Posted by AaronClausen
A number of important platform improvements continue to be rolled out:
Daily summary email has been completely redeveloped to handle the load of providing alerts to over 11,000 people on a daily basis.
Emails are delivered reliably, duplicates are prevented from being sent and our email service provider is keeping up with the workload.
Species pages have been refreshed and modernised - finally.
These pages were one of the last parts of the system that was still running on 10 year old code.
This means a fresh new simplified and more appealing look for all species pages.
Species pages now get familiar NatureMapr features such as one-click follow, consistent sensitive data handling and filtered sighting lists.
Example: https://naturemapr.org/species/2265
Sensitive data handling improvements - every single list of sightings served by NatureMapr is channelled through a single and consistent front door, ensuring sensitive data handling rules are applied and enforced consistently, platform wide.
Collections have been improved and simplified to allow anybody in the community such as school kids, researchers and community groups to setup a free project and document important local causes and projects important to them.
All collections now get their own dedicated home page where you can describe your project as well as define any project specific questions that you'd like your project to capture.
Example: https://naturemapr.org/collections/44788
NatureMapr data collector mobile app update 6.3.1 is close to release and will resolve a known navigation bug with recording audio sightings as well as improvements in performance and stability across more devices.
NatureMapr data collector is now the highest ranking Australian citizen science platform mobile app thanks to your continued suggestions for improvement, a large investment and a mammoth effort from our team to make it all possible. If you enjoy the app, please donate 2 minutes of your time to leave us a quick review on the Google Play or iOS App store - our team will really appreciate it.
As the platform and our community continues to see large year on year growth, engineering improvements to keep the platform running reliably at larger scale become non negotiable.
This is the invisible work that nobody really sees - except that the platform is still running and serving pages reliably and without delay.
A login is now required to access more parts of the platform as we have had to reduce our overall footprint in terms of the number of rich pages that are "dangling out on the internet" for bots and malicious users to openly consume.
Complex parts of the system continue to be refactored and optimised to function reliably at larger scale with millions of page requests per month and tens of millions of requests to the NatureMapr API.
Paid programs such as NSW BCT Land Libraries, NSW Bats in Backyards, Glossies in the Mist, SE Orchids and Guardians of the Grassy Woodlands now benefit from: