Monthly Status Update - March 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 ~$85 and our rolling balance remained roughly the same compared to the end of January.

There will continue to be some adjustments made after the February incident, including the decommissioning and consolidation of our beta and prod architecture. The Mastodon instance has already been decommissioned due to a lack of use. Staff will also continue making up the difference of the excess cost incurred by the incident. Once this is finished, we will resume our funding forecasting.

On another note, our payment acceptance method for Ko-fi has been locked, so this method of donation has been disabled for the time being.

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 have started integration testing for the playlist release in our beta environment.

Our integration testing is a 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, we have made the necessary changes to support a closed beta integration testing effort for playlists and began this effort. The full set of changes can be reviewed here.

Additions

• API: Add ability to constrain aggregate fields.
• API: Add missing endpoints for playlist image pivot type.
• Auth: Add Patron role with ability to bypass feature flags and other constraints.
• API: Add feature flag for playlist management.
• API: Wrap actions in database transaction to prevent faulty states.
• API: Add role and permission resources to schema for currently authenticated user.
• API: Add playlists to global search endpoint.
• API: Add color and priority attributes to role for distinguishing in client.
• API: Add sublist endpoints to list tracks before and after a given track.
• API: Add support for content moderation by filtering user input through third-party service.
• API: Add playlist track count aggregate field.
• Add support for hashids with ability to rotate salts.
• API: Use hashids for playlist route model binding to circumvent easier enumeration of unlisted playlists.

Fixes

• API: Fix format of pivot destroy messages.
• Auth: Remove zxcvbn strength requirement from passwords & pruned dependency.
• API: Resolve soft-deleted playlist and tracks for forward and backward listing endpoints.
• API: Fix timeout issue for playlist track insertion.
• Auth: Update Profile endpoint should support updating username and email address separately.
• Auth: Prohibit disposable email services for registration to prevent spam.

Maintenance

• chore: update dependencies to anticipate Laravel 10 upgrade [1 blocker].

animethemes-web

With the start of the closed beta there's been a lot of progress on the playlist effort. This are some of the most notable changes:

• The profile page got a new design for logged in users:

• A new video player is now in development! This player will be the base for many upcoming features like the watch list including auto-play and more. Here's a small preview of how it will look:

• Playlist can now be searched for on the /search page.
• The navigation got redesigned too. It's now also visible on mobile devices. The navigation toggle button got removed.
• Various improvements to the auth flows, like logging in and registering a new account.

animethemes-api-docs

• Add missing pivot endpoint pages.
• Add field to distinguish default visibility of fields.
• Add page for endpoint that shows details of currently authenticated user.
• Add playlist to global search page.
• Add pages for endpoints that show tracks before and after a given track.
• Add auth resource pages for role and permission.
• Add playlist track count aggregate field.
• Use hashids for playlist route keys.
• Update dependencies.

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

We have had some issues with our first seedbox for Project KuroPon, our source file hosting solution. We are 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!