+# Lemmy v0.15.0 Release (2022-01-12)
+
+Lemmy now has private instances, optional registration applications, optional email verification, and temporary bans! These are described in detail below.
+
+Special thanks to @asonix for adding [tokio-console](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/2003) and [Jaeger + opentelemetry](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1992) to our dev setups, so we can better identify performance bottlenecks.
+
+
+## What is Lemmy?
+
+[Lemmy](https://join-lemmy.org/) is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, or Hacker News: you subscribe to communities you're interested in, post links and discussions, then vote and comment on them. Lemmy isn't just a reddit alternative; its a network of interconnected communities ran by different people and organizations, all combining to create a single, personalized front page of your favorite news, articles, and memes.
+
+## Major Changes
+
+### Required email verification
+
+Admins can turn this on, and new users will need to verify their emails. Current users will not have to do this.
+
+### Registration applications
+
+Admins can now optionally make new users fill out an application to join your server. There is a new panel in their top bar where they can approve or deny pending applications.
+
+This works in conjunction with the *require_email* field. If that is also turned on, the application will only be shown after their email has been verified. The user will receive an email when they have been accepted.
+
+### Closed / Private instances
+
+The instance settings now includes a *private instance* option, which if turned on, will only let logged in users view your site. Private instances was one of our first issues, and it was a large effort, so its great to finally have this completed.
+
+### Temporary Bans
+
+When banning users from your site or community, moderators can now optionally give a number of days for the ban to last.
+
+### Allow comment replies from blocked users
+
+It used to be that if a user blocked you, you couldn't respond to their public posts and comments. This is now fixed. They won't see your content, but others can.
+
+## Upgrade notes
+
+Follow the [Docker or Ansible upgrade instructions here.](https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/administration.html)
+
+## Support development
+
+If you'd like to support development, and make sure that we will always be available to work full time on Lemmy, consider [donating to support its development](https://join-lemmy.org/donate). We've spent hundreds of hours on Lemmy, and would like to be able to add more developers to our little open-source co-op as time goes on.
+
+## Changes
+
+### API
+
+We've removed a list of banned users from `GetSite`, added a few endpoints related to registration applications, made a few changes allowing temporary bans, site settings, made a few changes to the login response. These are non-destructive and current clients should work with this release.
+
+- A full list of the API changes can be seen on this diff of [lemmy-js-client: 0.14.0 -> 0.15.0](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-js-client/compare/0.14.0-rc.1...0.15.0-rc.34) .
+
+### Config
+
+There is a new rate limit for creating new comments in the [config.hjson](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/config/defaults.hjson#L36).
+
+### Lemmy Server
+
+- Adding temporary bans. Fixes [#1423](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1423) ([#1999](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1999))
+- Add console-subscriber ([#2003](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/2003))
+- Opentelemetry ([#1992](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1992))
+- Use correct encoding when fetching non-UTF-8 site metadata ([#2015](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/2015))
+- Adding a banned endpoint for admins. Removing it from GetSite. Fixes [#1806](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1806)
+- Prevent panic on InboxRequestGuard
+- Case-insensitive webfinger response. Fixes [#1955](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1955) & [#1986](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1986) ([#2005](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/2005))
+- First pass at invite-only migration. ([#1949](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1949))
+- Upgrading pictrs. ([#1996](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1996))
+- Trying out an upgraded version of html5ever. [#1964](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1964) ([#1991](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1991))
+- Adding min setup password length to the docs. Fixes [#1989](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1989) ([#1990](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1990))
+- Test pleroma follow ([#1988](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1988))
+- Remove awc ([#1979](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1979))
+- Consolidate reqwest clients, use reqwest-middleware for tracing
+- Don't drop error context when adding a message to errors ([#1958](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1958))
+- Change lemmur repo links ([#1977](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1977))
+- added deps - git and ca-certificates (for federation to work) and changed adduser to useradd so that user can be added non-interactively ([#1976](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1976))
+- Allow comment replies from blocked users. Fixes [#1793](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1793) ([#1969](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1969))
+- Fix retry infinite loops. Fixes [#1964](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1964) ([#1967](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1967))
+- Add lotide activities to tests
+- Allow single item for to, cc, and @context
+- Adding a captcha rate limit. Fixes [#1755](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1755) ([#1941](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1941))
+- Dont send email notifications for edited comments (fixes [#1925](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1925))
+- Fix API dupes query. [#1878](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1878)
+- Fixing duped report view for admins. Fixes [#1933](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1933) ([#1945](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1945))
+- Adding a GetComment endpoint. Fixes [#1919](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1919) ([#1944](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1944))
+- Fix min title char count for post titles. Fixes [#1854](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1854) ([#1940](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1940))
+- Adding MarkPostAsRead to API. Fixes [#1784](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1784) ([#1946](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1946))
+- background-jobs 0.11 ([#1943](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1943))
+- Add tracing ([#1942](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1942))
+- Remove pointless community follower sort. ([#1939](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1939))
+- Use once_cell instead of lazy_static
+- Adding unique constraint for activity ap_id. Fixes [#1878](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1878) ([#1935](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1935))
+- Making public key required. Fixes [#1934](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1934)
+- Change NodeInfo `links` to an array
+- Fixing fuzzy_search to escape like chars.
+- Fix build error in [#1914](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1914)
+- Fix login ilike bug. Fixes [#1920](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1920)
+- Fix Smithereen webfinger, remove duplicate webfinger impl (fixes [#1916](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1916))
+- Dont announce comments, edited posts to Pleroma/Mastodon followers
+- Community outbox should only contain activities sent by community (fixes [#1916](https://github.com/LemmyNet/Lemmy/issues/1916))
+- Remove HTTP signature compatibility mode (its not necessary)
+- Implement rate limits on comments
+
+### Lemmy UI
+
+- Adding as and lt languages, Updating translations.
+- Temp bans ([#524](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/524))
+- Fix banner. Fixes [#466](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/466) ([#534](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/534))
+- Making the modlog badge stand out more. Fixes [#531](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/531) ([#539](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/539))
+- Add some fallback properties for display in older browsers ([#535](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/535))
+- Private instances ([#523](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/523))
+- Add nord theme. Fixes [#520](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/520) ([#527](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/527))
+- Dont receive post room comments from blocked users. ([#516](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/516))
+- Using console.error for error logs. ([#517](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/517))
+- Fix issue with websocket buffer.
+- Switching to websocket-ts. [#247](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/247) ([#515](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/515))
+- Fix native language issue. (zh_Hant) ([#513](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/513))
+- Fix tippy on component mount. Fixes [#509](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/509) ([#511](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/511))
+- Fix docker latest ([#510](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/510))
+- Enabling html tags in markdown. Fixes [#498](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/498)
+- Fix comment scroll bug. Fixes [#492](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/492)
+- Fixing error for null person_block. Fixes [#491](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/491)
+- Trying to catch promise and json parse errors. [#489](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/489) ([#490](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/490))
+
# Lemmy Release v0.14.0: Federation with Mastodon and Pleroma (2021-11-17)
Today is an exciting day for the Lemmy project.