I've been thinking about making a patron-only post on the first day of every month. This is that post! I think more communication and more feedback is always a good thing.
Let's start with upcoming features. Tags! I was surprised to see how fast we reached the $180 funding goal which is for tag support. The amount of new patrons that made pledges after the last update has really got me amped up and motivated to work hard and build features that the community wants.
Thank you for the support! I literally couldn't do this work without my patrons.
I often check up on /r/projektmelody and one of the more common post types is of people looking for Mel streams with a specific theme. It could be that they're looking for a specific tag like dildo choking, or it could be an ask for streams when a specific toy like the Frickenator was used.
A lot of redditors have good responses for these type of posts. It's often favorite streams or ones that stick out in memory that get mentioned, but I think the truth is that Mel has created so much content that it's impossible to keep track of it all without the aid of notes.
Tags solve this problem, and it's my goal to create a robust tagging system which helps people find exactly what they're looking for. I'm off to a good start and I'm on track for a June 15th launch of this feature. Here's a nice work-in-progress teaser image which I think you might appreciate.
A list of ProjektMelody's toys.
You might be thinking, "that's not tags, that's toys!" and you would be correct. The thing is, tags can do more than locate everyone's favorite kinks. Tags can also label toys, outfits, hairstyles, stream activities, models, scenes, and more.
In the screenshot above, toys are tags, and those tags are helping me organize and display content in interesting ways. In this example, clicking on a toy brings up a list of streams where that toy appeared.
I'm still working on the UI at the moment, so I don't have a good W.I.P. image for the tag editor. I've spent several days thinking about what the best tagger interface would look like, and I'm doing my best to make it a reality. I'm hoping to impress visitors with it's features, which include tags, timestamps, and upvotes.
I want to touch on the May 15th update which added a Patron-only video player with faster video playback. That player uses a content-delivery-network (CDN) service called Mux, and this was my first time building a integration with their network.
Because Mux CDN is a paid service, my original idea was to calculate a certain number of VODs which would be uploaded to Mux's CDN. I called this variable number "muxAllocationCount." That number would be based on the total dollar amount of patron pledges, and the idea was that the cost of Mux's service would be covered by patrons.
The original idea was to delete older VODs from Mux if new VODs were added to futureporn and the muxAllocationCount was already reached. I've since learned that that idea is a bad one, because of how Mux's service works.
Mux charges very little money for storing files and serving them. This means that I can store more VODs without too much financial strain. However, Mux charges a lot of money for encoding videos, a one-time process which is necessary when uploading files to their platform.
The encoding fee is a lot more than I anticipated, and led to a moment of sticker shock in late May.
Part of the problem of this big bill was that I was adding and deleting Mux videos over and over to test my automation workflow. Every time I was doing that, I was getting charged for encoding every minute of those long-form VODs. I did not read the fine print which detailed encoding prices, but I've learned from this and I'm moving forward a wiser man.
My new strategy is to deprecate my muxAllocationCount variable. I will leave VODs permanently on Mux if they're already there. The list of speedy VODs on Mux will grow slowly, as long as I have a budget for it.
I think the last thing I wanted to bring up in this post is my curiosity for what features patrons want next. If there's something not on this list that you would like to see, please let me know!
As always, thanks for the support, and I look forward to continuing to serve you!