Well, I think it’s about time. In January I suspended addition of new users to Extended Stats due to capacity problems. I then procrastinated for a few months because I wasn’t sure how to solve some technical problems and didn’t know how to proceed. Then in June I solved the problems and progressed onto a proof-of-concept phase.
However Extended Stats is not just about programming, it’s also about management of the site and management of the users on it. By “management of users”, I don’t mean “herding”, I really mean communicating with them, setting expectations, and participating in a conversation with them about the site. And for a few months or maybe years, I have been really bad at that. And I will probably will remain really bad at it, that’s just what I’m like.
So one of the tasks I have to start doing now is onboarding new users to the new site. New users don’t get to be added to the old site as it’s overloaded, for which I hope they will forgive me. However I’m hoping that the new site will satisfy some of their expectations at first, and any more over time. There’s a post here about why the new site and the old site are so radically different:
Now I guess new users will want to know WHERE’S MY PRETTY PICTURES? SHOW ME THE PICTURES! That’s a problem I’m still working on, but a good starting point is:
https://extstats.drfriendless.com/geek.html?geek=Friendless
but of course you should change “Friendless” to your boardgamegeek user name. That page will remain an index of all of the things related to you. In particular if you go through to Favourites or Collection there are some nice bits.
Now, if I still have your attention, I have a bit of a chat about privacy in this post:
I just had a look at auth0 (which manages logins for me), and the site now has 7 users with accounts, which I think is pretty impressive given that logging in achieves nothing so far :-). By the way, auth0 does not let me access those users’ passwords – it always worries me when I log in to a hobby site like this that I’m giving my password to some unknown nerd who might try to use it on other sites. Don’t worry about that, I cannot see your passwords as far as I know. I like it like that. Here’s more chatter about users.
It would be foolish of me to not mention to a dedicated reader such as yourself that the site is not free for me to run. I blog about the costs every month when the bill arrives. If you want to help, find the Patreon button on the site.
So, what happens next? Well there are a whole bunch of features that I need to port to the new site, so I’m going to be busy. I’m going to be distracted by a few other things until about November, so it’s probably going to be slow. One idea I had this morning was about how to prioritise what I should implement next. Of course, it involves writing code, so that in itself is a feature that needs to be implemented.
Thank you for using Extended Stats! I hope that the site can grow to meet your expectations, and I hope that you enjoy the ride!
