Current state of things

By Lemon - Jan 29, 2018

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As everyone knows by now, the current UI is very outdated and there haven't been any new features added in over 5 years.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

manuela782 (Feb 02, 2018)

Thank you! This is the best site I've seen that provides the tools for organizing my tv shows. If not for followmy.tv, I'd be completely lost!

mymindrebels (Feb 02, 2018)

thank you for everything that you do. even tho there are no new features the site continues to be perfect for tv tracking.

eherberg (Feb 01, 2018)

So great that the site is being worked on. FollowmyTV is still my favorite TVDB-sourced site. I haven't been using it as much due to missing specials and some shows not available - but I can't wait for it to be back up and 100%. The ical export of TVDB-sourced programs is so valuable - and not many other sites have it. Just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the work being done on the site and look forward to the time when I can do all my tracking here again! :-)

Dmpstrbaby (Feb 01, 2018)

Thank You !! =D

Saxo (Feb 01, 2018)

The UI is good, please don't change it too much.

Appreciate the update.

Cyane (Jan 31, 2018)

Thank you for the status update!

Erwtjebe (Jan 31, 2018)

Thank you!

killmotion (Jan 31, 2018)

I am thankful the site isn't going anywhere. Thanks so much for it and everything you do!

Necane (Jan 31, 2018)

Thanks! I watch a lot of shows so this web is really helpful.

Sajina (Jan 31, 2018)

Thanks for all your work and this update! I've been using this website for years almost daily and really appreciate all the work that's in it. Looking forward to the new version!

Baltimore (Jan 31, 2018)

Hey Sarah, it's sad to hear that Jasper left the core team, but I think it's admirable that you keep going with this site. I've been on here since ... I don't even know when ... and I very much rely on this site, maybe a bit too much even ... I just feel like you're putting a lot on yourself with doing this all alone. Is there no possibility to get some people to help you with running the site? The interface and everything could still be in your hands, it just seems to be an unneccessary big load to do by yourself. :x That's just my opinion though, maybe you like it that way, it just seems to be too much for two people, let alone one person.
(You're still doing great though, I agree with everyone else -- as long as it works the way it does right now, I don't really care about features. It saddens me though that smaller TV shows won't be considered from now on? I get that you have to save time but that seems a little harsh to me, especially since I already can't track some of my shows because they don't get added on here, and if it becomes even less, because new shows from smaller networks don't get added anymore, it seems ... well ... pointless for some people, tbh.)

dingdong (Jan 31, 2018)

Thank you for your work! I'm not going anywhere either! Don't change if it's not broken.. unless it improves the website experience but don't change UI that much in future if you decide to put more makeup on.

Lemon (Jan 31, 2018)

@bojler I did, but it involves changing a lot of internal code to make it work. I rather build a better system for the new site. Where anyone can update anything with community moderators.

mrOTHER (Jan 31, 2018)

I'm not going anywhere!

Pplr (Jan 31, 2018)

Thank you for your hard work!

bojler (Jan 30, 2018)

Great site! Keep it up! Have you considered "opening" up parts of the site to make your work easier, eg. more users can be allowed to add content (tv show infos, episode infos, and photos). Of course, all changes before applying would needed confirmation by other users so we can have quality content.