This has been a busy month for us so far at Piczel.tv, so an update is in order.
First of all, a few days ago we attempted to migrate to a new server. Unfortunately, that new server failed under load, which caused site instability for a few hours. Thank you all for your patience while we reverted to our previous server.
After finding and deploying on a second, better new host, we have now just migrated to the new new server, and it seems both faster and smoother than either of the other servers. Notably, this should fix any stuttering/slowness that some users, especially Comcast customers, were having.
On the software front, we have upgraded our stream layout engine (Thank you to the user who helped write the logic for that!), in order to better fit various multistream layouts to your page. The layout for all multistreams should be far more efficient now - especially 2x multistreams, which are as always, free!
Further, we have spent some time optimizing our backend server:
1. We have better looking URLs for many things, especially images - basically, instead of piczel.tv:3000/image/url/goes/here they will now be something like piczel.tv/api/image/url/goes/here. Old URLs will still work, of course.
2. Server performance is vastly improved, which is especially noticeable for loading images in user galleries.
Our team has also worked hard to update our video player to the latest version, which will increase reliability and performance, you may have already noticed streams playing more smoothly and recovering more reliably from extreme buffering states.
We’ve also fixed a variety of bugs and added minor features, including the following:
1. Popout streams did not load for a while, they now do
2. The purchase premium button in the notification for non-premium users did not link to the correct page, apologies everyone!
3. Edit and Delete buttons now show on image posts if you are the owner, rather than only appearing in the gallery overview
4. Private streams no longer can be added to another stream’s page in any way. The only way to access a private stream is to go to that stream’s page (from which you can then add other streams to that page)
5. Fixed being unable to switch from Flash player to HLS player
6. The page URL will no longer update when streams on that page change. This means that when you add a stream to a page via the add stream button, or close a stream, the URL will not change, so refreshing will always put you back on the same stream you started with. This was changed because users were somewhat frequently getting confused about how the URL affected the page. You can still form custom multiviews by editing the URL if you so choose.
7. Sorting by “followed streams first” on the homepage did not work - fixed!
As always, thank you for using Piczel.tv, please let us know how we’re doing either via reblogs, emails (to piczel.tv at gmail.com), or messages in our feedback chat tab.
We’d love it if our users could reblog this post so that everyone can read about our improvements!
