Shana Project Blog

Just a quick update - It appears there was a (nother) bug in our big follows update that I only noticed today. If you have get any subber checked for any follow, then a release with the correct subber would not be prioritised over the original file (unless it was also better in some other way).

Since I generally only follow specific subbers and do not use that option much myself, I did not notice until now.

I have rolled out a fix and also re-processed a few thousand releases (since the new follows code was rolled in) to retroactively resolve the issue. Any missed releases should now be in your RSS feed.

<3

Taiga

Well, it took a lot longer than expected and resulted in thousands (?) of lines of rewritten code. But we’re done. And deployed.

Things to take note of:

• New follows allow you to specify a profile. If you select Hi10P or 8-bit ONLY, then the releases must contain that text in the release text!
• Retroactive matching is now all or none (did this for a few reasons; mainly simplicity and to avoid confusion)
• You may now have multiple follows for a single series (as long as they’re all unique). Matches that work for multiple follows will only be seen/downloaded once. This is kinda complex, so let me know if you find any issues here.
• The All Releases page now greys out files you’ve downloaded.
• The Follows List page now highlights the row you’re hovering to make editing/deleting easier. Clicking a series title on this page now takes you to:
• A Series Follow page that shows you only the matched releases for this show against your follow rules.
• Matching should now be a lot smarter. This includes some fixes and changes. In particular, any releases that have the website link to filesonic or fileserve or releases that contain the text “unofficial” will be ignored for matching! (Those links/text are fine in the comments though).
• All existing follows have been migrated (and completely rematched) to the new system. This means:
  • All existing follows were migrated with Don’t Care for the Profile setting
  • Some follows will now have new files matched due to the smarter matching. This shouldn’t cause too many new matches for any of you (I hope).
  • Due to a bug at deployment, some of you may have had packs temporarily appear on your RSS feeds (even if your settings say they should not). So check your torrent clients for any packs (volumes, full sets, etc) that should not be downloading. Apologies for that one, its now fixed.

So: If you have any issues then please let us know!!! We’ve done our best to test all cases but need your help to find any other issues!

Any other questions and comments (or feature suggestions) are as always: welcome!!

*edit* Due to a fuckup on my part; any follows with “any subber” checked, were not migrating properly. I have done a full database restore and re-migrated everything with the data fixed. Apologies for the down-time and for those of you who will end up with random torrents in your clients (if you connected to the RSS while this bug was live).

<3 Taiga

Hi all.

I’d promised to get Hi10P support in ASAP. Unfortunately we ran into a bunch of issues to do with complexity that have prompted us to decide: we’re going to re-write how the follows system works (not all of it… just a bunch of it…).

It shouldn’t be a huge undertaking so I expect we will roll it in in the next week or two.

To buy us a little more time we’ve implemented some preliminary support for Hi10P and 8bit releases. You’ll now notice that if we can determine what kind of release it is; it will say “Hi10P” or “8-bit” next to the title for each release.

The overhaul will allow you to choose a preference for Hi10P or 8bit releases. Obviously it won’t be perfect (since for many releases, we simply don’t know… in those cases you will have to do a bit of subber research yourself ;) )

<3 Taiga

The latest set of changes are mostly pretty boring fixes (with the exception of one long sought after feature! See the last dote point). Though in exciting news we did ban 3 IP ranges spanning about 200,000 IP addresses (read of for details).

The new Anime season has begun and with it, many new shows are being released in Hi10P. This raises 2 issues. First, how to play them back; luckily, there are many ways. This site has some good info. Though if anyone has a solution for people using Mac OS X Leopard (10.5, not Snow Leopard), please let me know =(. Second: how to differentiate between them in Shana Project. I’ll try to come up with some solutions, but any ideas are welcome; so please leave comments if you have an idea.

Anyway, here are the changes since the last post in order of implementation:

• Fixed some torrent links not working due to specially encoded values.
• Fixed some some of the record keeping with regards to download counts and popular shows by not counting duplicate downloads from the same person (and some other related changes)
• Some misc changes to marginally improve performance and stop bots from indexing certain pages.
• Banned 200,000 IP addresses (3 ranges) located in China due to massive bot activity — This has resulted in a performance increase of about 10 times. Yay! In related news, I’m yet to delete any bot users (coz I’m lazy).
• Fixed some critical backend bugs causing problems with matching follows and merging titles.
• Implemented a temporary hack to stop 8bit releases (released after a Hi10P release) from stomping on the better original version. Need to come up with a good way of dealing with 8bit and 10bit releases… any suggestions welcome!!!
• Changes to the series page:
  • Added “follow this series” link
  • Added links to more information from AniDB, ANN and YouTube
  • Added a custom scrollbar that looks nicer for series with lots of info
• Fixed a minor issue with multiple “Unknown” seasons being listed on the follows listing page for some users (thanks for reporting this!)
• Added ability to edit follows. You can now edit follows from the follow list. Editing a follow will cause that follow to be deleted and re-created which any modified settings. This means any existing matches will be deleted. However if the new follow matches some files you already downloaded, they’ll still be marked as such! =)

