If you encounter any issues, please reach out.

Previously all conversations with new messages were always on top, which led to a new conversation jumping down after being read.

The rest of the site uses user id, so it is confusing to use profile id only when showing profiles. Old links gracefully redirect to the new links.

Many people complain about not having enough matches. Some of this is caused by not enough users, but I suspect that some of this can be fixed by adding more info to their profile or relaxing their search requirements. The goal of this page is to give advice what to do.

The goal is to rewrite the entire site into React. React allows much more interactivity + separates UI code from backend, which should simplify backend development too. As a bonus, one can easily add other clients (like iOS or Android) reusing the same API.

Previously I did this on request manually, which stopped scaling.

Looks like the height data migration didn't go as smooth as planned. I've sent messages to folks whose new heights look suspicious. If you received the messages, please double check.

I discovered a bug. As a result the email is sent to the same user again and again. Looks like 3 users were affected. I am really sorry for the inconvenience.

This way when you reach the end of your queue, you don't need to check the site, you can just wait for these notifications.

This affects only your search - people without photos can send you requests anyway. This way they may choose to share their photo privately with you.

Previously one could search only for one specific gender or all three at ones. Now one can choose two genders too.

Just looks nicer.

The new UI is stable enough to be used by default. It fixes many issues of the old UI. Many thanks to the wonderful volunteers without whom this wouldn't be possible.

Now the browser should complain explicitly about the height field.

Previously it was counting fields, which user couldn't fill in on optional field page.

• Added 'About me', 'What do I value in a partner/friendship', 'Side project/occupation', 'Education', 'Alcohol', 'Smoking', 'Savings rate' (this replaced notoriously ambiguous 'frugality score' field)
• Age is now required, but one can set is as a 5 year range.
• Relationship status and height are now not free form text fields anymore. Please fill the new fields in. Height field automatically takes care of units for you :)
• Added 'maybe' option to 'Want children'.

The user wasn't autologged-in and had to log in manually.

People who had not replied incoming requests from deleted accounts had permanent 'new' label on incoming requests. There were 97 requests like these. Now all marked replied. Also deleting an account marks them as replied too (these 97 requests predate that).

This is a result of collaboration between 5 volunteers and me. The design is still in beta and it is only for mobile. You can open it by adding v2 to the url, for example: https://firedating.me/messages/v2/with/1/ .

If you like v2 design, you can use it by default by enrolling into beta in settings. Beta is reasonably tested and shouldn't have major bugs. There is also a way to enroll in bleeding edge design, which is not tested. This way you can follow the development and contribute early.

This is a proxy for me and volunteers how much you like what we are doing.

Profiles with less then "your number of filled in open ended fields - 4" or "your total length of open ended fields - 400 characters" won't be shown during matching. They might still send you requests. You can change this preference in your search preferences.

The goal is to improve the search experience by matching only with more active folks.

They are shown in "Mandatory fields" page when updating profile. This way the users can double check themselves whether the location is correct and report if not.

Forgot to add non-binary gender in one place in the code (short representation). Added a test now to prevent such cases in the future.

I've discovered that Nominatim ignores 2 character state codes, which can lead to mistakes when geocoding (wrong state).

Sometimes it was hard to understand for which request one has got an email notification. Thank you for the feedback.

'Search for new matches' instead of 'search'. 'Current matches' instead of 'search results'.

Previously when geolocating some cities in the US the state was ignored. I fixed this on 2021/04/17. Here I fixed remaining affected cities (there were ~30 of them).

This means no downtime during pushing, which enables me to push any time during the day (instead of waiting for unpopular times).

Previously for some cities from the US the coordinates of the same name city from a different state could have been used.

(1) Add a button to trigger searches (previously this was done implicitly, but with 10 min cool down, which was very confusing).
(2) When showing profiles, divide the list into two categories - the ones satisfying current search preferences and others (previously the list was always the same and this was confusing when one changes their search preferences - it looked like search was broken).
(3) Show current search parameters and a link to change them on this page (to signal what kind of search one is triggering).
(4) Show number of profiles left to see and when the full refresh will happen.

Since now searches are explicit, they may take a bit longer if the user desires to have a larger search radius.

Otherwise if one checks the site everyday they have to do it later each time forward.

...to make people feel welcome independently of their FIRE background. Basically the test is just "do you know what FIRE is" and not "are you enough into FIRE". Since testing the former is hard, one might perceive the current test as the latter.

