Smoother log in and sign up

Portail v2.8.5 shipped on 2026-10-31 as a patch release focused on smoother log in and sign up. A round of fixes for logging in and creating an account. The biggest one: if you came to Portail from Ratchet, an app asking to connect, or a gift card, and made a new account along the way, you ended up in the chat instead of back where you started. Now you land where you were going. Sign-up errors also read properly in Russian, a code screen that has run out of time sends you back to the form with your email still filled in, and the Back button no longer bounces you off the log in page. The work is recorded here because small releases are still product history. They change how people sign in, read responses, pay for access, share conversations, open files, or trust the system when something goes wrong.

The main changes were direct: new accounts made on the way to ratchet, an app connection or a gift card now return there once the account is ready, instead of opening the chat, every sign-up and email-code error now shows in your language. russian speakers saw english messages before, when a sign-up code expires or runs out of tries, you go back to the form with your email kept and a short note on what happened, instead of being stuck on the code screen, the resend code button waits out the same 45 seconds the server does, so pressing it straight away no longer fails, if you log in to an account that never confirmed its email, portail now sends the code it says it sent, a password that is too short is caught before anything is sent, so you don't have to solve the captcha again, losing your connection mid sign-up shows a clear message instead of a browser error like "failed to fetch", after logging in, the back button takes you to where you were before, not to the log in page, and forgot password? now starts with the email you already typed. That list is intentionally plain. It names what changed without turning the release into theatre. When a release fixes a build, a redirect, a storage path, or a UI edge case, the value is often that users stop noticing the problem. The archive keeps that invisible work visible enough for future debugging and for anyone checking whether Portail has cared about the details over time.

This version also fits into the wider Portail contract. One account, one chat history, and one model picker only work if the smaller pieces keep their promises. Authentication has to fail clearly. Billing has to count honestly. Uploads have to arrive in a form models can read. Admin tools have to show the operator what happened instead of hiding it behind a blank screen. v2.8.5 moved that contract forward in its own narrow lane.

The screenshots attached to this entry show the public release record as it now appears on portail.cc. For older releases, this archive was rebuilt from the git history, package version changes, release modal text, and commit subjects. That means the page is honest about its source: it documents the shipped change and preserves the record going forward, even when the exact old production screen cannot be recreated from a single saved image.

The practical result is simple. Someone landing on this page can see the version number, date, release tier, headline, highlights, and a real rendered screenshot of the archive page. Search engines can index the post through the canonical URL, sitemap entry, and structured data. Future releases now have a standard to meet before deploy, so the history should get cleaner from here instead of fuzzier.