Polishing

I refactored some ridiculous code that was inline, and made it a separate function.
This will reduce allot of bandwidth because now the JavaScript is in one place instead of in every single comment

View Commit

Polishing

Spent some time polishing things, and working on docker images, for a move to another server

• 612a3cecad I removed the dependency on go-sqlite3 which was leftover from when I used sqlite as the database. The error messages for duplicate usernames are now prettier
• fc2f524b21 I added docker images
• e6394fea10 I gave the icons when changing/uploading thumbnails a background, so the contrast is still OK when the uploaded image is light or dark
• 1427c28e33 I allowed the recommended videos to be clicked anywhere for better UX, and added a background on hover

If you spot anything that needs polishing - please let me know!

iOS App: Update

1. I added sort options, you can now select between latest, popular, recommended and trending. This took a fair amount of work, I had to guess the type of the gRPC client so I could pass it between Views. This is really hard when you don’t have a functional LSP. I also had to rewrite the way the gRPC client was created so the connection doesn’t close.
2. Moved thumbnails to a separate component for clarity

• 03ee41ded7
• 7944685210

iOS Update

I updated the styling of the onboarding page

1 Commit

Web Update

I added suggested videos right in the view video page.

I also simplified a lot of repeated code, moved an API endpoint from the Users service to the Videos service, and made it so if there is only one comment on a video it says 1 Comment instead of 1 Comments - Crazy right?!

View 3 commits

iOS Update

1. I allowed the user to configure the API + S3 Endpoints
2. I added the user avatar, username, and view count to the video list

View the code

iOS App!

I started working on an iOS app using swift!

This is my first time ever using swift, so it took quite a while.

Initially I tried using NativeScript Svelte, then React Native. Its pretty hard to get gRPC working with them, needing a proxy or something for the gRPC server, so I switched to swift instead.

Xcode (Apples IDE) doesn’t run on linux, so I had to install xtool and vscode/zed. I have to rebuild everytime I make a change, and the builds are pretty slow, but Swift is a really nice language and I may use it in the future

More flag reasons

I added a reason to flag videos that is not nudity.

View the commit

Video Reporting

I finished video reporting, now admins can flag a reported video in the admin dashboard

Reports: Progress

Users can now report videos, and admin page was added to view reports

Next up I need to add actions like removing reports and flagging videos

View the commits

Moderation Appeal

You can now request an appeal if your video gets blocked.

There is a new page in the admin dashboard to view appeals

Admins can either reject or remove appeals

Rejecting will not allow the user to create another appeal

View The Code

Rewrite

I rewrote the video analyzer (NSFW detection) from Go to TypeScript, because the go package used for NSFW broke.
It might be slower, but at least it works

Can’t really have many screenshots for this update…

I also reduced the amount of things you need to install by using go tools,
where instead of installing the binary I run go get -tool and call it using go tool
More work for me, less work for someone trying to set this up themselves.

I also reinstalled my OS 2 times, so thats why this update took a while

You can view the changes on Codeberg

Live chat

I added chats to live streams! (you can chat even when the stream is offline
This was implemented using websockets (this is like the 8th microservice)

I made it so scrolling pauses the chat, so you can read messages.
The colour of the usernames are based on the hash of your username, I should probably let you pick a colour though.

Live streams fix

I fixed live streams by writing a proxy to the stream server

Also did a few bug fixes
View The Changes

Replaced dropzone.js with a custom upload script, so uploading matches the theme better
(4h of work because everything decided to break)
(ps don’t use RustFS, it is buggy and vibecoded)

View the code

Added a live indicator to profile pages

Big Update - Live Streams!

I added live streams

View Changes

+ 502 Additions
- 73 Deletions

I added trending, and did a few other things, like improving security, working on a demo environment, improving code, fixing a bug and cleaning up processed thumbnails

View 5 changes

I added view counter (a view counts once every six hours per users) and refactored the code!
View Changes

Admin Dashboard Improvements

I added a user management page that lists all users (with scrolling to load more) and allows flag management (Admin/Verified flags)

View the change

I should add search next

I added an admin dashboard with user/video count analytics.
(I spent a lot of time perfecting how the graph looks)
View the change

Added milliseconds to durations that show on hover
Accidentally deleted the last devlog

Improved UX by redirecting back to profile page after deleting a video (with a refresh) so deleted videos don’t show after deletion
Also changed some endpoints to use proper http semantics

I hid private/unprocessed videos in the recommended feed
Also had problems with atlas migrations which took hours to fix :)

I added a most popular sort option to the homepage of WatchTower.
I am planning to add a trending option as well.
I should probably remove some of the duplicated logic though and replace /videos/latest and /videos/popular with /videos/{sort_type}

I added a “latest” sort option to my video sharing platform
I also fixed a bug where usernames wouldn’t show on recommended videos
Next up is sorting by popularity