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As everyone knows by now, the current UI is very outdated and there haven't been any new features added in over 5 years.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
thx you for your work, this site is very useful :)
Keep it simple and we will always be faithful! <3
AWESOME. No worries with how slow (or fast) the updates are. The site works well enough as it is so any major changes can take as long as necessary
You're doing amazing work, keep doing what you're doing.
Thanks for the update! I've tried other sites but none do what I am looking for in the same way this one does. I love having the upcoming and pinned shows on my home page. Thanks for all you do!
Thank you, Lemon!
You are awesome. This site is awesome (even in its outdated state). I'm here to stay! :)
One thing that I dislike about followmy.tv is not being able to track some of the obscure anime shows... but I love the rest :)
keep it up!
Thank you for all your hard work, @lemon! This site is amazing and you're doing a great job.
Don't be afraid to ask something from your users: we're happy to help!
Amazing work Lemon, we all love Followmy.tv .....
Lemon this is a great site, it's amazing that you work on it on your free time, and we appreciate it!
Cant you find a moderator that can help you with requests?
Thank you for this update regarding the future of this website. This is still my go-to website when it comes to tracking TV shows. Thank you for everything you've done and I look forward to the new version.
Looking forward to see the results of all your hard work and will continue to use the site for as long as it lives ;-) have you considered letting users do the moderating? Like they do on Goodreads, Wikipedia, maybe last.fm.
I'm usually around here just to track my favourite shows and I don't consider myself a very "active" or "engaging" user, but I just wanted to take a moment and give you a BIG THANK YOU because your site makes my life easier (and, in that extent, better). What you accomplished here is great!
I want to deactivate my account...will you make an deactivation option? Because you can't hostage us...
Thank you Lemon for creating this site and trying so much to make this even better. Great job, you go girl! :)
Definitely the best website to keep track of the shows watched. Thank you, Lemon for keeping it alive and for your dedication!
THANK YOU! GREAT JOB!!!