ReaverCelty

Site DDOS & Response

Hey all,

Moving forward, the site will be using cloudflares antibot solution by default after a malicious actor located in Spain leveraged protonVPN's IP addresses to scrape the site so aggressively that it knocked the site partially offline, failing ~1.5 million requests in a matter of hours. Then, this actor picked up again in another country, amassing > 4 million requests in a few hours blocked.

If your API functionality linearly iterates over waifus, you'll most likely be u...

2022 Goals, Frontend Remake

Hey all,

I wanted to say thank you to all who gave their support in 2021 to this website <3

With 2022 launching I thought it would be good to touch base on what I have been working on for MyWaifuList.

One of the core issues I keep running into with the site was related to Google, SEO, user experience, etc. After a long uphill battle of minor adjustments in various places I decided to just say fuck it and start remaking the entire site frontend using vue3, typescript, and ...

Developer Update November 22nd, 2021

Hey all,

I spent some time this past weekend working on the mobile application and some time last week working on some cost saving measures on the server side of things. These are all still in motion, but I figured I would post the mobile app preview here in addition to on discord.

I am more comfortable with the build this time around and thanks to github copilot autofilling a lot of type hints working with Typescript has become a much more enjoyable experience. I was worried abou...

Developer Update November 14th, 2021

Hey all, today I spent some time doing performance optimizations!

I am happy to report that the top pages are now much, much faster thanks to some query adjustments and better indexes. 

Originally the vote counts (likes, trash) were done via an appends query that ran a count(). These were being added to the Waifu at runtime from the framework rather than done in the same query. Earlier this year I moved the votes to a set of 2 queries that were done via a scope in the same se...

Developer Update November 7th, 2021

Hey all,

Today I added studio support to the main website (click here) and added the controls for power users and community moderators to add information to them. This information will be exposed to the API in full once enough time has passed to fill a bit of information. I have done about 30 studios today on my own.

Latvia, France, Russia, Czech regions will have additional captcha and browser test upon regis...

Developer Update: October 22, 2021

Hewwo!

Sorry for the slow updates. About 3 weeks ago at the end of September / early October I had a breakthrough COVID-19 infection. Needless to say: it sucked. I'm still coughing, but I am improving.

I took my sick time to step back and begin working on the mobile app again and ended up throwing it out to start over. This time I'm approaching it differently and with better tooling. This includes moving from Redux to MobX, which makes way more sense. It also means moving from JS ...

October 8th, 2021 Developer Update

Hello Everyone,

I spent some of today preparing a potential move to Cloudflare Images as it provides much better features for us in the long run. If you're not familiar with Image Processing, here is a dive on how it works with MyWaifuList and why it's problematic.

Controlling File Size

At some point this year we moved from attempting to do image compression on rack to doing it via ShortPixel. This not only removes a dependency on image pipeline tools having...

Direct List Links, Email Issues

Today I pushed out direct list links which can be viewed here. I also made a few backend changes and touched up a few things here and there.

I also received a notice that my account is "in the yellow" for AWS apparently because users are marking the emails as spam. Since I only ever mail on account verification and password reset it's a little hard to address a the volume is so slow ...

Copyright Art, Artists, & More

If you're watching on twitter we ran into a bit of a situation where a random (very, very upset) user was accusing us of stealing art, ripping out the watermark from the original author, and setting it as a display picture. 

Of course, none of those things are true. In fact, that's a silly amount of work for the character being cited. 

Regardless, though, it did reiterate our...

Developer Update: API Changes

Hey all, I published a small API update today.

• Trending Waifus\Husbandos are now available in the API (with scope of today or week)
• Waifu and Series sitemaps now available via meta endpoint (will contain <entity> entry to expose the original ID) (Refreshes Tuesday AM)
• Waifus, search Waifus are now scoped to Waifus only
• Husbando, search Husbando now available and scoped to Husbandos only
• User model now contains banner_thumbnail and banner 2021-08-15 15:58:28 +0000 UTC View Post

Developer Update: New Browse Page, Tags Reintroduced

Browse Page

A new browse page has been launched at /browse to help allow better searching, linking, and make way for me to let google know that there is search capabilities so google can display a fancy search box. Additionally, google will have more pages it can crawl which is nice. 

Tags

Power users and up can now add tags to the ...

Developer Update: Popular Virtual Youtubers, Compression Updates

Hello everyone!

Server side image compression is gross

Despite my best effort, I could not get results that would satisfy our google overlords so I ended up purchasing a bulk image optimization plan from ShortPixel as it was the most inexpensive solution. Regular gallery images will be done on rack, but the main images will be pipelined through the backend to receive optimization via Short Pixel because, frankly, they compress way better because that is the entire...

Developer Update: Improving Compression & Google Stuff

Today I spent a ton of time tackling a few key issues, specifically around bandwidth consumption & web vitals (via google).

Bandwidth consumption is pretty much the number #1 contributor to costs, and compressing images can be challenging. I did some fine tuning on the compression that the server does today but the output is still not satisfactory enough for googles  page speed insights to give an A grade on mobile. However, it's still a huge improvement.

Secondly, images...

