📰 Blog

Ah, the season of joy, mistletoe, and... app updates? Yes, indeed! It's the most wonderful time of the year, and here I am, Vincent, delivering the latest and (occasionally) greatest in app enhancements. Let's unwrap these updates like they're under the Christmas tree, shall we?

• [FIX] Remember how the status bar flickered like it was trying to compete with your neighbour's over-the-top Christmas lights? Well, no more! We've fixed it. Now, you can navigate around the app without feeling like you're in a disco.
• [FIX] The "Down" screen layout issue is now a thing of the past. It used to look good, except for, well, the actual screen. We've ironed that out, so now everything looks as it should. Because who needs extra chaos during the holidays?
• [REMOVED] We took away the ability to PING a site when it’s down. Turns out, it was like gifting socks to a teenager – not very useful and caused more disappointment (crashes). We might bring it back, but let's see how we feel after the holidays.
• [TWEAK] We did a bit of wordplay on the auth screen. Nothing major, just a little festive sprucing up to keep things fresh. Think of it like changing the wrapping paper style this year.

And there you have it! A small, cozy update to keep the app fires burning. More updates might be coming down the chimney soon. Enjoy the quick development cycle – it's like Advent, but for app features!

Stay tuned, stay merry, and let's hope the only crashes this season are from the sleigh-riding guy in red, not from our app. Happy Holidays!

Alright folks, gather 'round! It's time for our holiday update, where we fix things you didn't even know were broken - it's like finding hidden presents, but without the joy.

• [FIX] We might have fixed the app crash when you try to open a conversation. I mean, who knew apps needed to be stable to converse? Our developer discovered this revolutionary idea just last week!
• [FIX] Profile pages now actually update when you follow or unfollow someone. Yes, it's a miracle, like seeing Santa at the gym in January.
• [FIX] The discover timeline was stuck, but now it's potentially unstuck. Let's play a fun game of "Did it Really Fix?" - your feedback is like those letters to Santa!
• [TWEAK] Inline videos are back! We removed them last time just to see if you'd notice. Spoiler: You did.
• [TWEAK/EXPERIMENTAL] Timeline positioning is like that one light on the tree that won't stay put. We've nudged it a bit. Not perfect, but hey, neither is Aunt Edna's fruitcake.
• [SHADOW BANS] More work on shadow bans because we're naughty, not nice. Kidding! If we really banned you, we'd send a lovely "Please Leave" card with a heart emoji. Holiday spirit and all that jazz.

Remember, if something breaks, it's probably part of our "festive feature set." Happy holidays, and here's to hoping your app experience is smoother than your uncle's dance moves at the holiday party!

Installing Ruby 3.2.2 to the Tinylytics server and running some upgrades. Might affect uptime for a few minutes.

Funny how things work out... Looks like I'll be concentrating on working on my "Status++" app for updown.io over the holidays. There has been some interest and I'm in talks with Adrien to get some momentum as it's been requested for a while now.

Tinylytics is gonna smash through 1 million combined page hits soon... and I'm gonna miss it as I have to go now haha. WOOOOOO!

Just pushed out a quick update to Gluon on TestFlight:

• [NEW] When you navigate to a conversation, the post you have selected will now be highlighted with a blue dot (next to the timestamp) and border so it’s easy to identify... which goes in hand with:
• [TWEAK] Tweaked the scroll to behaviour when navigating to a conversation where the item now actually scrolls to the desired position (maybe) — and it’s also a little bit more faster.
• [TWEAK] Tweaked the Nitpicky main titles and also the layout of the section so that titles are shorter and descriptions also (i.e. now they don’t push things around and go to another line).
• [TWEAK] Changed the colour of blockquotes in dark mode. It was a little hard to see. Thanks for reporting that again!
• [FIX] Fixes an issue with some accounts not getting past login. Sorry about that. My butterfly keyboard = spelling mistakes :_(

Conversation view might need a little bit more tweaking though...

Most likely will hit 1 MILLION page hits across all sites on tinylytics this week. Just want to say a HUGE thank you to all that use it ✌️❤️ You're all fantastic!

I was bored, so I added a gallery view to Gluon. So when there is a post with multiple images (if you're @maique for example) it'll present them in a nice row. Single image posts are not affected. Will be available via TestFlight tomorrow.

Quick TestFlight update for Gluon today:

• [NEW] Alt tags for images now show at the bottom of the image, when you open up the image modal. Just scroll to see it.
• [FIX] Fixed the image width and height when viewed on the timeline. Yay!
• [FIX] Fixed timeline jumping around. No longer a party, but easier to read!
• [FIX] Font changes are now shown in the timeline.

Just want to give a huge thank you to everyone that messaged me in support of Gluon. You're the best! ❤️

Had to make changes to shoutouts today that doesn't let you use the account until you have confirmed your email. In the past it gave you 5 days to confirm before logging you out. So many sign ups the past few days but no confirmations.

