Release Notes

Released April 24, 2023

Website Version 11.0, Mobile Apps Version 3.1

We are continually adding new features and improvements to the site and mobile apps but often forget to update the release notes here. In fact, we didn't post release notes at all for Version 10 of the website or Version 2 of the mobile apps in 2022. Sorry about that!


As always, if you come across any errors, please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released Oct. 21, 2021

Website Version 9.0

  • New Logo & Colors: You've likely noticed that we have a brand new logo and color scheme! You can learn more about the meanings behind them in our blog post here: The New Face of Concert Archives.
  • We took this opportunity to polish up a lot of the smaller design elements as well as a handful of other bug fixes and minor changes too.


As always, if you come across any errors, please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released July 26, 2021

Website Version 8.3, Mobile Apps Version 1.2

  • Cancelled Concerts:
    • The big thing in this version is the ability to mark concerts as 'Cancelled' (thanks a lot 2020!). Cancelled concerts will still appear in concert listings (crossed out) but they won't count towards your stats and all of the bands will be marked as 'not seen'.
  • Plus a handful of other bug fixes and minor changes.


As always, if you come across any errors, please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released May 22, 2021

Website Version 8.2, Mobile Apps Version 1.1.4

  • Mobile Apps Version 1.1.4: Search Your Archive
    • The most requested feature after launching the iOS and Android apps has been the ability to search your own archive. Now that ability is here!
    • The Search screen now has a new toggle button that allows you to switch between searching only your archive and searching the entire database.
  • Website Version 8.2: Slimmer Concert Pages
    • We made several improvements to your concert pages to make them more manageable for big concerts (like festivals).
    • For the concert's Band Line-Up, we've created 2 sections: bands you saw and bands you didn't. The bands you didn't see are much more consolidated now.
    • For the concert's setlists, we've separated these into seen vs not seen as well. Setlists for bands you didn't see are now on a separate tab so you don't have to scroll through all this info but it's still close at hand if you want to see it.
  • Plus a few bug fixes and minor changes.


As always, if you come across any errors, please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released April 26, 2021

Website Version 8.1

We've made some great progress over the past 2 months!

  • Status Update on "The Big Clean": If you don't remember, "The Big Clean" is a huge project we're undertaking this year to clean up and standardize the data on Concert Archives. It's a multi-phase project beginning with Locations, then Venues, then Bands, and then Concerts.
    • Standardized Locations: Phase 1 is complete, we now have standardized locations! All of the location info now gets processed through a third party database of location data (called Geonames). That way the locations will all be standardized and stay clean. This will also enable some cool new features in the future like being able to see your concerts on a map.
    • Verify Data: When you add or edit a concert, you may be asked to verify the location info before the concert is saved. This will happen if you put in location info that hasn't yet been verified via the Geonames database. In the future, we'll prompt you to verify venues, bands, and concert info in the same way. While this will slow down the process of adding a concert, it's absolutely essential for reducing duplicates as the site grows.
    • Updated Database Guidelines: The Database Guidelines now reflect the new format for location info ("City, State, Country").
  • Performance Improvements: We've been making a bunch of performance improvements!
    • Cacheing: This is kind of a technical topic, but we made some big changes to how we "cache" data. Long store short, the changes we made sped things up quite a bit for visitors who aren't logged in and, as a result, freed up a lot of the server resources so that things are faster for logged in users as well. Everybody is winning!
    • "Time Seen" Stats: Performance improvements to your "times seen" stats for bands, locations, and venues
    • "Unread" Counts: Performance improvements around showing the 'unread' counts in the menu for your news feed and notifications
    • Core Web Vitals: Google is going to be emphasizing a bunch of performance metrics called "Core Web Vitals" to help determine page rankings in Google searches. We made several improvements for these (particularly "content layout shift"), to help us stay in Google's good graces.
  • We opened a Merch Store: If you haven't checked it out already, you can get all the CA merch that your heart desires at ca-merch.org.
  • Changed the blog URL: We moved the URL of the blog from https://backstagepass.concertarchives.org to https://www.concertarchives.org/backstagepass. It's a pretty subtle change, but it'll help with our SEO.
  • Quite a few bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes on the website.

