Many of you have been wondering when the feed is coming back - we really wanted to get it back much sooner, but developer availability and other high priority tasks (like rushing the new forum launch) have gotten in the way. Plus, it took us awhile to come up with a new solution.
Back when the feed went down for maintenance, there was an issue that led to a total loss of the feed data.
My original goal is that we'd have a prototype for new feed code (that doesn't rely on Mongo, the old feed system, that we wanted to replace for awhile anyways) and I'd do the announcement then about the data loss + future plans. That was awhile ago, and I apologize for how long of a delay this has been.
But, I have good news, and a lot of it, moving forward.
THE FEED IS COMING BACK SOON!
OLD DATA
Our #1 goal was to figure out how we could "save" as much of the old feed as possible. We've come up with a way to reconstruct the following old actions:
NEW FEATURES
We've rebuilt the feed code from the ground up - it's MUCH faster and more performant, which means the friend feed will finally return to the profile homepage, and we're figuring out other places we can put it as well (for example, maybe on the root anime-planet.com page, etc). This has been the only 'glass half full' of the feed going down - we finally could rebuild it in a way that is much better and more more usable/visible.
We plan to roll out the following big upgrades, with more upgrades being added iteratively:
Not sure yet which features we'll have on launch, as the goal has always been to get the feed back up as soon as humanly possible. But we're thinking we'll have the new design and filter for sure, and maybe the 'love' functionality if things go well.
NEXT STEPS
If all goes well, sometime this weekend, the site will have scheduled downtime of about an hour. This is because we need to run the regeneration script that will recreate the feed database, and it takes a long time to run on the site data. I'll try to give as early of a heads up as I can, but the server down message will also explicitly say why the site is down.
After the script finishes, you still won't be able to see your feed, but the feed will be working in the background, collecting info on anything new you do.
The development team will then continue running thorough tests to make sure it's performing well and that everything is working as expected. We'll also work on the front end components to give you shiny new features/designs. Hopefully within a few weeks from that day, we'll have a V1 new feed for you to check out.
I don't have any more information to share than the above on background/timing/etc, and we ask that you please continue to be patient as we work through this process (aka please don't reply every few days asking for an update - we'll give updates as we have them)
Thanks as always for your support of Anime-Planet!
Back when the feed went down for maintenance, there was an issue that led to a total loss of the feed data.
My original goal is that we'd have a prototype for new feed code (that doesn't rely on Mongo, the old feed system, that we wanted to replace for awhile anyways) and I'd do the announcement then about the data loss + future plans. That was awhile ago, and I apologize for how long of a delay this has been.
But, I have good news, and a lot of it, moving forward.
THE FEED IS COMING BACK SOON!
OLD DATA
Our #1 goal was to figure out how we could "save" as much of the old feed as possible. We've come up with a way to reconstruct the following old actions:
- All reviews (date added)
- All recommendations (date added)
- All profile comments (date added)
- The most recent one update for anime and manga updates. So, if the last time you updated the Naruto anime was marking it "watched", that's what will be in the feed. If the last update was setting eps from 6 to 7, that's what will be in the feed.
NEW FEATURES
We've rebuilt the feed code from the ground up - it's MUCH faster and more performant, which means the friend feed will finally return to the profile homepage, and we're figuring out other places we can put it as well (for example, maybe on the root anime-planet.com page, etc). This has been the only 'glass half full' of the feed going down - we finally could rebuild it in a way that is much better and more more usable/visible.
We plan to roll out the following big upgrades, with more upgrades being added iteratively:
- New design - instead of one text row, there will be an image, info about the anime/manga, and (in theory) a way to interact with it (such as the "anime list" widget showing up in anime rows)
- Ability to "love" feed updates - handy for showing your approval that your friend started watching Popee the Performer
- Ability to comment on feed updates
- A way to filter by feed type (anime updates, reviews, recs, etc)
- Better feed locations (back on the profile! other homepages, etc)
- New types of data in the feed - for example, other kinds of comments
- "Profile posts" - this is being discussed, not sure if it'll happen or not. Something that's been surprisingly popular in the new forum is the profile posts feature. As part of our efforts to single source the accounts on the site/forum, we're debating allowing you to post these on your profile (and are shared in both places). We might merge the comments functionality into the "feed" (and have it just be your "profile", rather than a "feed", lots of things are being discussed.
Not sure yet which features we'll have on launch, as the goal has always been to get the feed back up as soon as humanly possible. But we're thinking we'll have the new design and filter for sure, and maybe the 'love' functionality if things go well.
NEXT STEPS
If all goes well, sometime this weekend, the site will have scheduled downtime of about an hour. This is because we need to run the regeneration script that will recreate the feed database, and it takes a long time to run on the site data. I'll try to give as early of a heads up as I can, but the server down message will also explicitly say why the site is down.
After the script finishes, you still won't be able to see your feed, but the feed will be working in the background, collecting info on anything new you do.
The development team will then continue running thorough tests to make sure it's performing well and that everything is working as expected. We'll also work on the front end components to give you shiny new features/designs. Hopefully within a few weeks from that day, we'll have a V1 new feed for you to check out.
I don't have any more information to share than the above on background/timing/etc, and we ask that you please continue to be patient as we work through this process (aka please don't reply every few days asking for an update - we'll give updates as we have them)
Thanks as always for your support of Anime-Planet!