I'll also automatically delete accounts, with zero notice, that don't have any shoutouts or themes, and are not confirmed. Best way to handle those accounts and keep the database clean.

There's a minor update to Gluon on the iOS TestFlight. Don't read too much into it... Only tweaking minor things for myself (and others). Probably never release it anyway. But it's there if you want to.

If anyone is using tinylytics and you wrote some nice words, or bad, please let me know. I'd love to add some testimonials to the homepage at some stage. I know it's still early days, but would love to hear from you: [email protected].

For any existing users of Gluon on Android, there is no change for you... and you can still use and download the app (I think). However, I have now unpublished it and is no longer available. The easiest reason for this is Google. Period.

If you're on the edge of subscribing to shoutouts, I have some good news, and it's running until the end of the month, you can get 40% off on the yearly (usually $20) using OMGWHATAREYOUDOING. Use it, share it, print it on T-Shirts 😋

It'll help keep the lights on if you're able ✌️❤️

If you have email stats enabled for your sites on tinylytics, it'll now use your timezone when calculating the next Monday at 09:00 AM. This will not work tomorrow, but will work for the next Monday, unless you disable and enable it again in your site settings.

Slowly starting a changelog for tinylytics too. Only did November so far and will make sure to populate the other months as I go.

I tweaked the shoutouts list view this morning (afternoon 😅). It takes a little bit more space, but I kinda like the room to breathe. Let me know what you think.

Guess what you can do on shoutouts now? Yeah, waste time and upload an avatar... wooo! Only used in the header and nowhere else (for now — I know I know, I have ideas... which came to me as I wrote this post).

Howdy gang! So it's been a while since I shipped anything for shoutouts, and that's OK. I believe shoutouts is a finished product, and I had so many positive comments and hardly any features requests.

Saying that, I did ship a few things, although mainly behind the scenes. One feature that is new is the ability to target a specific element on your site/page, meaning you can add the script where you want and it'll insert your shoutout where you want. You can see the documentation here (head on to the bottom of the page and see "Target specific element").

Also I'm slowly bringing across changes I made to tinylytics in terms of UI bits, but that is a slower task. I really love re-using elements across my projects. They all carry each other.

New pricing, new payment provider

If you read my post on moving payment provider for tinylytics, it's no surprise that I moved shoutouts too. It's live right now for new subscribers 🍋

Saying that, I also looked at the pricing because it felt that the "pick your own price" was a little confusing, so I changed this around.

Now there are two plans, one is $2/month and the other, you guessed it, is $20/year.

Shoutouts is a very niche, fun, product. I also get that people are put off by spending money up front for 1 year of commitment. So I hope that the monthly will be an option to explore.

Alas, there is also a free plan giving you 3 free shoutouts (try saying that a few times) and the default theme. Upgrade for unlimited shoutouts and themes.

I don't expect to make a living from shoutouts, and as long as I can cover hosting & operating expenses, then that's a positive for me.

In general I need to make around $50 before I get a payout from my new payment provider, and $100 for the old one (so that's gonna be interesting to tell them I left). So that's my aim. $50/month... somehow.

What about the future?

I know I said that I think it's a finished product, but... BUT... I have ideas that did not make it into the first version. I'd still like to pursue that.

If you have any specific changes you want to see, for example an integration with tinylytics (😅), I am all ears. It can be what you want.

It's important for me to show what I make, get it out there, but then be able to pivot to feature requests, and be open to them. So please, just let me know.

✌️❤️

Life changes! Not. Ah yes, bliss.

I basically ramble about my project called tinylytics. And at the same time unable to talk or make proper sentences.

That's it... nothing more. You should subscribe.

Oh wait, and shoutouts... but really, I just mention it. Wait, is this episode a shoutout?

Recorded November 17th, 2023

Links

• Gluon is on ice
• tinylytics
• tinylytics - docs
• tinylytics - project posts
• maique's website (scroll down near the end)
• My site
• shoutouts

Fixed an interesting issue where a "hit" was saved, on tinylytics, which then would run a little background process to update the lifetime country flag list as it was "created". Funny enough though, the hit was not yet fully created, so it failed at times... depending how quick things were 🤷‍♂️

Approaching 70 paid subscribers on tinylytics. Thank you to all that support my work, it really means a lot to me 🙇‍♂️✌️❤️

Just a nitpick little thing, now you can clear the path filter, on tinylytics, but keep the rest of custom filtering intact. I got frustrated that I alway had to reset the whole filter.

Ah yes, one more nice little change to shoutouts this fine 2AM, is that you can now target any specific element on your page by class name and it will insert your shoutout there (if it finds the element). Documentation here. Just a little more flexibility for you ✌️