Hey everyone,

First off, a Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone, and happy almost-new-year!

Tim and I are very happy with the year devRant has had, and thinking back, there are a lot of 2017 highlights to recap. Here are just a few of the ones that come to mind (this list is not exhaustive and I'm definitley forgetting stuff!):

- We introduced the devRant supporter program (devRant++)! (https://devrant.com/rants/638594/...). Thank you so much to everyone who has embraced devRant++! This program has helped us significantly and it's made it possible for us to mantain our current infrustructure and not have to cut down on servers/sacrifice app performance and stability.
- We added avatar pets (https://devrant.com/rants/455860/...)
- We finally got the domain devrant.com thanks to @wiardvanrij (https://devrant.com/rants/938509/...)
- The first international devRant meetup (Dutch) with organized by @linuxxx and was a huge success (https://devrant.com/rants/937319/... + https://devrant.com/rants/935713/...)
- We reached 50,000 downloads on Android (https://devrant.com/rants/728421/...)
- We introduced notif tabs (https://devrant.com/rants/1037456/...), which make it easy to filter your in-app notifications by type
- @AlexDeLarge became the first devRant user to hit 50,000++ (https://devrant.com/rants/885432/...), and @linuxxx became the first to hit 75,000++
- We made an April Fools joke that got a lot of people mad at us and hopefully got some laughs too (https://devrant.com/rants/506740/...)
- We launched devDucks!! (https://devducks.com)
- We got rid of the drawer menu in our mobile apps and switched to a tab layout
- We added the ability to subscribe to any user's rants (https://devrant.com/rants/538170/...)
- Introduced the post type selector (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...) (which will be used for filtering - more details below)
- Started a bug/feature tracker GitHub repo (https://github.com/devRant/devRant)
- We did our first ever live stream (https://youtube.com/watch/...)
- Added an awesome all-black theme (devRant++) (https://devrant.com/rants/850978/...)
- We created an "active discussions" screen within the app so you can easily find rants with booming discussions!
- Thanks to the suggestion of many community members, we added "scroll to bottom" functionality to rants with long comment threads to make those rants more usable
- We improved our app stability and set our personal record for uptime, and we also cut request times in half with some database cluster upgrades
- Awesome new community projects: https://devrant.com/projects (more will be added to the list soon, sorry for the delay!)
- A new landing page for web (https://devrant.com), that was the first phase of our web overhaul coming soon (see below)

Even after all of this stuff, Tim and I both know there is a ton of work to do going forward and we want to continue to make devRant as good as it can be. We rely on your feedback to make that happen and we encourage everyone to keep submitting and discussing ideas in the bug/feature tracker (https://github.com/devRant/devRant).

We only have a little bit of the roadmap right now, but here's some things 2018 will bring:

- A brand new devRant web app: we've heard the feedback loud and clear. This is our top priority right now, and we're happy to say the completely redesigned/overhauled devRant web experience is almost done and will be released in early 2018. We think everyone will really like it.

- Functionality to filter rants by type: this feature was always planned since we introduced notif types, and it will soon be implemented. The notif type filter will allow you to select the types of rants you want to see for any of the sorting methods.

- App stability and usability: we want to dedicate a little time to making sure we don't forget to fix some long-standing bugs with our iOS/Android apps. This includes UI issues, push notification problems on Android, any many other small but annoying problems. We know the stability and usability of devRant is very important to the community, so it's important for us to give it the attention it deserves.

- Improved profiles/avatars: we can't reveal a ton here yet, but we've got some pretty cool ideas that we think everyone will enjoy.

- Private messaging: we think a PM system can add a lot to the app and make it much more intuitive to reach out to people privately. However, Tim and I believe in only launching carefully developed features, so rest assured that a lot of thought will be going into the system to maximize privacy, provide settings that make it easy to turn off, and provide security features that make it very difficult for abuse to take place. We're also open to any ideas here, so just let us know what you might be thinking.

There will be many more additions, but those are just a few we have in mind right now.

We've had a great year, and we really can't thank every member of the devRant community enough. We've always gotten amazingly positive feedback from the community, and we really do appreciate it. One of the most awesome things is when some compliments the kindness of the devRant community itself, which we hear a lot. It really is such a welcoming community and we love seeing devs of all kind and geographic locations welcomed with open arms.

2018 will be an important year for devRant as we continue to grow and we will need to continue the momentum. We think the ideas we have right now and the ones that will come from community feedback going forward will allow us to make this a big year and continue to improve the devRant community.

Thanks everyone, and thanks for your amazing contributions to the devRant community!

Looking forward to 2018,
- David and Tim

A devDuck update!

Hey everyone,

First off, thank you to everyone who has purchased a devDuck (or a bunch!) and thanks to all who have given us feedback. @trogus and I are thrilled at the incredible response these ducks have gotten. If you haven’t seen them yet, you can check them out at https://devDucks.com or the devRant Swag Shop (https://swag.devrant.io).

We are trying to process all of the orders as quickly as possible and our goal is to have all current orders out by the middle of this coming week. Many orders have already shipped, but if yours hasn’t, rest assured it will very soon!

If you ordered a Java devDuck or cape, your order might be delayed a bit until the middle of this coming week because Java seems to be a heavily-demanded cape and we needed to get the material shipped in to make more of that, specifically.

So far we’ve gotten some awesome feedback from the community. A short list of possible future additions based on what’s been requested: Go devDuck, Kotlin devDuck, Perl devDuck, Android devDuck, and possibly some devDuck accessories like little hats, sunglasses, headphones, etc. If you have any other ideas just let us know:)

Lastly, please know that even with the launch of devDucks, we remain extremely committed to the devRant product and we have some very exciting big devRant features coming very soon.

Thanks again everyone!

Hey everyone,

Our live stream announcement and Q&A will be going live in less than 30 mins (9pm EDT)!

The event is here: https://youtu.be/Vk7TIKadYHk

We will be taking questions on the YouTube chat, feel free to ask whatever you want!

Thanks to all who tune in, hope you enjoy!

EDIT: big thanks to everyone who joined us and participated! The replay is available at the YouTube link above, and you can check out devDucks in the devRant swag store (https://swag.devrant.io) or the page we set up at http://devducks.com

"...researchers have delved into "the dark side" of inviting rubber ducks and other flexible plastic toys into our tubs. "

https://medicalxpress.com/news/...

Be careful playing around with you devDucks xD