Hello, everyone.
I'm sure you are getting bombarded by end of year sales, wraps and other items so I figured I'd add one more!
To be honest, I've been super slacking on updates to the website (not without good reason). If any of you read my previous ramblings, you'll know I'm a father of 2. Those kids are now 5 and 2; you can imagine how much chaos they bring. Along with that - I accepted a new position in Nov '24, just over a year ago. While I'm enjoying it, it certainly takes a lot of my attention.
Combine those two items plus just trying to live life and you get not a whole lot of movement on randomanime.org.
That being said - I'm still actively working to improve the site. I made the decision about a month ago that I was going to work through refactoring the entire codebase, from database design to front-end. The site, over the years I've worked on it and "improved" it, has become a bit of a mess in terms of architecture and technologies. It works, for sure, but is difficult to update.
What to expect this next year?
I am still actively maintaining the "data" side of the website. Meaning keeping the anime information and streaming data up to date (though I still need to add this latest season of anime).
While I'm doing that, I'll also be working on the refactor. I've already completed the new database design and have moved on to my automated jobs / local admin dashboard. My plan is to have my dashboard/jobs created for the new version, but add in temporary redirects on the back-end to update the "old"/current database.
That way I can make progress on how I want the new automations and dashboard to look/function, while keeping the current live data up to date.
My current dashboard is something I would call "semi-autonomous". I'll input an anime id and it does the work pulling in new info / suggesting changes; then I accept/decline. The goal with the new setup is to lean more into the automation while still having methods for me to add/remove/lock fields. You know, sometimes an anime has a "romance" genre when.. it really shouldn't.
After the automations and admin dashboard are done, then it'll be front-end time. I don't imagine the "look" will change much, but there are things I want to freshen up. We'll see how it goes.
For the more technically inclined that are curious, the stack is nothing fancy. It's going to be mostly PHP with Twig templating; front-end will have AlpineJS and Tailwind. Vite to compile. I'm so tired of full front-end frameworks, so keeping it simple.
I hope everyone has had a wonderful year and an amazing 2026. Happy New Year.
As always, thank you for supporting something I created.
Best,
Kyle Hawk