That's a lot of stuff, right?!

As always, if you come across any errors, please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released Feb. 27, 2021

Website Version 8.0, Mobile Apps Version 1.1

The mobile apps went live on February 15th! We'll now be tracking release notes for both the website and the mobile apps here.

  • Upgrade to Ruby 3.0: We upgraded the programming language that the website is built on (Ruby) to the latest version, 3.0. While you won't really notice any differences, this is a really big update behind the scenes and has taken just about 2 months of updating and testing to get everything working and stable. Being on this newest version of Ruby will allow us to continue to increase the performance of the site, build new features faster, and keep everything secure.
  • Follower & Following Counts: User profiles now show the amount of followers and follows (unless the profile is private)
  • Browse Followers & Follows: You can now browse the people that a user follows and their followers.
  • Links to the Mobile Apps: Revamped the homepage with links to the mobile apps (and a bunch more changes) as well as added links to the mobile apps in the footer of emails, etc.
  • Recommended Users on Mobile: Added the Recommended Users screen to the mobile apps (under the 'Social' menu), to match the website.
  • Quite a few bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes on both the website and mobile apps.

As always, if you come across any errors, please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released February 13, 2021

Website Version 7.1

We're getting really close to launching the iOS and Android apps! Just two main things with this website release:

  • Blocking Users: You can now block users so you won't see any of their content. Your profile will appear as 'Private' to them so they won't see your content either (when they are logged in).
  • Reporting Content: We added more ways to report content (incorrect, objectionable, etc.).
  • A few other bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes as usual but we've primarily been focusing on the mobile apps.

As always, if you come across any errors please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released January 13, 2021

Website Version 7.0

We've been pretty quiet here on the release notes, but it's been for a good reason: we've been building all the functionality for the forthcoming iOS and Android apps!

  • API for Mobile Apps: The mobile apps need to push/pull data to/from the website, so we've built an API to accomodate all the mobile app functionality.
  • Play Concert Setlists: You can now play the setlist of a concert on Spotify and YouTube. (this is one of my favorite features of the whole site!)
  • More Reliable Photo Uploads: We changed the way we process photo uploads to make it more reliable and less likely to have 'time out' errors.
  • Software Upgrades: Big upgrades to the underlying code base (from 'Ruby on Rails' version 5 to version 6 and Ruby version 2.7). Being on this latest version lets us take advantage of major improvements with regards to performance, flexibility, and ease of adding new features and will pay off well into the future.
  • Updated our About page
  • Tons of other bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes as usual.

We're super excited to unveil the new iOS and Android apps. Stay tuned! Like always, if you come across any errors please email us at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released January 5, 2020

Website Version 6.7

  • Tag Photos & Videos: You can now add tags to your photos and videos on concert pages. Clicking the little 'cog' icon next to a photo or video will now present you with a list of available tags for that item. You can tag the relevant band(s) as well as things like 'setlist', 'gig poster', 'ticket', 'gear', 'crowd', etc.
  • Closest Setlist: In a perfect world, there would be a setlist posted online for every concert that's performed. Unfortunately our world isn't quite that perfect haha, but since bands tend to play the same (or similar) setlists for a whole tour (or for years), we now show the 'Closest Setlist' on the concert page. In other words, say Iron Chic played a show in Portland on December 4th (I wish!) but nobody posted the setlist, we'll now show the closest available setlist (before or after Dec 4th) on that concert page. Super handy :)
  • New Domain: Patron dbecker accidentally made a typo heading to the site one day accidentally putting in concertarchive.org (no 's' on 'archives'). Being such a thoughtful guy, he wondered if others might make that same typo as well and donated the cost to register the concertarchive.org domain for 3 years. So now if you typo (or just want to save yourself from having to type an 's' LOL) and go to concertarchive.org, it'll automatically take you to concertarchives.org. Thanks dbecker!
  • Plenty of other bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes as usual.

