Current state of things
Hi Everyone,
I'm so amazed at this insane loyal userbase. It's so heartwarming to have built something that others continue to enjoy for years and years!
I would like to give everyone an update on the future of followmy.tv. In short, it's not going away, ever. This is my passion product and I will continue to keep it up in the air to the best of my capabilities.
As everyone knows by now, the current UI is very outdated and there haven't been any new features added in over 5 years. With the exception of the contribution system. The reason is that I have been working for the last 5 years on a new version. but due to the sheer size of this website and it's complex social business logic, it's a very big task to do as a single engineer.
To give you some history:
- The current live production version is running the CakePHP 1.3 framework.
- CakePHP 2.x was released and Jasper and I started an effort to migrate the website to 2.x.
- Jasper also started working on a brand new front-end UI which was going to be amazing.
- Then life happened, I started an immigration process to the United States and both Jasper and I kinda lost interest in TV Shows and generally building apps in our free time.
- We both were working full time and eventually CakePHP 3.x came around. Again a new version we had to migrate this huge application to. sigh..
- I finalized my move to the US and Jasper officially left the team. The core team went from 2 to 1.
- Several years went on where I started focussing on personal health and other life events that were more important.
During all these years when I had some downtime to work on followmy.tv, it was mostly dedicated to maintaining data request, fixing issues. There was no time left in building the new version and the efforts kinda fizzled out. The whole tvrage.com outage was a disaster that almost destroyed followmy.tv.
As for the future, the good news is that I started moving the entire codebase again to a more modern language with a better database engine. I've also started work on a brand new front-end that uses React.JS. I'm also developing the API side-by-side the web app.
In a new effort to get the new version out. I decided to from now on, to no longer add new features to the current live followmy.tv version. I will also be more strict in moderating the new show addition request, only tv shows that are from the major networks will be considered.
I'm doing this so I will have more free time to actually build a better version of the website you all love so much. I want this to be a success, I want to build new cool features for all of you, I want to have the API in place so we can finally move into the mobile app space.
I work full time, so the only thing I ask from this community is to have patience :-). I'm working on a new version. I don't know yet when it will be launched, but when it does, it will be fantastic!
This is the best thing I've built in my life. And I'm especially thankful to all the members that consistently provide feedback, submit show suggestions, and contribute to all the show, episode pages. Followmy.tv wouldn't be what it is today without all of you!
Best, Sarah (Lemon)
Comments
You ask us to help by suggesting shows to cut down on the workload, we add them, they just sit in a line, ignored.
Can anyone in a position of power actually reply to us?
Is the site dead? There is quite a backlog of missing shows to be added.
Please add new shows
Just tried to add another 4 shows, that came up "pending review".
Can someone please start approving shows again?
I have "Pending" shows I've tried to add, dating back to March. Also I keep trying to add a lot of shows, which keep saying "pending review" so, I know there are loads more too.
Any update?
@Lemon
Really wish you would let some of us help you maintain the current site, I totally get why you may not want to, this is your passion project and you can't just trust random strangers with it but you don't have to give away any administrative powers that could hurt the website, just give some volunteers the ability to update shows and review/accept contributions etc, only give some basic moderator powers. TBH I love this site exactly as it is, elegant and simple (just really really hate that search tool, I wish searching redirected to it's own page with all the exact matches/similar results).
Anyways, I'm more than happy to help out with moderating if you ever decide to do this.
Wish you all the best in your personal life and professional career o7
It's nice to see how passionate you are, thank you for making this website :)
<3
Looking forward to it :)
I love this thing you created.
I'm new here but I can feel good aura on this website. Cheers!
Why are news shows not being added? I put in a request for 'Love Death & Robots' ages ago and it still has not been approved. @Lemon?
Hey Sarah @lemon and everyone behind followmy.tv!
This is my favorite show-tracking website out there (I've tried a couple others). I like the simple & minimalistic design, I prefer functionality to "fluff" when it comes to services like these, and the database is great, I found a lot of shows here that I couldn't find on any other sites.
I'd like to know what are ways that we can contribute in keeping it alive. I recently started working as a web developer, front-end though, and still kind of a beginner, but if there's anything you could use some help with, let me know.
Have a great day!
You're great and your efforts are much appreciated!
Please update or hire people. This is getting ridiculous.
I appreciate all the work you put into this website. And I can understand when you have a full time job, and do it on your own/ with 2 people you wouldn't always have the time to work on it. I came here to say I contributed a show back in November and still it didn't get added or rejected. But now I read here: "I will also be more strict in moderating the new show addition request, only tv shows that are from the major networks will be considered."
I can understand it's hard to keep up with one/two people working it, so why not add more people to that team? Only to check the contributions and maybe the updates for shows. I don't know, it's just that I like using this website, but when I have watched a show back in November and want to track it and to know where I left off, to have that show only added months later or not added at all it kinda takes away the whole point of the website. I've had it happen multiple times.
Anyway, thanks for creating this website and hopefully we get to see the new version soon :)
ps. the show I'm talking about is called Deadwind (or Karppi), it's on Netflix:
https://thetvdb.com/series/344444
@lemon @josbeir
It seems like episode lists aren't showing up at all...
glad to be here.
To be honest, the reason that I continue to use this site over going to others is due to the pure simplicity of it. It works great on a laptop and a phone, and it’s super easy to keep up. I appreciate all the work you do to maintain it, as it’s always been my favorite tv show tracker. I look forward to it’s future, but hope that it doesn’t stray too far from the simplicity that makes it so much better than the other sites. Best of luck with the work that lies ahead, and thank you again for maintaining this secret gem!
Thank You! :)
Does anyone know how to delete user account?