Shana Project Blog

Ask and ye shall receive

Sat, 05 May 2012 09:46:00 -0400

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.

More Minor Fixes and Improvements

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:50:00 -0400

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)

Minor Fixes

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:50:04 -0400

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).

Send to RSS

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 06:41:00 -0400

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

Spring 2012

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 07:52:00 -0400

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?

Over 10,000 lines of code written. Far less activity lately...

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:13:00 -0400

Over 10,000 lines of code written. Far less activity lately though… the site is functioning really well =)

Look at that blue bar in November 2011, that was the Hi10P update!! Over 1500 lines of code touched!

The first big blue bar is the first checkin. It wasn’t much of a site yet, just a base Django repository with the (as then) completely re-written Tokyo Tosho parser, re-written in Python. Originally it was written in PHP (the original version was written around 2005 and was used in an IRC bot!). The bulk of the site really appeared in that mid-January commit (right after I got back from Japan).

Follow us on twitter for updates!

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 03:22:00 -0500

Share What You Follow

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:39:48 -0500

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 =)

Password Recovery

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:33:02 -0500

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

Differentiate Between 720p and 1080p

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:12:21 -0500

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!

Winter Season Has Begun!

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:53:52 -0500

Winter Season Has Begun!:

I’ve written a scraper to make setting up new season pages quicker =)

Unfortunately I still need to find images manually (not yet done…). Please contact me if you’re willing to help find images for this seasons shows. Note: All images need to be such that I can crop/resize them to 500x280.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Fix to Get Any Subber

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 03:12:00 -0500

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.

Taiga

New Follows System

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:41:00 -0500

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

Hi10P and 8bit Releases

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:55:35 -0400

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

Boring updates and mass bot bannings

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:33:00 -0400

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.

A Slow Few Months + Deleting Bots

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 20:30:00 -0400

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?!

Summer 2011 Season

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 05:00:00 -0400

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!

400 Total Commits

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:30:22 -0400

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!

Features and Bug Fixes <3

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 07:17:00 -0400

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

Shana Project Blog

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 06:03:12 -0400

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