Monthly Status Update - May 2023

Hello, welcome to this month's status update post. Here I will be sharing what's been going on with AnimeThemes.moe, where we are heading, how to help, and inviting feedback.

Funding

The listing of last month's account balances and posted transactions can be found here.

Our operational expenses decreased by ~$20 and our rolling balance is back up to target.

Staff contributions will be returning to normal budgeted levels. We have also made some adjustments to our architecture, consolidating some components that serve traffic for both beta and production. This should slightly reduce our baseline and will push back forecasting another month.

Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Thank you to everyone who has supported the project thus far!

We have also set up a Bitcoin address if you prefer to send crypto: bc1qg682txpazfqhh50uq2xmvh5pn99c95dujd7sy5

If you want another way to support us, we were given a referral link on our DO account. We get kickback if new users sign up and spend $25 USD (You get a $100 credit that expires in 60 days). If anyone was thinking of using this platform for their own hosting needs, please use our link:

https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=38c90f0c46e8

AnimeThemes.moe Development - Playlists Release

This month, we continued our focus on integration testing for the playlist release in our beta environment.

Playlist management is still in closed beta that includes our Patrons as participants. If you would like early access to our playlist features and involvement in our development efforts, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

An open beta will be announced at a later date.

animethemes-server

This month, the primary focus was on adjusting our beta environment to read live production data for shared tables and to consolidate architecture. We are also wrapping up changes for the next major release of our framework.

Additions

• API: add featured theme model to replace setting pair
• API: allow models to specify database connection so that live data can be managed from beta

Fixes

• Auth: append token to password reset URL

Maintenance

• Use Process facade for FFmpeg routines
• Bump dependencies & update framework stubs
• Address code inspection findings

animethemes-web

This month was a bit slower for the client, but we still released two updates to the closed beta. I’ll summarize the most notable features here. Keep in mind that although the playlist features are exclusive for patrons for now, the new video player is available for everyone here: https://beta.animethemes.moe/wiki

Video Player 2.0

• The new volume control is now available. This was one of the last missing pieces from the video player.
• You can now maximize the video player by double-clicking the mini player.
• The video player should now look better on smaller screen sizes.

Playlists

• You can now reorder playlist tracks. This works by simply dragging the tracks to the position you want.
• It is now possible to rename playlists as well as changing their visibility. Just use the "Edit Playlist" button on the playlist page.

Password Reset

In case you forgot your password, you are now able to reset it. Just click the "Forgot Password" link on the login screen and enter your email. Then you'll be sent an email with a link to reset your password.

Ranking Mode for Playlists

We also added a "ranking mode" to playlists. If the name of your playlist starts with [#], so for example [#] Top 10 Anime Openings, it will be treated as a ranking playlist. Moving tracks in a ranking playlist will update the ranking. If you want to convert a playlist to ranking mode just rename it to the include the prefix. If you want to return to a normal playlist just remove the prefix. With that feel free to show us your good or bad taste ^^

animethemes-api-docs

• Enable local search
• Add docs for feature and featured theme models
• Add allowed pivots
• Bump to Vitepress beta

animethemes-batch-encoder

• v1.2.0 has been tagged and released, fixing some bugs introduced by FFmpeg 6.X and adding a small quality-of-life setting. Thanks, Kyrch!

Backfilling Efforts

Nothing to report this month.

If you are interested in helping us with these efforts, please reach out. These are time-consuming efforts and we can benefit from having more volunteers here, especially with anison data. Thanks to those that have recently joined to help us out.

Misc

No updates on Project KuroPon, our source file hosting solution. We are still researching offerings that will provide us with a more reliable box. If you are interested in helping out with this project, please contact staff.

Mod applications are still open. We have continued to onboard applicants. Now more than ever with our efforts widening and less of our team being active, we need some help delegating tasks out. Please consider joining the team!

The backup torrent was updated 2023-04-01. The links can be found in the discord and in the one place you should be able to find. The next update will be on 2023-07-01. Seeding is appreciated.

Please consider helping out with our Encoding efforts. We can always use more help there.

We are still looking to staff at least 25 editors to help us backfill and build out our database. If you are interested in helping out, please reach out to para here or on the discord. We have a detailed description of the role in our #help_wanted channel on the discord.

Next Month Priorities

Continuing work to prepare playlist beta access.

Wrap-up

Please feel free to discuss anything related to these items or anything else related to the project with us in accompanying social media posts, especially anything we may have forgotten. Feedback on the structure of these posts is welcomed too. Thanks again, everyone!