What's next?

Hey Serializd family! This is the first of many updates you'll be getting every month if you're a Supporter, VIP, or Tellie Fan.

My goal with these updates is to keep you posted about what is coming to Serializd in the future (with tentative timelines), and more transparency into the work I'm doing.

First of all, I want to thank you all for your support. With your help, the weight of running Serializd feels lighter. Of course this is both due to your donations (which now cover 30% of all Serializd costs - servers, databases, etc), but also because of your moral support. The fact that Serializd members such as yourselves are willing to help keep this app alive and thriving is so meaningful ❤️

So, what's new with Serializd?

I spent basically all of January working on 2 things:

1. Setting up the Patreon
This included creating the badges, setting up the "Connect your Patreon" feature, and logistical stuff around that.

2. Bug fixes, and more bug fixes
If you're on the Discord, you know that people regularly find bugs on Serializd and report them (for which I am so grateful!). I paid extra attention to that channel (and my email inbox) and prioritized what to fix. Serializd is much more stable than it was a month ago.

Bugs will always pop up, especially as the community grows and the app gets new features. It's hard to see them coming because they're always from something unexpected, like someone reviewing a show which gets deleted from TMDB, or text appearing weirdly because someone's set up a custom font on their phone, or simply when someone marks 10000 shows as watched and my database can't handle that amount of data lol

However, I'm trying to be more vigilant and spend more time testing things. This does mean that newer features will roll out slower, but I think it's worth it.

In the past, I have aimed to release a set of new features every 2 weeks. Sometimes I'd miss that target because my "real job" would have too much going on, making it difficult to focus on Serializd, but I mostly stuck to that timeline. *

Moving forward, my goal is to release a set of new features every month. This extra time will allow me to be more thoughtful with the releases and give me more time to test things (thus reducing bugs).

With all that out of the way, here are the things I'm working on for February:

1. An "Upcoming Premieres" section
Everyone on Serializd already gets an "Upcoming episodes" section, which shows them upcoming episodes from shows they've watched/watchlisted. This new "Upcoming Premieres" section may sound similar, but it's for all new shows.

Think of it like this list from Den of Geek.

I'm halfway done with this. I need to work on making it specific for each country, so that people can see shows available on their local streaming services. In the future, I will be adding filtering options here to make it even easier to discover new shows.

2. A page that lists all the Patreon supporters, for more visibility
This is pretty straightforward. I want to make sure that Patreon members get the recognition they deserve ❤️

3. Bug fixes and performance improvements
... as always

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While I'm working on this, I'm also getting things ready for some bigger, more exciting things on the app in the future. Stay tuned!

Also, some of you may have noticed that the "Following Activity" feed hasn't been working. This is intentional. Unfortunately, it was causing a strain on my database because of the massive amounts of data it was pulling. This will be back as soon as I can upgrade to better hardware (which will be made possible as more people join the Patreon!)

That's all I've got for now! Let me know your thoughts 💭