Sorry for the long post
but td;dr: Jappleng has a long history of being a passion
project and 7.0 is a huge improvement over the current edition (as
of 2/2/2022). I hope that people will love what is to come and
there’s a lot of new features on the way too. Community building
and new content are the next big thing once 7.0 launches in a few
days.
Greetings everyone!
For 15 years I have had a dream, and that dream was to develop
a Japanese-centric website that would permit users around the world
to engage in discussions about the Japanese language, culture and
other Asian topics. This dream extended further into wanting to
develop a service that permitted them not only a place for
discussion, but also have the option to learn the Japanese language
from beginning to end, learn about the Japanese culture, explore
Japan’s latest trends, create and join clubs and be able to play
and get involved in various fun things in relation to Japan.
How exciting of an idea was this? Unfortunately, I did not have
the talent to achieve this on my own and asking others to help was
a fruitless effort as the only volunteers would be moderators. It
was at that moment that I decided to learn how to do everything
necessary to make Jappleng possible and it jumpstarted my career as
a full-stack developer.
The various builds of Jappleng
Jappleng began as a simple blog about Japan and evolved into a blog
and forum. Eventually I added some functionality to news and
education, but it was still very limited, and the code was clunky
at best. Over the years I was rebuilding the project with what I
had learned, and it eventually have seen many iterations.
Jappleng was never a full-time job, it’s a passion project and
I have been on hiatus quite a few times. Even more recently in 2021
I had spent many months on hiatus because this project is stressful
and difficult on my own. At its peak in an earlier build with a
different database, there was over 40,000 unique visitors per day
around 2007-2008 versus the 200 or so of today. This was when I had
moved and had no time to put into the site or funding. At the time
I was spending around $200 a month for Jappleng on a $500/mo.
Salary working full-time at a startup. It was rough and the bills
piled up over time. I had to shut the doors for a while and
eventually resumed at just $80/mo. With few people coming to the
site around 2012.
I had moved overseas in 2012 or 2013 and worked on the 2015
build of Jappleng which unfortunately did not succeed. I had
rebuilt the entire website from scratch but by the time I had
completed it, mobile phones were all the rage and people demanded
mobile support and functionality. Web development at the time was
changing every few months but that isn’t the case anymore.
A few revisions later, 6.0~ 6.45 had released and it is what you
are seeing as of today, February 2, 2022. But many people have
mentioned that the design was dated, the site is broken, incomplete
and has issues with mobile. I wasn’t going to remake the website
but in September of 2021 I had come up with a solution to fix all
of it. That solution was 7.0, the 7th edition of project
Jappleng.
The solutions
Jappleng 7.0 is important as the design has been modernized, the
resolution supports 4k and most resolutions underneath it. The
major bugs have been fixed and a lot of the minor bugs follow suit.
The issues of understanding what is Jappleng and what it can do for
people is better understood with the new design and the
introduction of the Dashboard system. The Dashboard system is a
pop-up that navigates like a really nice app. Various features are
embedded within the dashboard such as the new IMChat.
The new IMChat is entirely remade from scratch. It is much,
much more efficient, it hosts all the features you would want in a
chat app for the J-Community and it’s just so nice to use. Mobile
users will rejoice because the awful chat system that currently
exists will be replaced with something much, much better.
- J-Spot has been significantly improved in every manner and I
can say the same for Clubs, the forums, Education, Search system
and everything else found around Jappleng.
- Dozens of new features have been added, and a lot of new
unlockables will be added to the Jappleng Market. (Post to earn
J-Coins!)
- Features like the vocabulary tracker has been enhanced and it
will be possible to manage your vocabulary in greater detail than
the bare-bone function that exists today.
- All-in-all, Jappleng 7.0 is just a different beast and I’m
really excited to bring out.
The future
There will be no more revisions for Jappleng, it is where I want it
to be or at least it will be in the next few days. It will provide
people a place to convene, have fun, learn about Japan and it will
give me and other people who may have interest in writing lessons
and other content to do it with ease.
This doesn’t mean that new sections, features or fixes won’t
be implemented, in fact I have a good idea on what will come next
as features and section. But before that, a community needs to be
established and quality content needs to be added such as new
lessons.
Jappleng 7.0 is future-proof for the next 5 years at least, and
I hope that you will all find enjoyment in this passion project
with me.