Happy New Year! Like always, if you come across any errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released November 2, 2019

Website Version 6.6

Tons of new features lately!

  • You can now crop the cover photos! When you choose a new cover photo for a concert/band/location/venue, you'll be able to crop it before it's set.
  • You can now add captions to the photos and videos that you add! Click the little cog menu (which is newly revamped too) next to your photo/video and you'll see the option to add a caption. And by the way, I have plans to add another way to 'tag' the bands in your photos sometime soon, so you may not want to spend the time to enter a caption for each photo/video if you just want to identify the band.
  • Show each bands' most recent setlist on their band page
  • Added the year graph for Bands & Venues in the sidebar of their page
  • Added the ability to see/browse Band & Venue concerts by year
  • More notification settings (found on your Profile & Settings page)
  • You can now bulk import concerts from your Songkick account if you have been tracking your concerts there.
  • Dedicated pages to see your followers and the people you follow
  • Changes to how concert titles get handled if a user doesn't enter one when creating a new concert
  • Added Recent Photos & Videos to the homepage
  • Plenty of other bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes as usual

Hope you enjoy all the new stuff! Like always, if you come across any errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released October 14, 2019

Website Version 6.5


Hope you enjoy the new changes! Like always, if you come across any errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released October 9, 2019

Website Version 6.4

We've added a bunch of improvements around 'upcoming concerts'! The focus of Concert Archives has always been on past concerts, but why not show a bit of love to upcoming concerts too :)

  • On your user Overview page, there is now a section for Upcoming Concerts on the top. This listing shows the soonest concert first instead of the latest one, so it's easier to see your next concert at a glance.
  • You'll now receive an email a week before the concert as a reminder (which includes tips to prepare for the show).
  • Concert pages for upcoming concerts have been reworked. The wording has been optimized (for example: "People Going" vs "Seen By"), there is no longer an empty setlist section, etc.
  • It's more clear in concert listings that a concert is in the future with a new 'Upcoming' badge.
  • You'll now receive an email the day after the concert reminding you to upload your photos/videos, add attendees, leave a comment/review, etc.
  • If you added the concert to your archive in advance, the system will automatically post an activity to your news feed that you "Attended a concert" the day after the concert.
  • Various other bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes.

Hope you enjoy the new stuff! Like always, if you come across any errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released October 5, 2019

Website Version 6.3

Recommendations are here! Under the 'Social' menu in the navigation, you'll now find Recommended Users and Recommended bands:

  • Recommended Users are users that have attended the same concerts as you or seen many of the same bands.
  • Recommended Bands are bands you haven't seen but have played many concerts with bands that you have seen.

In addition, we also fixed a bug where if you removed a band from a concert, that band would still appear in your list of All Bands and statistics. Not any more :)

Like always, if you come across any new errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released September 23, 2019

Website Version 6.2

  • One of the most requested features is here! It's one that is asked for a lot, especially from brand new users: the ability to import concerts from a spreadsheet. That means you can now create concerts in bulk by uploading all the concert data in a CSV spreadsheet. Check it out here: https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/import
  • While adding the import ability we also took the opportunity to make exporting a bit nicer too. Previously when you exported your concert archive, it would do it in real time while the page loaded. This worked fine if you had a pretty small archive but if you've been to hundreds of concerts, this would cause the system to time-out and error. Concert exports are now done in the background and we email you the spreadsheet once it is complete (usually within just a couple of minutes). This makes exports much more scalable and is easier on our web servers.
  • Various other small bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes.

