Yooooo Developers!! How are you all?
I was building a social media platform with a special algorithm that gives new voices or communities a better chance of being discovered.
And... it's Crowdwide! I'm also done with its core features.
Building something that has already been built by someone else and exists in various different forms can be confusing, like social media platforms.
There are a wide number of platforms like Reddit, Instagram, etc., and each has its own speciality.
And I was mostly confused with Crowdwide until I added that algorithm for giving new voices better visibility!
And yea, that's where I tried to create a difference!
I made some new updates in my last few updates. I removed one whole section of Crowdwide named Widewave because it was getting complex for users to understand all at once, due to which its UI was confusing.
So, after a few suggestions, I removed it.
From this:
To:
Along with that, my friend @akhourianmolkumar suggested that I should put the profile icon at the bottom of the side menu, and now it's there...
From:
To:
And he also suggested that I use a line chart instead of a bar chart... this is looking pretty good now!!
From:
To:
All publicly given suggestions feel useful, so I ship them faster.
And then, when I was adding a few of my old craft photos to Crowdwide, I noticed that the post composer was looking very messy, like:
- The co-author column was messed up with the following list.
- Media display was getting unaligned when the screen was too large.
- When the details of the post composer were closed, you wouldn't be able to see your own added attachments.
- When you open any post for reporting, reposting, deleting, or editing, you have to go through a "..." more option. And when you click that button, the whole post's content shifts a little bit down to show the options... that was looking very poor.
So, after noting down all these...
I started making changes.
Media attachments and reporting options were easy, but thinking about the co-author scenario was a little tricky because I was thinking of showing all the authors at a time... then the list could get too long, be laggy, and look messy. π
I added a search bar above, but still, the co-author part wasn't fixed because when the author's name gets searched, it shows an ugly block that I had initially added...
And then I thought, if someone wants to add someone as a co-author, they must know at least their name... or username...
So, I just simply added the option to search and add!! Simple!!
No more rocket science.
The solution was simple... but I was looking at the wrong point lol... literally, when I got to my last option, I was shocked, like, why didn't I think of this earlier?
And also, I got some stats, not complete...
But generated by Crowdwide itself.
About new voices and posts, comparing large communities and post views.
Check it out!
Yea, the current week isn't completed yet, that's why its views are also lower. It gets most of its active users on Sunday.
Also, there is no large community... please, someone make one large community!!!!!!
Also, I got one idea... every platform has its own brand ambassador...
So, I was thinking of making someone a brand ambassador. π
So, the idea is simple!!
You just have to tell me if you want to be one...
And I'll make you one!! That's it, simple!!
And the person who becomes the brand ambassador of Crowdwide will have their name added to the official Crowdwide site. And if they want, I can also add their words... or quotes.
If they want, I can write more about them, but ONLY if they want to. I'm not going to do anything fake or leak anything without permission!
Ngl, this idea seems good!
And if I don't get anyone for that, I'll choose one person to make them the brand ambassador!
And I got new users on Crowdwide... YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
SAY THEM HIII... ππ
BTW, THIS IS THE PROGRESS:
21 members
76 posts shared
4 communities
LINKS:
π Crowdwide: https://www.crowdwide.run.place/
π» GitHub repository: https://github.com/DeveloperPuneet/Crowdwide
Top comments (26)
That co-author fix is funny in a good way, the simple search and add was right there the whole time. Congrats on 21 members too, that is real momentum for day 27.
Haha yesss π I was overthinking the co-author feature so much, and the solution was literally right there!!
And thank you!! 21 members on Day 27 feels really good. Still a long way to go, but weβre getting there!!
The simple version is easy to miss when you expect a bigger fix. What made search and add click this time?
Honestly, I was trying to figure out how to display all the authors at once, but the list was getting too long and messy
Then I realised that if someone wants to add a co-author, they probably already know their name or username. So why not just let them search and add?
I was focusing on the wrong problem the whole time lol!!
Knowing the name first really changes the list problem. Search and add fits that assumption much better than showing everyone at once.
Yeah, exactly! Knowing the name first makes the whole thing much simpler.
The search-first version reads like a much calmer screen than a long author list. Good call spotting that early.
Yeah! I felt the same when I tried both approaches. The search-first version just makes more sense and keeps the UI clean. Sometimes the simpler solution is right in front of us, but we don't notice it until we try different approaches. π
Search-first keeping the UI clean is the part that sells it. The simpler version usually wins once you see both.
π exactly!
Thanks, Puneet. Once you see search-first next to a long list, the calmer screen is hard to unsee.
The classic trap when bootstrapping social feed engines is dynamic relational fan-out on readβhammering Postgres with nested
JOINs and runtime sorting across timeline tables. At just 300 concurrent active users, that pattern predictably exhausts connection pools, degrades p99 latencies from 15ms to well over 1.4s, and balloons memory footprints to 600MB+ per worker process due to redundant ORM entity hydration under heavy I/O wait.In production bare-metal architectures, the proven path is pre-computing timelines into bounded in-memory primitivesβlike Redis sorted sets (
ZSET) capped at 500 IDsβoffloaded via background queue workers rather than query-time computation. When you implemented your fix, did you accept the write-amplification penalty on high-follower accounts, or did you settle on eventual consistency and live with read-after-write cache lag?Bohdan Hordii // bohdanhordii.dev
That's a really interesting perspective! ππ₯ I'm still learning and improving Crowdwide step by step, and these are exactly the kinds of challenges I want to understand better as the platform grows. Thanks for sharing your insights! π
The before/after pairs work exactly as hoped β the Widewave removal reads instantly in two frames. My favorite is the co-author fix: replacing the whole author list UI with search-and-add removes a decision instead of just restyling one. That's the harder kind of minimalism.
exactly that was the biggest realization sometimes good UX isn't about making an existing flow look better, but questioning whether that flow needs to exist at all. The co-author fix was a perfect example of that. Thanks for noticing the details and before/after pair suggestion! π
Thanks to mention me π
and congrats 21 member including great individuals.....
Haha, of course! π And thank you!
welcome
Akhouri Systems is with crowdwide
Day 27 and still going β respect. Those "why didn't I think of this earlier" moments are honestly my favorite part of building in public. They never show up on day 3.
I'm on a similar road (free AI tools, built with AI help, as a non-developer). What keeps you shipping on the quiet days when it feels like nobody's watching? Asking for myself as much as anything.
Thank you! Honestly, some days it's difficult to stay motivated, especially when it feels like nobody is noticing the progress. But I keep reminding myself why I started building Crowdwide in the first place. I also enjoy seeing even the smallest improvements every day. And documenting the journey here on DEV helps me stay accountable. I guess the trick is to focus on building rather than waiting for people to notice. π
Also, that's interesting! Would love to know more about the AI tools you're building.
Bug report (affected: ui; platform: mobile):
noted boss...
fixing...fixing...fixing
ππ€£
BUG KILLED!
USING BUG KILLER SPRAY, HIS DEAD BODY IS THROWN AWAY...
2 MIN SILENCE FOR BUG...
Day 27π₯β€οΈ
ππ