Shana Project Blog

A few people have been after a feature allowing them to follow bluray only releases.

I promised to look into it a long time ago… and now I finally have =)

On the Add Follow page you’ll now find a source option that allows you to specify: any, TV (or unmarked), DVD, Bluray or “DVD or Bluray”. If you select one of these options then only releases of this type will be matched.

For many of you this will mean you have a standard follow (matching any source) to watch the show as it airs; and then a bluray follow set to either 720p or 1080p for archiving (careful, some of those 1080p bluray releases are HUGE!).

We’ve updated our Follows Help page too! So check it out and let us know if its working properly ;)

edit - Fixed a bug causing 720x400 res’s to sometimes be matched when 720p was wanted.

Pushed a bunch of little changes today:

• Send to RSS is now better, smarter, and more all over the place. You can pretty much access the feature from anywhere you’d need to now, including for files you’ve already downloaded, or to push “packs” from your follows list to your RSS feed.
• Made a bunch of optimisation (database) improvements across the board which should make life the tiniest bit speedier.
• Fixed (thanks to major optimisations as per above) the stats page so that it now doesn’t take several seconds to load and no longer threatens to take down the server with it! There’s some cool stats there, so check it out =) (There’s also a link under Home in the header now!)
• Fixed a small bug with the “filter” page when you got there from someone else’s profile. There’s now a nice follow button so you can follow what they are.
• Updated a few javascript libraries to their latest versions.
• Fixed minor issue with the “expand all” button being unintentionally wide.
• We’ve also improved our help pages a bunch!! The Follows Help has been updated significantly (and now has pictures!) and we’ve added a help page for Setting up Your Client for automatic downloads (just a uTorrent guide so far). There’s also some basic info about the different feeds we offer.
• Added an option to your settings page that lets you disable v2’s (and above) from appearing in your feed. This way you can manually download v2’s or patches yourself. This only works if the sub-group marks the file as v2 (instead just releasing with a new hash for example).
• Added a +1 (google button) to the top right of all pages. +1’ing a page generally now represents +1’ing the content (such as a series page, subber page, or a search). The +1 at the bottom of the page is the same as the old one - for the whole site.

As always, let us know how we’re doing =)

Of interest perhaps: we’re at 580 registered users (up from about 130 in January - which took us about a year to get). We get about 1200 unique page views per day and around 125,000 hits per month.

Here’s hoping we can continue to grow faster and faster! Let all your friends know about Shana Project =)

(Note: The total ever downloads appear low because we used to only count downloads from registered users)

Made a change to de-prioritize PreAir releases. This means a file that doesn’t say “pre-air” (or similar) will be considered better than one that does.

I’ve retroactively applied this to a small few releases that this mattered for (namely Nanatsuiro Kiseki by Rori).

I also fixed a minor “security” bug. We were accidentally storing clear-text email addresses for new members. I’ve purged all these from the database now. Shana Project only ever stores a hashed copy of your email address for password recovery purposes (so if anyone hacks in they cannot get your email address).

If you’re logged in, you’ll notice a nice little change that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Instead of a big fat download button like usual, you’ll now see two buttons.

The right button (green) is the same old download button you remember, albeit a bit slimmer. Pressing it does the same thing it always used to do (verify that the link works, mark the release as downloaded, and give you the torrent file).

The new button on the left (yellow) puts this release on your RSS feed for your torrent client to pick up. This means you only have to click one button, and you can let your torrent client do the rest of the week.

Even better - if you’re away from home, you can now just log in to Shana Project, and send as many files as you want to your RSS feed. As long as your torrent client is running at home, it will grab those files and maybe even be done by the time you get home! Hopefully we’ll be able to launch a more mobile phone friendly version of the site in the future that makes use of this new feature.

Let me know how it works!!

<3 Taiga

The new season of anime is upon us!!

Spring 2012 Chart

Spring 2012 Shana Series Page (help us find images for the stuff we’re missing!)

Spring 2012 PV’s

What are you all planning on watching?

This feature has been available for a while (though it got broken somewhere along the way). But you can now (properly) share with your friends what you’re following by giving them a link to your public follows page.

This link can be found on your settings page and should look something like this:

http://www.shanaproject.com/user/Tyris/

Since these links are public, people can type the link in manually if they know your username.

Let me know what you think of this new feature =)

A small update this time.

We’ve finally added password recovery. Basically, you give us your email (which we don’t even store!!!) and if you forget your password, then you just type in your username and email and it will send you a new password.

You can also change your password or set a recovery email address (important for anyone who doesn’t have one… which as of today is everyone) at http://www.shanaproject.com/settings/

Let me know if you encounter any issues!

Regards,

Taiga <3

I’ve just added two new “quality” options for Quality Preference:

• 720p Only (High Definition)
• 1080p Only (High Definition)

These options are useful when following a show/subber that has both a 720p and a 1080p release.

Please note that if you select one of these options then files that do not specifically specify 720p or 1080p will not be matched!

I’ve also added identifiers similar to the Hi10P/8-bit identifier that appears next to series names.

Enjoy!