January 2021 update
2020 was a year of very intense work on AstroBin, and the platform benefitted from a vast number of improvements and fixes, including:
the new Ultimate subscription tier which brings a few new features to the plate, the most notable of which is the advanced plate-solving provided by PixInsight.
The support for embedded ICC color profiles.
The beginning of the process to modernize the frontend via a new webapp (already available for the upload pages, notification pages, subscription pages, and 2 of the 3 pages of the IOTD process).
The click-and-zoom on the large image view.
An improved hosting and deployment infrastructure for better stability. Lots of other small fixes and improvements!
This ia chart that shows the number of code changes I made in 2020: 2503, which is an average of 7 every day!
IOTD/TP process changes
The first item on my January agenda was the rotation of the IOTD/TP selection team. Due to the high number of volunteers (thank you all!) this year I decided to do things a little bit differently and increased the number of members of the staff. In 2021 there are almost 200 volunteers who contribute to the Image of the Day and Top Picks selection every day!
NPS satisfaction survey
I'm also starting a "tradition" of collecting a quick user satisfaction survey every January, until I get 1000 or so responses. The 2021 result is overwhelmingly good: 74! For reference, a score of 30 is considered good. Thank you all for your trust in AstroBin!
Forum visual improvements
The AstroBin forums are gaining traction and due to the great skills and knowledge of AstroBin users, they are one of the best places to get answers about astrophotography!
Experimental TIFF support
AstroBin now offers experimental support for TIFF files, available to all subscription tiers!
Coming up!
The time is finally right for me to begin planning and implementing the "next big thing" on AstroBin!
February will be the month when I officially begin the new equipment module that aims to solve a few issues:
Item duplication and fragmentation
Inability to search for certain features (like OSC vs Mono cameras)
This is going to be a very hard effort, and will also require community involvement to make sure as many items as possible are migrated to the new database models. When the time comes, everybody will be informed.