really can't get enough of Whisthub, then you can also choose to just always receive them, regardless of whether you are available or not. Be careful with this option though and make sure to put your phone on silent at night if you use this!
Receiving invitations is a feature of the friend system that does not require a premium subscription. This means that you can receive invitations from any friend of yours that does have a premium subscription, as sending invitations does require one.
Examples
The friend system is an extensive system that offers a lot of flexibility, but above all aims to improve you experience on Whisthub. It's up to you to decide how to use the friend system, but below are a few examples of how you could use it
- Rachel, Ross, Phoebe and Joey play a session of Barbu King every week on Wednesday at 9pm. Rachel has a premium subscription and always hosts the room so that they are able to play double king. Ross comes online, but Rachel is late from work today and she hasn't opened the room yet. Ross sets his status to available, and starts watching an episode of the sitcom Friends, while waiting for Rachel to come online. Once Rachel comes home from work, she sets her status to available, opens the room and protects it with the usual password they have agreed upon, and then sends an invitation to Ross, who is available. Phoebe and Joey haven't set themselves to available yet, but they receive a push notification that Rachel is available now, so they open Whisthub and join the room to start playing.
- Chandler wants to play a game of Hearts, but prefers to do this with his friends. He creates a room, setting it to "Friends only". He then clicks the button in the room he has created to see if any of his friends are available. He sees that Monica is currently available, but only for Manille. Chandler decides to cancel the room, and opens a new room for Manille, as he likes this game too. He once again limits the room to friends only, and sends an invitation to Monica. Monica was cleaning the house, but once she receives the push notification with the invitation from Chandler, she drops everything and joins Chandler's room. As no more friends are currently available, Chandler makes the room public after which two other players join.
FAQ
Do I still need to set a password for my rooms?
The friend system and the ability to protect your rooms with a password may seem similar, but their intended usage is different. If you exactly know which players are going to be playing in your room, then it's advised to protect the room with a password. This commonly happens when you want to show people you know in real life how Whisthub works, and this is also why protecting your rooms with a password will never become a premium feature.
If you don't know yet who will join your room, but you know for example that every Monday night a lot of your Whisthub friends are online at 7pm, then you can choose to only allow friends in your room. It's advised in that case to check if any of your friends are available from the room dashboard, and if not, make the room public after all, perhaps after some friends have already joined.
I can't invite my friends, even though I see they are online!
You have to be aware that being online on the website - i.e. having the website open - is different from being available. Players explicitly have to indicate that they are available to be invited, and they may do so only for their own friends. Therefore, the fact that you see that one of your friends is online does not mean that they have actually set their status to available! Those are two different things.