Hello to all of you,
Today I'll like to share my latest developments on Inkito, the Hive interface for series. I worked on the alpha version over the summer but it is far from over. So I'm back at it.
As I mentioned last week, I'm working hard on optimizing the home page load time and adding more series from the Hive community.
Before sharing my latest endeavors let me explain how the system currently works.
When a user posts content, Inkito creates a unique id composed of the username and series title. This id is set as a tags to identify and order the series.
That allowed me to design a system solely relying on Hive and no additional database. A true decentralized option.
So what is the problem...
Well on the home page I only need to load cover information (one image, title, author, last payout). But with the current system I need to dig through all the series posts to find the first one which contains the data. This is not the most efficient and results in an asynchronous cover load.
The system became even slower as I began adding content with no inkito tags. This time I had to go through all content of a user (yes, even unrelated blogs) to find posts with a title matching the series title. All this to return the cover.
This none sense had to stop!
So I created a database just for the cover information.
I added the series permlinks in the database as well. I do go through every post at least once anyway and this will improve the reader loading time. By keeping the original logic, the permlink and last payout information is updated automatically if any new episode come out.
I know it strays away from a Hive autonomous platform but it was needed to scale the website.
So for now, I have a simple whitelist of content that I'll be updating with as much series as I can. It's basically hard coded series that would trigger the auto update script.
This is a temporary system to include Hive content and get momentum going. Eventually it would make more sense if creators were posting directly through Inkito.
Anyway, for the time being, please share your suggestions for comics or novels you'd like to see on Inkito! I'll try my best to add as many as I can. I even think a series of article you would like organized could fit the platform! If you are a creator please drop me a line, it'll be my pleasure to add your content. Otherwise posting through Inkito would be the best way to join in.
So, this new structure is not yet in production as still need to clean up the code and adapt the front end to this new database system.
I'll share more about it after the weekend.
I might have gone a little too technical here. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
See you on the other side,
Jrej
I can see this is not easy if people did not set up their tags with it in mind. Need to find ways to make it easy.
I notice you have a form of endless scroll, but that makes it difficult to get to the links in the footer. Would it be better to have them at the top of the screen?
!BEER
Thanks for the feedback. Those links are indeed quite difficult to reach because of the infinite scroll. I'll definitely move them back into the menu.
What do you think of this scroll. On kindle it a left swipe instead. I might implement both actually...
I think the scroll is okay. An easy way to move between chapters is important.
!BEER
Cheers buddy!
Thanks, keep rocking
Sorry, out of BEER, please retry later...
View or trade
BEER.BEERHey @inkito, here is a little bit of from @steevc for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.Let me follow this, looks interesting.
!BEER
Great to have you on board. Don't hesitate if you have any suggestions. ;-)
Sorry, out of BEER, please retry later...
Congratulations @inkito! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz:
I'm embarking on this hive front end shenanigans as well so I may need to pick your brains at some point :)
While the dream may be to rely soley on hive, it's perfectly fine to use other things to help when it's needed ;D
Currently most of your audience are probably used to hanging out on "hive" (which they probably associate too specifically with hive.blog or peakd) because that's what they joined and that's what they're used to, and if they've been around a while might be following people that don't post novels and comics and they don't want to miss their posts and like me might be too lazy to keep jumping front ends. As time goes by you may find that you have more signups through Inkito itself and those people are more likely to only use Inkito, and people who originally joined "hive" to post their novels and comics and aren't following/interested in other stuff might also drift over because it's easier :)
That sums up pretty well my strategy. Last year I thought I could start bringing people over from outside the Hive realm but I realize that actually comes as a second step once the site is full of content.
Don't hesitate if you need help on your front end project. I mostly used the hive api documentation. I can even share my code if you wanna see how i did some parts.
Best of luck to you! ;-)