If you come across any new errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released May 11, 2019

Website Version 6.1

  • Bucket List (a.k.a. Wish List): You can now create your Bucket List (a.k.a. Wish List) of concerts (bands, festivals, etc) that you want to see before you die (sorry for being morbid, haha). More info here: https://concertarchives.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1911994
  • Aliases (a.k.a. Variations): We can now set 'Aliases' for bands, locations, and venues behind the scenes. For example, the official spelling is "blink-182", but a lot of people enter it as "Blink 182", which caused there to be duplicate listings. Now the "blink-182" listing has an alias of "Blink 182" (amongst others), so any time somebody enters "Blink 182" it'll automatically get corrected and applied to "blink-182". This works for Locations ("Portland, OR" vs "Portland, Oregon") and Venues as well.
  • Various other small bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes.

If you come across any new errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!

Justin

Released April 23, 2019

Website Version 6.0

Version 6.0 is a huge release for the site, maybe the biggest release since I first launched it over 6 years ago!

  • In addition to tracking your past concerts, Concert Archives is now a full-fledged social network! You now have the ability to follow other users, see their updates in your News Feed, comment & like their activity, write posts, and more. These new social features will help us build a stronger and more active community!
  • Added Database Guidelines that outline the data and formatting standards for entering concert information.
  • When editing a concert that has multiple attendees, you now need to:
    1. Include a reason for your edit (which goes in the notification email that is sent to the other attendees).
    2. Confirm that the edit complies with the Database Guidelines.
    3. Confirm that you've included all of the bands that performed (that you know about), regardless of if you saw them or not. (You can select which bands you saw on the Concert page)
  • Added the ability to search users by location. For example, you can search users by 'Portland' and see those who have listed their location as Portland.
  • Several bug fixes and minor improvements.

If you come across any new errors (especially with the social features) please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!
Justin

Released March 23, 2019

Website Version 5.2

I'm happy to share another big batch of improvements to the site from the past 3 weeks!

  • Setlists now populate correctly for multiday concerts. Previously the site would only look for setlists from the first day of a multiday concert.
  • Added search to the navigation sitewide.
  • Fixed the ability to add large concerts from Songkick via the Past Concert Search Engine. Previously it would error if you tried to add a concert that had more than about 75 bands.
  • Ability to disable a user's ability to edit concerts if they are causing a mess.
  • Improved the Venue search so now you can specify a location as well, so you can search "Crystal Ballroom Portland" for example.
  • Updated search results on the Past Concert Search Engine.
  • Improvement to the band/location/venue suggestions when entering a new concert.
  • Performance improvements & bug fixes.

If you come across any new errors please email me at [email protected].

Cheers!
Justin

Released March 1, 2019

Website Version 5.1

It's amazing how many new features we released in the past 2 weeks. It's a really exciting time for the site!

  • Ability to mark the bands you saw (and didn't see) at a concert.
  • Private Comments - you can now selectively mark a comment as private and only visible to you.
  • Improved the concert search so that it no longer times out and implemented a new search architecture that will low us to improve the search all throughout the site.
  • And speaking of Search, one of those improvements is that the Past Concert Search Engine now shows results from Concert Archives in addition to Songkick.
  • Text changes to better explain some of the features (most notably when Editing a concert and the Notes field on concerts) as well as some navigation updates.
  • Wrote a longer explanation about how concerts are shared amongst attendees. It's short and definitely worth a read: https://concertarchives.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/1903243
  • Send an email to all of a concert's attendees if the basic concert info changes (bands, title, locations, or venue).
  • Standardize the concert titles when creating a concert from the Past Concert Search Engine (Songkick) and update the titles for existing concerts created in this way.
  • Update the underlying version of Ruby
  • Update to the latest server infrastructure
  • Lots of performance and database improvements
  • Various bug fixes

If you come across any new errors please email me at [email protected].

Thank you for helping build this community!

Released Feb 14, 2019

Website Version 5.0

This is one of those classic 'behind the scenes' updates where a lot of major things changed but they're all almost invisible to the users :)

  • Major upgrade of the version of the underlying code base (from 'Ruby on Rails' version 3 to version 5). This was a big undertaking since the previous version was the same as when I first started the site 5 years ago. Being on this latest version lets us take advantage of major improvements with regards to performance, flexibility, and ease of adding new features and will pay off well into the future.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some venues to get duplicated when adding new concerts.
  • Various other small bug fixes, improvements, and wording changes.

