Veklar

Hello everyone! I'm back after a vacation with my son, and I'm glad to see you again.

This month I'll be moving house, which is a major event, especially as I'm moving almost 1000 kilometers away. So August will be a busy month, even though I'll have time to work on Veklar. But more importantly, after the move my life will be much more stable and my productivity will be greatly improved.

I'm restarting work on Veklar as I write these lines, so I'll start by getting back on track by planning my tasks for the week. See you all next week for a development update!

Until then, I wish you all an excellent week, and a good vacation for those of you who have one.

Hello everyone! We're back together for the last devlog before the holidays.

Over the past week I've mainly been working on the site's interface for the next version. I've redesigned quite a few elements of the interface, as well as the registration and login processes etc... I've also been working on the more technical side of things to strengthen user account security, and developing new authentication methods such as passkeys.

In between, I've also been working on other aspects of the application, in particular communication with external services (Twitch, IGDB, Steam, etc.), which needs to be completely overhauled. This will also be an opportunity to add other third-party services like Discord to your profiles.

As I said last week, this is the last devlog before the holidays, but I'm only going to be away for the month of July and I'll definitely be back in August when I go back to work and write the next devlog.

In the meantime, I wish you all excellent holidays if you have some, and a pleasant summer.

Hello everyone!

This week I've travelled back and forth across France to my northern homeland, but I've still had time to get on with a lot of the work on Veklar.

I've made a lot of progress on the interface mechanisms and in the next few days I'll be able to concentrate on the aesthetic aspect of things. It's a moment I've been looking forward to after several months working on the backend or on elements “under the hood” of the frontend, finally getting down to something more visual is a breath of fresh air!

I should also inform you that there will be no devlog during July. That's the month I'll be spending with my family, but work will resume with a vengeance in August!

I'll be back for one last devlog next week, though, as I've still got two full weeks to work on before the holidays. Until then, I hope you all have a great week.

Hello everyone, I hope you're all well!

Over the past week I've continued working on the new game sheets, the account management interface, and I've made a few adjustments to the push notification mitigation system.

Then I worked on the preview generation for external links. Many of you will have noticed that some previews don't generate, for example when there's a link to YouTube or Medium. The reasons why previews aren't generated differ from platform to platform, but it's usually the result of anti-scraping protection. I'm working to fix this for most services.

That's all for this week, and I hope you all have a great day!

Hello everyone!

This week on Veklar I've been continuing work on the interface for the next update, including navigation, the registration/login process and account management.

I've also started work on an overhaul of the retrieval and structure of game data, taking into account the major changes to the IGDB API and the new information they make available. It's also an opportunity to review the layout of the game pages.

Finally, I've done a lot of work on the backend application starting protocols, so that automatic tests can be carried out to ensure the health of the process and its relationship with the services on which it depends, and thus guarantee greater stability of the service.

That's all for this week, see you next week!

Hello everyone, I hope you're all well!

As I said last week, I've traveled across France and I'm not at home at the moment. But I'm able to get some work done and I've made good progress on the next version of Veklar.

I've finally finished all the work I still had to do on the databases and notifications, and I'm continuing work on the website's interface. I've also started work on integrating heypster, which will be serving GIFs on Veklar as of the next update, and on integrating Stancer, which will replace Stripes when Veklar enters its commercial phase.

Finally, I've done a few tests with the S3 API on Scaleway storage, and it's possible that I'll take advantage of the roll-out of the next Veklar update to migrate servers, databases and object storage to Scaleway, so I'll probably have a chance to talk about it again until then.

I hope you all have a great week!

Hello everyone, we're back for another Veklar devlog!

This week I've finished the work I started last week on web notifications' encryption and mitigation (and push notifications for the upcoming Android application).

I've also extended the functionality of the app/database synchronisation module, enabling more advanced configuration, particularly in terms of the link between the different tables and data consistency.

Yesterday I wasn't able to work, I had to cross France and I won't be home for the next three weeks. I'll still be able to work during those three weeks, and the devlogs will still be published every week!

Over the coming week I plan to continue working on the redesign and, above all, the optimisation of the interface.

Thank you all for your support, and have a great week!

Hello everyone! I hope you're all well.

Over the past week I've continued work on the projects I mentioned last week, namely optimising interface performance and encrypting notifications. I've also had to get my hands into the database synchronisation tool several times to adapt it to the realities of its implementation, which was expected.

This week I'm going to continue working on these issues. As far as notifications are concerned, the encryption is complete and I'm now going to work on notification mitigation so that you don't receive too many notifications all at once, as is currently the case when someone starts liking several of your posts.

I hope you all have a great week, see you next time!

Hello everyone, I hope you're well and having a great week!

For my part, work is continuing on Veklar and I've been able to finish developing the internal database synchronisation tool I mentioned last week.

I've also continued work on redesigning the interface, with a particular focus on performance to ensure that the website doesn't overload your browser windows as is sometimes the case with the current version of the website, especially when several media and GIFs are present on the page.

Finally, since yesterday I've been working on the encryption of notifications so that the service that transmits your Veklar notifications doesn't have access to their content. It's not essential at the moment, but in the future with the addition of an private messaging system it's likely that the content of notifications will be more sensitive, and therefore deserves greater protection.

That's all for today, see you next week!

Hello everyone!

As mentioned in my previous messages on Veklar, a back injury kept me away from work for a while but I was able to happily resume last week. Thanks again for your understanding and messages of support!

Since returning to work, I've continued to develop Veklar's interface redesign, and have been working in depth on more technical aspects on the server side.

For those interested in the more technical side of things, I've developed an internal tool that allows me to centralize the declaration of database structure at application level to speed up development, but also to avoid synchronization errors between what the application knows of the data structure and the actual data structure. Some would say it's an ORM, but it's not. I don't need all the functionalities of an ORM, and I usually develop my own tools in such cases to avoid turning my projects into gas factories, but also to avoid suffering from all the constraints brought about by a tool that hasn't been specifically developed for my needs. What's more, these tools will make it much easier for me to develop and maintain other projects.

This week I'm going to continue working on the same sites, trying to double the pace to make up for lost time as much as possible, but I'm still concerned about taking the time to offer quality work.

Before I finish, I'd like to thank once again those of you who support Veklar on veklar.com/donation by becoming Architects. Your support is invaluable and provides me with a great deal of motivation!

Happy 1st May to those of you who celebrate it, have a great weekend, and see you next week!