I hope you all find the changes useful. Please let me know if you encounter any issues (particularly with the new edit follows, since its kludgier than I’d hoped…)

\o/

- Taiga

Update: I was hoping to have the new follows system in (supporting 10bit/8bit) by tonight… Unfortunately the problem is proving far far more troublesome that I’d ever feared =(

I do have a solution, its just gonna take a little longer still.

I haven’t got a lot done the last few months… But enough to warrant a new post now.

We’ve recently had a massive influx of users (yay), however they’ve all happened at the same time and none of them support javascript or have any follows… that means they’re bots (boo).

What this means is I’ll be deleting any users who haven’t changed any settings or added any follows (or downloaded any files etc etc). Essentially any user who doesn’t have a database presence (aside from having registered). To ensure you won’t be deleted in our cull, you just need to make sure you’ve done something on the website such as download something or follow something (or even visit the RSS page will do it). Of course this means only users who have no information to lose will be deleted ;)

And now, the changes:

• Added most followed shows this season to the stats page.
• Automatically calculate and update the current Season (for the Season page and the stats page) - Seasons start January, April, July, October (for the sake of accuracy with regards to the actual anime seasons) rather than following the actual season dates.
• Fixed some miscellaneous admin views.
• Added “Mark All Read” button to the follows page.
• Added expand/collapse all button to all list pages.
• Fixed a backend issue causing new follows to sometimes not retro-actively matching all volume releases.

Thats all for now. I’m looking forward to the new season! Are you?!

The Summer 2011 season has officially started!

Check out a nice roundup of PVs of some of the more interesting looking stuff over at Sticky Jellyfish. We’ve also got our Summer 2011 Season page up!

As for features. Some very minor stuff:

• Season page list now defaults to sorting by date.
• Season link at the top now goes to Summer season.
• Fixed a few issues with stats and made stats show a little more info.

Enjoy the new season!

We hit 400 commits (to our code repository) just yesterday which seemed like a good idea to mention whats changed lately =)

There haven’t been a lot of changes since the last update, but they’re still worth pointing out.

• Changed Ignore to Mark Read. Functionality is exactly the same but hopefully the terminology makes a bit more sense?
• Added some text to the login page indicating how easy registering is.
• Series/Subber filters now disappear on pages that have been filtered.
• Added sort by date (defaults to alphabetical) to the season list page.
• Miscellaneous fixes to the moderation back-end.
• Added a stats page - Still need to clean this up a little before I add a link to it on the main site, but provides some interesting info none the less =)

We’re still working hard on many other features as well as getting next season’s season list ready for you.

As ever, please let us know about any issues you might have (you can ask a question at the top of the page!) or any ways you think Shana Project could make your life easier!

I’ve made a number of changes over the past few days. So here’s what we’ve been doing since the start of the month :)

Here is the list of bugs resolved and features added in no particular (but mostly chronological) order:

• Fixed some ampersands not appearing correctly on some pages.
• Added a “Report Problem” link (now hidden away under the Help menu).
• The most popular anime showcase now only appears on the first page of the main anime list. Pages 2 and onwards will no longer display it.
• We’ve added a Google +1 button. It’s a single button for the whole site, so please click it and share Shana Project with your friends =)
• Added a “direct” search button to the Search auto-complete. Clicking it will take you straight to the Series page for that title. More details below.
• Added a filter button to Series and Subber pages that allow you to filter on a specific subbing group (from a Series page) or series title (from a Subber page).
• Resolved some hidden issues with how settings are handled for users that haven’t specifically set anything. Your public RSS feed now defaults to enabled and packs by default are hidden from your feeds.
• Some miscellaneous bugs (many arising from the above changes)
• Added a link to this blog!

With regards to the new direct search button: The default behavior of search is to find any release that have a title that matches the text you’ve input (or that matches the subber). Clicking on the new search button will instead take you to the Series page (or Subber) for that title (which is what happens when you click on a release title).

If anything is unclear or you need some help, please don’t hesitate to comment or fire off an email (to taiga.anime@gmail.com).

<3 Taiga

Hi,

This is the new Shana Project blog where we’ll be posting new information about how to use the site and what new features are being rolled out.

You can also ask us questions here about usability or new features.

As always, we’re looking for staff to verify links (the ones that automagic system has trouble with) and to generally help out.

Regards,

Taiga