The first of many

It's been a year since I launched PlayTracker to the public, and to commemorate this occasion I’d like to talk about the origins of PlayTracker, the year since launch, and look forward to where PlayTracker is going in the next one. I’ll try to keep it short and interesting, but if you’re only interested in the future scroll down to the last paragraph.

The original idea for PlayTracker was ridiculously simple and almost unrecognisable from the site we have today. It was just a simple page with cards for a few platforms and games. There was not an aggregated level, or a library, or anything of note, really. It also looked horrible - I mean it:

It began to evolve and get more ambitious over time. More data on profile like platforms. An aggregated level representing progress across all platforms. A unified gaming library. All these were, at first, wild ideas that I had no idea how to implement. I learned and got better, eventually becoming capable of making these ideas a reality and creating what I presented to the world on June 19th 2018 as PlayTracker.

But, it was a rickety mess held together by duct tape. The features I added on top of the original code made it a nightmare to fix any bugs, fit new things into the interface, scale up to handle the load, and just improve the site in general.

This is why I spent the last year rewriting things and getting better at doing it. I did implement new things, but they were not what I spent most of my time on (yes, that includes Insight). It was a struggle - I knew the rework was important and the only way for the site to survive and evolve, but I felt like I was not developing new things fast enough and was letting the community down. Luckily for all of us, this huge endeavor will be concluded with the release of the upcoming dashboard rework which will complete what I consider “PlayTracker 2.0”.

After that, I will start to work more intensely on new features for all parts of PlayTracker. The roadmap for April/May I posted is way behind in an Epic way, but the features I listed there are still a priority and will be coming soon. I’ve worked on all of them already since I tend to have a bunch of things in the pipeline at the same time, but they’ve not been ready for prime time.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.