Previously it was only 1 field and unfortunately people often provide only a couple words answer completely ignoring all the questions.

Looks like some activation emails might be not delivered. As a temporary mitigation, resend them once after 1 hour.

Some users don't even attempt the test. I want everyone to be welcome here. Thus, send an automatic test remainder linking to the custom test submission or just reaching our directly to me.

The goal is to introduce key concepts.

After I rewrote the internal matching architecture, there was a bug. Users e.g. in Unknown or FIREland locations couldn't open show_others_list page (they observed error).

Previously one matching search ('find all profiles, who satisfy my parameters and whose parameters I satisfy') could take 15 seconds. I rewrote this (migrated DB to PostGIS and rewrote as DB query) and now it takes well under a second.

In addition to city and country counts, also show counts for 100km/miles radius (depending on country). This is now possible because the location search is much faster.

The field is used as "located in" and named as such on the search preferences page.

I noticed that some bot-like accounts were created right after I removed 'username' field. They didn't pass the FIRE test, but anyway - I decided to add some simple captcha.

Once enough users populate these fields, I will make them part of the filter.

Email address is enough. Existing users can continue using their usernames to login as normal.

Users having at least 1 optional field filled-in won't see empty profiles during matching. Users with empty profiles see all other profiles and can use the site as normal (e.g. send requests).

When disabled, it allows to use "Enter" for new line (as normal) and "Ctrl + Enter" to send a message. When enabled, it is vice versa.

One can write email instead of username when signing in.

The bug was caused when "requests revocation" was added. Basically profiles without any request couldn't be seen. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Thank you for reporting!

This effectively allows users to prevent other users, with whom they chatted before, from sending messages and seeing their profile. Unfortunately, this was actually requested by a user, I really hope this won't be used much though.

Show percents of users having 5, 15 and more than the current user filled in fields.

Previously it was top 100.

If user has filled in few profiles, show a warning that this negatively affects their matching experience (others just have no way to get to know them from their profile).

There is a note on the page that the fields are optional.

Previously this was a part of settings, which was confusing. Also the goal is to make this more prominent.

Also show % of users with photos, number and % of users who always show unblurred photos.

The goal is to give users proper perspective to decide whether they want to upload a photo.

Previously it was deep in optional fields page.

Looks like this was causing RAM usage spikes. Previously the page was generated once per day, so this issue was less prominent.

It became too slow to be regenerated during request response.

Previously it was 1GB RAM, 1 CPU virtual server for 5$/month. Now it is 4GM RAM 2 CPU virtual server for 20$/month.

The guy said: "Without question the best dating site I've ever used. Many good conversations and even found my gf here. Would have gladly paid $100/m to use, but somehow it's free."

Moved to newer Python version (programming language).

Looks like there might be different interpretations of the other letters and they are more likely to lead to a typo.

Previously it had constant height and some screen space was not used. This is my second attempt, last time I tried on 2020/12/02, but had to rollback, because it didn't work in Firefox (thank you for the quick bug report!).

Unfortunately it is very hard to check whether a person is into FIRE. E.g. some questions also correlate with cultural background. I don't want to exclude people, thus, I added an open question ("just tell more about your FIRE plans and path"), so that one could pass the test after manual review even without knowing all the answer.

Now the text should fit on the screen.

Previously it had constant height and some screen space was not used. This is my second attempt, last time I tried on 2020/12/02, but had to rollback, because it didn't work in Firefox (thank you for the quick bug report!).

One can record 30 seconds and people seeing the profile can listen to the result.

The current phrasing was confusing to many people.

Previously one could see new profiles only after seeing all previous candidates. This was fixed. Now one will get new profiles even without ever opening any other profile.

Previously it was 2.

See the blog post for context.

I will collect all mentions there from now on.

From now on I will optimize them.

Now all new users will have to pass a simple FIRE test during the registration. Otherwise they won't be able to use the site.

This is not a ghost ban - a banned user gets redirected to a special page and they see the explanation and can contact the admin. I hope not to have any need to use this, but I want to have tools ready to handle cases like the recent 2 spammer accounts.

One can now upload up to 5 photos at the same time. They all handled the same way a profile photo previously was, that is blurred by default.

Some users have reported 2 suspicious accounts via chat, which used photos from the internet and tried to move conversation to WhatsApp. Looks like the site is growing and such stuff might happen again. I added "Report" button to user profile to make it easier to report suspicious accounts. Thank you for your help!

