Release Notes

Under normal circumstances, a website that isn't ready yet would never see the light of day. But our circumstances aren't normal. The status is not quo.

As we flee our sinking social media ships, we may end up in many different places, disconnected from each other. I felt it was important to let you know what I am working on, and provide a running website that you can bookmark and come back to when it's ready.

These Release Notes will let you know what is working, what isn't working, and what features are brought online as we go forward.

23 February 2025

This week has been devoted to technology research. There are no new features to deploy. Instead, I have been fighting with — erm, learning — how to add SocketIO support to the Flask applicaiton. This will allow real-time communication between the browser and server without having to reload the web pages, which supports things like new activity and friend request alerts, real-time delivery of messages, and all these kinds of things.

The week has been spent learning, challenging my own assumptions and understanding, and getting the SocketIO behavior working in a "Hello Socket" application. I hope to be able to get some features based on this protocol deployed next week. Stay tuned!

15 February 2025

I have not been able to devote as much time to this project this week as I have the previous few weeks. I did get a couple of new subsystems started that make it feel more like a community - photo albums and messaging. This is probably the buggiest deployment so far.

• Feed
• Replaced 'create a post' mechanism
• Started using popup windows for certain features
• Implemented 'edit (my own) post'
• Implemented 'who reacted to my post?' popup
• Profile
• Implemented navigating between Profile subsections (About, Posts, etc.
• Implemented Photos subsection
• Placeholders for Posts and Friends subsections
• Messaging
• Message link in info bar works
• Unread message counter works
• Conversation thread presentation works
• Photos
• Visual list of albums
• Visual list of photos in album
• Create album
• Drag and drop interface to add photos
• Added support for database migration so accounts are not lost on new deployment

7 February 2025

This week's notes include both visible changes and some design progress. I've checked a bunch more items off the to-do list. Last week, layout issues made mobile use impossible, so getting feedback even from programmer-friends was problematic. I accomplished a couple of things away from the codebase as well, so they don't show up in the sidebar list of Working Features.

This week's work:

• Reviewed progress with technical, UX and legal colleagues
• Set up and tested outbound email service
• Moved ID lists of various classes of Friends and Posts to the session, reducing the number of database calls required.
• Fixed responsive behavior of 2-column feed layout
• Reworked location of link in desktop and mobile navigation.
• Reworked contents of "Info bar".
• Added generation of random Profile Hero and Vacation photos
• Added object model support for Photo Albums (not reflected in UI yet)
• Added a "Profile Reputation" feature - cumulative counts of each reaction for all Posts by a Profile
• Created script to refresh reputation of all Profiles
• Removed "username" from registration and login in favor of email address
• Added gender to Profile, adjusted Profile Picture placeholders
• Added formatting to visually distinguish each Post Comment
• Added commenter's Profile information to Comment layout
• Added friend-status icons wherever Profiles are displayed
• 👤⭐ — Myself
• 👤✅ — My Friend
• 👤⏳ — Awaiting Response to My Friend Request
• 👤🔔 — I have a pending Friend Request from Them
• ➕👤 — Available to Friend Request
• Implemented Reject, Quarantine and Block on Friend Request list
• Quarantine: Remove the friend request from the list so I don't have to see it, but prevent the Requestor from issing a new Friend Request. Does not Block the Requestor.
• Implemented Unfriend, Block on Friends list.
• Profile Name clickable to view their Profile page
• Their Profile Page
• Friend-status indicator and active Friend Request link
• Mutual Friends count (not yet clickable)
• Link to list of Their Friends
• Their Friends page
• Each Friend display includes friend-status with YOU of their Friends
• Friend-request available
• Link to the Profile Page of Their Friend available

29 January 2025

It has only been a week but I've made a TON of progress. In addition to the "plumbing" being done for all of the following actions, I've written scripts for generating test data for each of these features as I go.

The callout at the top of the right column is the cumulative list of what's working. It's more abbreviated than these weekly notes, and I'll keep adding to it as things get done.

• User account creation
• Upload and set profile image
• Resize and center-crop uploaded image
• Create and edit limited profile info
• Login, logout
• Main Feed of posts
  • Feed is not yet filtered
  • Not yet auto-loading more
  • Feed IS pulling real posts from database
  • Reactions and comments are posted efficiently
• Robust Post Reactions:
  • Love
  • Like
  • Care
  • Laugh
  • Wow
  • Whatever
  • Cry
  • Eww
  • Angry
  • Stop It
• Top-level comments on a post
• Friend-request post author
• Friend Request notifications
• Accept Friend Request
• Data model implemented for:
  • Nested comment threads on posts and images
  • Photo Albums
  • Attaching images to posts, comments and messages
• Independent scrolling of left and right columns
• New public pages
  • Roadmap
  • Known Issues
• Established SSH certificate

23 January 2025

• Information website is made available.