State of Da Hub Address

Now that college football season is over and all the things that go along with that, I can now focus some time on some work that needs to be done with the website and the mobile app. There are a few things on the list that I’ve been working on.

APP

First off, Google has removed the Ute Hub app from their app store because of some kind of app store rules violation. I think I have figured out the issue, which is a current bug in the app. I’ve got that bug fixed in my current pending update.

The app is many years old now and has some older libraries and code in it. I’ve been working many hours the last few weeks to upgrade the app to the latest and greatest. This will hopefully result in a smoother experience, faster, etc. I’m close to done and hope to push new versions of the app to both major app stores. For the most part the user won’t see a difference visually, but hopefully the performance will be batter. I’ve also tweaked a few things here and there and fixed a couple of bugs. I improved the registration too. I added a confirm email field there as many people seem to fat finger their email address when they sign up. The email typo means they never get the registration confirmation. I also improved the messaging for users after they register, so they know to expect a confirmation email. Hopefully that will clean up a lot of the orphaned user registrations that happen on mobile.

Website

The website itself is a bit outdated too in terms of code base and backend. I’ve been playing around with some improvements and different user experiences. I don’t have anything very close yet on new stuff. I do need to update much of the supporting libraries for the site which will mean I have to upgrade much of the code to be compatible. This will be a daunting task. I’ll take that on after I get this mobile app stuff done and released.

I hope to get all the website stuff done before next football season starts so things are running smooth when traffic picks up.

There is also a long standing issue with emails from UteHub reaching users, especially the registration emails. It seems that several internet service providers completely block emails from here thinking they are spam. This means new users who just registered never receive their email to activate their account. This is problem I’ve spend dozens of hours on, but likely need to hire or find a volunteer specialist who knows email and email server configurations. I had someone volunteer a year or so ago, but as soon as it looked like he was going to have to do some “work” to fix it, he ghosted me. 🙁 If you are a software engineer or server admin with these skills and can help out, PLEASE reach out to me!

Suggestions/Issues

As always I ask for your input on new features, ways to improve the site, and if you have any bugs. I do my best to address what is reasonable. I’m open to new ideas so send me a note or comment on the board. That’s how Pick Em was originally conceived, user suggestion.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I look forward to making things even better for 2023 and we’re off to a great start!

Tony @admin