Content Moderation Improvement

To help with content moderation,  I rolled out an image report feature which should help moderators on the backend take corrective action against really bad offenses and reward users who assist in reporting it. 

https://news.mywaifulist.moe/2021/06/announcing-community-points/ 

Developer Update: Minor Server Updates, Minor Bugfix

• Fixed an issue where certain users (one user, trashman) had such a thicc profile due to trashing over 4k Waifus on the site a leaky query was discovered that prevented his page from loading
• Adjusted server to help give it a little more performance (still tweaking things)

Developer Update: Minor Updates, New Affiliate Coming Tuesday

Today the following adjustments were made:

• Adjusted how comments are loaded as under certain conditions trees between 1-2 weeks being dropped from the results [I need to rebuild this whole approach. it works on paper, but logically, it's awkward to explain]
• Banned some kid with 243 accounts
• Prepared new placeholders for affiliate link
• New news post scheduled for affiliate links
• Updated relevancy sorting for searching (should return better result...
  2021-05-31 19:15:25 +0000 UTC View Post

Trending Data Fixed

Trending data was fixed tonight so popular Waifus for the week are now working again. No view data was lost, but the table used to generate data for optimization purposes was not being updated properly. So I just went back and generated all the missing days.

Thanks All!

War Notes

There is a new widget on the dashboard for all users who are patreon tier 3 and up and want to submit a war request.  I'll let it re-show every few months or whenever we run low on ideas. Or ill make it available to Tier 2 and up.

Thanks!!!

Developer Updates: Bug Fixes, Quality Of Life, New Patron Features

Hello Everyone!

The following updates have shipped and are now ready for your viewing pleasure.

• Fixed issue with uploading replacement images on your profiles true love (patreon only)
• Patreon users can add up to 70 waifus to a list
• Patreon users can now make up to 20 lists
• Non Patreon users can now add up to 40 waifus to a  list
• N...
  2021-05-23 19:52:53 +0000 UTC View Post

New GPU, Bugfixes Upcoming

It's Alive!

Earlier this week I was able to get my new GPU (by buying an entirely new computer and taking out the GPU) - however, I can say I am really happy that nothing else was broken and that I am back up and running.

I hunted far and wide for a GPU that would not cost an arm and a leg, but I was not able to find one at all. EVGA was not going to repair my...

Surgery Success!

Happy to report the IRL waifu had a stunningly great surgery with great outcomes! I should be able to resume regularly scheduled updates as of this week!

Well, that was before yesterday.

I was doing my dailies in genshin impact while monitoring the waifu and suddenly click my pc went black and would not turn back on. I assumed it was the power supply so I went and picked one from best buy and, unfortunately, it also would not start. I ended up ta...

Small Pause On Updates

This week, my IRL waifu was diagnosed with uterine leiomyosarcoma, which is very not daijobu.

I'll be performing some last minute bugfixes to ship out this weekend then I will be taking a 2-3 week break from working on the site & mobile app. I am announcing this now because I work on the website \ things related to the site every weekend (literally, i have a 6 day work week).  It also means if you have an issue collecting patreon rewards or something weird happens, I probably w...

Developer Update: Mobile Update 2

Today I shifted the login to gate the entire app and it feels much nicer. I also added the initial buttons for liking, trashing, and removing preferences for Waifus. They feel a little weird being there (too small or too large?) so I still want to play with it. The list button feels nice with the slide up drawer coming from the bottom of the screen so so you can add Waifus to your user declared lists from there.  I didn't add the lists at the bottom yet though.

I also re...

Developer Update: Mobile

Mobile Update

Slow & steady, but i got some more elements clickable such as going into a series from a waifu, then traversing, with back button support etc.

Also got logins working but it's kinda scuffed right now because the state would need to fire updates to god knows how many components to unmount buttons when someone logs out. I don't really know if I want to bother with that, so I may just gate the whole app behind a login so it's easier. Who doesn't have any account a...

Request: Mobile Devices

I'm having a lot of fun playing with building mobile applications lately and I think the idea of bringing MWL to a mobile application is within reach now. So, I wanted to see what device everyone is using! I can target both platforms, but there are specific things i need to take into account for building an iPhone version or Android version which could be radically different (mostly how native features work).

If you have time, please fill out this short 3 question survey on which mobile...

Developer Update: Random Bugfixes & QOL

Minor Update Today:

* Fixed issue with user id not showing in dark mode

* Fixed mobile controls for banners being unclickable

* Added recommended banner size to banner area

* Fixed an issue with Patreon connection not properly handling rewards

* Patreon tier users will show their badge in ongoing discussions

* Comments with no children will be removed fully, instead of showing just "comment removed"

* Improved achievement d...

Developer Update: Bugfixes, Trending Waifus, Up Next

Today

Today I rolled out fixes for addressing the broken top lists for waifus (liked, trashed waifus). I also restructured internally how these work so it can be more easily scaled upward in the future. Users have frequently asked for more entries in the trashlist, toplist, etc. The main challenge is calculating the ratio with respect to the weight and keeping it fast. The popular list is more simple as it's a flat query (just need to count)

I'll be updating these to allow top 2...

2021-02-15 Comment Update

Update Released Today

Hello all, today several updates have gone out:

1. New Supporter display on dashboard (old one was getting too large!)
2. New Wizarding World of Waifus sidebar image
3. New Site Notices area for ongoing concerns
4. Slightly changed achievement view on profile page
5. Fixed toggles for dark theme light theme
6. Comments Update

Updated Comment System

The new comment system looks nicer, has tr...

Developer Update: Comment System Part 3

I finally got this to a place where I feel OK about the structure. It's taken a more youtube like approach to hiding comments where it will show 4 most recent replies before allowing you to expand it. I am still working on showing more "active" threads, such as threads spawned within the last 6 hours (they should start expanded since they could be a relevant ongoing discussion). So right now, the logic behind it visually is:

• If more than four recent replies, show 4 most recent the...
  2021-02-07 19:45:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Developer Update: Comment System Part 2

I've finished implementing the ability to vote on new comments and moved some UI parts around as well. 

The hardest part is here now which is scale. Our most popular Waifu for comments is Zero Two but right now we currently only show about 25 - 50 comments.

Since the update features a hierarchy for comments, it's challenging to paginate by anything other than time sin...