Developer Update: Oct 2023

Backloggd
3 min readOct 7, 2023

Take a dive into what’s coming next for Backloggd!

Developer Update October 2023

2023 Recap

It’s been a while since the 1.10 update released July of last year, but it hasn’t been all quiet since then. We had a revamp of the log editor based on community feedback start back in February, which made its way to everyone in June. We also saw the addition of mentions and a new notifications page to better connect you with your friends across the site. Then numerous quality of life improvements have incrementally made their way in such as Patreon integration, self-service reactivation, performance optimizations, and plentiful UI tweaks.

Check out the linked posts in the underlined text above for more information on the most recent updates. Now let’s jump into what’s been cooking for the 1.11 update.

A New Home

It’s time for one of the oldest pages on the site to get a face lift. After running a survey on the current home page, it was found that most people would prefer to see more about their personal collection and activities from those they’re following. So the page is being redesigned with a new focus on just that.

Home page in the upcoming 1.11 update

As you can see, the very first row is all about you and your collection of games. While following that will be what’s new with your friends, before going into the global community with “Recently trending”. This new design will also better consider what if you don’t prefer to follow other people, as it will adapt to hide these sections if they’re not needed and not leave an awkward gap behind like it does today.

Another goal of the redesign is to declutter your first view, as I realize it can be difficult to focus on a single section when there’s so much going on. This does reduce how much information you’re getting in a single view but I believe it will be for the best as navigating to what you want should be easier with a more “row-based” layout.

One of the most requested additions will also be making its way onto the home page with its very own section.

New lists section on the 1.11 home page

There were many more learnings from those survey results that I plan on incorporating, some of which you’ll have to wait to see ;) But yes, I can confirm the “Recently trending” section (replacing Popular this Month) will no longer include games that are not released yet.

Release date?

The layout is pretty much done, it’s now all about filling in the cracks by making sure all the edge cases are handled. As well as making sure it’s as performant it can be. Right now the home page is one of the slowest pages on the site and so far I believe I’ve gotten it to run faster while displaying more content! The home page won’t be the only new change coming in 1.11 so there’s still a bit of work left to do there.

I can’t promise a date as being a one-person team often leaves to uncertainty in due dates, but rest assured I’m hard at work getting it out as soon as I can.

Just for fun, here is what the homepage looked like back in 2019. We’ve certainly come a long way…

Backloggd 2019 home page

That brings us up to today! Thanks for checking in and be on the look out for when 1.11 releases. If you’re a patron, you can follow a live progress tracker to get an idea how close we really are: https://www.patreon.com/posts/1-11-progress-85480575

See you on the site,

MrProg

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BackloggdApp

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@backloggd.official

Discord: discord.gg/Ac6XNNN

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/backloggd

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