Previously large size images were used everywhere. Generate thumbnails and use them when the resulting image is small (e.g. in lists and profile photo). One can open original photo by clicking on profile photo when seeing 1 profile. The goal is to speed up page loading.

Users with a lot of profiles in the list provided feedback that the page was too slow. This should speed it up. There is a link to a full list, so it can be seen if needed.

Previously when a user set 300 km, this would break the search form and prevent all future changes to it. This has been fixed. I've added tests. Setting max allowed search radius now works as expected.

I've recently remember that the site was still considered to be in beta and this seemed wrong. Thus, remove all mentions of beta.

I've described technical details here.

Instead there is a link to show older messages. This should speed up page load.

Unfortunately timezone support is a bit complicated, so I just show time since the message was sent (instead of when).

I noticed that many people reported bugs via Google Form. This was definitely suboptimal. I made it more obvious which channels should be used for which kinds of feedback. Thank you a lot for your feedback!

I think this may help you to choose your search parameters.

Multiple users reported having troubles filling in the first screen of their profile (gender & city). The gender is actually required, but this was not promiment. I added a border around the field and the error.

This way it is obvious that one has already seen all available profiles and it is not a technical bug that the list is not extended.

There is a link to show them. This should speed up loading of the page.

There was a typo in the latest profile lists update. Added a test to avoid this in the future.

Forgot to port this functionality when migrating to list-based views. Added a test.

The site has grew, the old approach with scrolling through single profiles didn't work well anymore. Thus, I rewrote to show profile lists. This also make UI much more obvious, e.g. one can easily see which profiles they've already seen and which are new.

Basically increased contrast between them.

The site has grown substantially and, while the limits have positive benefits, the previous values were unnecessarily strict taking into account number of users. Happy dating!

Previously the refresh was done on UTC midnight, which was confusing to people from other timezones. Now a running window approach is used, e.g. if you send two requests at 9am, your requests will be "refreshed" next day on 9am.

I noticed that blurred photo generation was happening more often than it was required. I fixed this (it happens exactly once now) as a result the site should load much faster now.

Around 400 profiles were in this state. I fixed the culrprit (race condition when saving blured image) and regenerated missing images.

One can look for friendships and romantic partner at the same time with different preferences. Location matching is much more flexible now - one can choose city, state, country, anywhere or up to specific distance away (as well as any combination of these). Offline and online preferences are gone (replaced with location preferences).

Previously one couldn't respond to such a request, as a result it was always shown as new. Now one can respond, moreover when a user deleted their account, all their non-answered requests are denied automatically.

This is not used anywhere yet, just happens in the background. I am working on showing profiles at X miles away from your city, this is the first step. First, I check in a local database, which is provided by http://www.maxmind.com/. Attribution: "This product includes data created by MaxMind, available from http://www.maxmind.com/". If the city is not there, I query https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/. I am grateful to both services! If Nominatim does not have it, I have manual moderation (me).

Number of such deleted profiles now becomes a success metric. Also I would love to know when site really works well (e.g. people stay together for a long time or even marry), that's why I would love to send an email after some time. Imagine someone getting married, because they met here - this would help to popularize the site a lot.

The goal is to give more info to prospective, new and existing users as well as improve discoverability of the site. If you would like to do a guest post, please reach to me.

This is the first case I am aware of people succesfully meeting romantially via the website. I wish them all the best and please tell when you get married :)

Previously entire message was shown, which might have been inconvenient.

There is "archive" button when viewing the thread. A new message in the thread will unarchive it.

Basically there are quite a few users already and my "anecdotal" approach does not work well anymore - thus, let's just vote for ways to improve the site.

When you register as "User", you can login using "user", "USER", "uSeR", "useR" etc.

Previously it was on a separate page.

Looks like occasionally they are not delivered.

The development was already feedback driven, but it was very anecdotal (people suggested ideas to me, I tried to assess impact). I hope to get more quantative data from the form. I plan to add possible features to the form and let people vote.

Previously they were sorted by when the last message was sent. As a result one could have missed some thread with a new message (especially if it was off the screen).

Previously to update matching preferences one had to go through 2 other pages before getting there. Now there are separate links from "settings" page.

Same as before Enter alone sends the message.