If you come across any new errors please email me at [email protected].

Happy Valentine's Day :)

Released Feb 7, 2019

Website Version 4.3

We've released several improvements and new features over the past few weeks. Including:

  • You can now change the order of bands in a concert! When you are creating or editing a new concert, you can now drag & drop the bands into the order they played in.
  • You can now add a Location to a Concert even if you don't know the Venue. Previously, you'd have to enter a Venue if you wanted to add a Location or it'd give you an error. This meant people would have to enter 'Unknown Venue' or '??' as the Venue.
  • User's are now able to delete their own accounts from their Settings page. Previously they would have to email me to delete their accounts on the backend.
  • Major performance improvements to the New Concert page.
  • Improvements to spam blocking.

Released May 5, 2018

Website Version 4.2

Private Profiles!

Here's a few notes about how it works:

  • You can make your profile private on your Settings page.
  • A private profile makes it so that only you can see your concert history, photos, videos, and comments.
  • Since concerts are public events, the concerts you add will still be visible on the public concert histories of bands, locations, and venues. You won't publicly be listed as an attendee on the concert though and any photos, videos, or comments you add to it will only be visible to you.
  • If you make your profile private, you won't be able to share your profile/history with any other users. In the future, I plan to add the ability to "friend" other users so that they can see your profile/history.

A few more spam controls (confirmed spam/ham database columns) so legit users will get incorrectly flagged less often.

Released April 21, 2018

Website Version 4.1

The biggest changes in this release were trying to defeat spammers.

Here's what changed:

  • Integrated Akismet on the user registration form and when adding new concerts and comments to help defeat spammers
  • Integrated reCAPTCHA on the user registration form and when adding new concerts to help defeat spammers
  • New users must now confirm their email address (click an email link) before they can access the site to help defeat spammers
  • Fixed a bug where some setlists wouldn't populate (Setlist.fm has a finicky API). Thanks to Ryan Thompson (https://www.concertarchives.org/ryan-thompson) for letting me know about this bug!
  • Fixed a bug where an empty Concert search would return 0 results instead of returning all of your concerts. Thanks to Ryan Pulliam (https://www.concertarchives.org/ryanpulliam) for letting me know!
  • Fixed a bug where a user's website link on their profile wouldn't work if they didn't include "http://" at the beginning of the URL.
  • Added the benefits of signing up to the Sign Up page

Released April 3, 2018

Website Version 4.0

This was a huge release, the biggest one since launch in 2014. Hope you enjoy it :)

Here's what changed:

  • Brand new site design ("Pizazz Edition" haha)
  • Lots of improvements when browsing on mobile devices
  • Users can now sort your Favorite Concerts
  • Smarter concert search that now searches the concert title, the bands that played, and the location
  • Features for Patreon patrons (profile badges and ad-free experience)
  • Users can now add a cover photo to their profile (they can upload one otherwise it'll automatically use the last concert photo they uploaded)
  • Made it so the "+ Add Concert" button is more accessible on many more pages
  • Dedicated Photos and Videos pages for bands, venues, and locations so that visitors can browse all of the photos/videos
  • Fixed the issue that caused concert photos taken in portrait mode (vertical) to display in landscape mode (horizontal) when uploaded.
  • Added band avatars to the band pages
  • On concert pages, the setlists now load in the background which dramatically improves performance and makes it so festivals with lots of artists don't cause an error
  • Improved the experience for brand new users adding their first concert
  • Added navigation 'breadcrumbs' to the top of the page to make it more obvious where visitors are on the site
  • Prompts for brand new visitors that tell them more about Concert Archives and prompt them to sign up
  • Added the 'Credits' and 'Release Notes' pages
  • Fixed lots of small bugs and cleaned up a bunch of code

As Seen On:

  • Reuters
  • The Guardian
  • The New York Times
  • Newsweek
  • Buzzfeed
  • Pitchfork