Username existance check during registration is already case insensitive. There are usernames in DB, which differ only by case, so I will reach to their owners before making login case-insensitive too.

To do so, click on "<" or ">" in front of the message to quote. I will think how to spread the news better, so far no good idea.

Otherwise one could send the same message by mistake previously (I did this multiple times).

Previously one could get at most one such email per day. This meant that all following messages in the same day triggered no email. In the new system, there is no "1 email per day" limitation and one can get more than one email notification per day if they receive more messages after the first email and don't read them.

Very occasionaly some users asked me to delete their accounts. Just deleting all their data would create bad experience for people they interacted with. The new approach preserves e.g. the fact that there was a request and shows that account was deleted (i.e. one can't see anything about the account, but it is obvious that there was a requests).

In other words profiles with more information will be shown first.

Previously one could see only ~20 characters, now at least 5 lines.

Previously locations were stored just as strings. This had drawbacks. I rewrote this completely. Now I can approve some cities and new users will be able to choose them or to add new ones. I haven't started approving existing cities yet.

I've added a mechanism to get email delivery confirmations from Amazon. Hopefully this will allow pinpointing the issue better (and actually checking how bad it is).

Normally other people see only your blured photo (unless you approve them). Now you can disable this and everyone will be able to see your original photo.

I've got an impression that these emails are not delivered more often, so I decided to try my luck. Unfortunately, from the website perspective everything works well and it looks like later in the email service something breaks. As a result, it is super hard to investigate.

Some people reported that they don't receive some emails, I am investigating and this error logging should help.

To be honest this one is a bit controversial. First, many people don't want provide their ages, so I had to add a special option to be matched with people "with no age". Second, age is a weird thing. At least I had experiences in my life, which according to society views would be impossible due to age difference, but they were amazing. So, please, when you have some strict age preferences consider at least making the window quite broad.

I've deleted them from database and cleaned up the code.

If you were wondering why your request has no response, it is a good time to have another look, perhaps it had been denied.

The new messaging system is much better - safer (you decide who sees what) and more convenient (you can agree on some mean of communication if you want to move somewhere). I will soon delete all the contact details data and remove all the remaining UI (e.g. edit forms) related to it.

This way you can quickly see whether there is something new, just by visiting the main page (similarly to "new" marker on all messages page). Please accept or deny incoming requests to resolve them.

Usernames are case sensitive and this is a source of confusion. Now "reset password" email contains your username explicitly. You don't have to reset your password though, you can just delete the email.

Previously some photos were shown sideways. I've added code to handle "orientation" tag of the file. Please reupload your photo if it is currently sideways. If it is still sideways after you reupload, please report.

This was main communication mechanism before built-in messaging was implemented. It is not needed anymore, but users who registered earlier might still rely on it. As of now, users who don't have any contact details won't be able to add them. Users who have something still can edit.

Now it includes height, current relationship status and views on children, religion. All are optional.

Unsubcription is only 1 click, you don't even need to sign in. Only people whose request you accepted or whom you sent a request can send you message, so this should be low traffic. Moreover, currently I send at most 1 such email per day (because I couldn't figure a good way to prevent sending emails for messages which you will read in a moment e.g. because you chatting right now - I am working on a better solution).

The design is suboptimal, but I want to bring to you something usable as fast as I can.

This is very early stage, I am already working on couple improvements (e.g. page with all threads).

At this point all critical pages are usable on mobile.

To be honest I designed everything only for desktop originally. Thus, it looked terribly on mobile. Now it should be much more readable.

Larger pictures take too much time to load (especially on mobile).

Both female and male partner genders can be selected at the same time. This is especially handy when looking for friendship.

All the text now is at least of appropriate size. Positioning may still be weird.

Now everything should be well clickable on mobile.

Each profile now have "relationship type", which can be "romantic" or "friendship". All existing profiles automaticaly get assigned "romantic". You will matched only with people, who look for the same relationship type and fullfil all other already existing criteria.

I noticed that people write country names differently, so now there is a predefined set to choose from (this makes the matching process much better).

Unsubcription is only 1 click, you don't even need to sign in.

For some of them file permissions disallowed the webserver to serve them. I now set proper file permissions when uploaded + fixed existing cases manually. Sorry for the inconvinience!

I definitely don't want to bother you with emails, each email contains link to unsubscribe (only 1 click is needed, no sign-in, nothing else).

If there are no matches from your city, people from your country will be shown as well.