January Jottings

A Note From Jim

January is a busy month for CityStrides. We're all looking for new ways to challenge ourselves, ways to keep/improve our fitness levels, and help give ourselves the motivational boost we need every so often. CityStrides helps with all of those things, so it's a great fit for that "new year new you" mentality.

CityStrides adds fun (as for which type that's up to you) to your running/walking, which can help you to continue pursuing this Every Single Street goal well into the year. That doesn't mean it's easy and carefree. There's extra effort on top of whatever running/walking you're already doing in the form of added planning and maybe even a little more distance here and there. There are times where you thought you completed a street but actually missed a node, or even ran right past it.

It's definitely hard work. But you can set a manageable plan (something you might need to review as you progress through your city), use the tools available to you in CityStrides to decrease planning stress, and keep it light by remembering that it's not a race. It's important that we enjoy the process of doing CityStrides - these are the memories we'll have after succeeding.

Have fun out there!

As always, you can reply to any email you receive from CityStrides - your reply goes straight to my inbox. I don't necessarily want sixty thousand people emailing me 😅 but I think it's important that if there's going to be a system of notifications, newsletters, etc which I'm comfortable sending out then I should also be on the other side ready to help with questions/issues.

I post more regularly in the Announcements category in the forum. If you'd like a more frequent view of new features/changes/fixes/etc in CityStrides, definitely keep an eye on that. You can also subscribe to updates by clicking the bell in that category page & choosing "Tracking" or "Watching First Post" from the list of options. If you have a valid email address in the forum, you'll receive email alerts after subscribing.

New Stuff

Big improvement to the Supporter Features page, including a separate page for each feature that shows how it’s used
- I also now show non-Supporters all available features, rather than hiding them
- The buttons on the map link out to their respective explanation page to show how it would work if they were a Supporter
Created a new notification for Badge achievements
- Everyone is auto-subscribed, but as always each notification can be unsubscribed at the bottom of the email as well as in the Notifications section of your Settings page
- Also a friendly reminder that you can reply to any CityStrides email, and your response goes direct to my inbox

Various Changes

Changed new signups so they do not auto-subscribe to the Activity Deleted Notification
- Many people incorrectly perceived this as spam, even with unsubscribe & notification preference links in the bottom of the email
- Others were generally confused by the email
- The option to receive this email is still present, and not going away, it’s just not something that most people want enabled by default
Disallow zero-length activities
- These were mostly cases where we’d start and quickly stop an activity, not actually tracking any movement
Temporarily tried an experiment in giving a 7 day free trial of Supporter Features to new signups
Upgraded to Mapbox GL JS v3, but then immediately downgraded because some people experienced an issue where the map would disappear after some use

Fixed Bugs

Changed the city update process to exit early if the Overpass server returns data older than 7 days
- If this happens, it reverts the last sync date so the city will stay "next in line" in the update queue
- This will help the case where people noticed some updates being reverted weeks/a month later
Fixed up some JavaScript errors

UI Updates

Minor improvements to the mail designs
- Both new signup onboarding emails as well as in-site notification emails
- I still have more work to do here, but it’s definitely Less Bad™
Update the image that appears when sharing CityStrides links in various social media platforms
Minor tweaks in the Settings page
Minor updates to the Badge pages
Minor update in the city stats tab (Extra Stats is a Supporter Feature)

AMSAP (As Many Streets As Possible)

AMSAP December 2023 just wrapped up, with John Erwin winning at 901 streets. Coming in second and third were Nick Kollett with 837 streets and Ryan Welch with 590 streets.

7,576 total streets were completed by 27 Challengers in 230 cities this month. This came out to 1372.85 total miles (2209.38 km) in about 827 hours.

The AMSAP Challenges can be found in the "Featured" section of the Challenges page. It's a Supporter Feature that currently requires you to manually join each month (or however frequently you want to participate).

Leap Day Challenge

Based on this great idea in the forum, next month is going to have a special Leap Day Challenge. It will be a one-day Challenge, much like Global Running Day. I'll also open it up to everyone (since Challenges are, outside of a select few, largely a Supporter Feature) and pair it with a badge that you can earn if you complete at least one street on Leap Year Day.

I'm always working on a number of things - keep an eye on the Ideas Category in the forum, and vote for the stuff you like. Your opinion and perspective matter!

Crews

I'm still planning/thinking this one through. The core idea is to have the ability to create a Crew which allow several things - work together to finish cities, compete inside the Crew to have the most completed streets, and compete against other Crews in cities.
Share your perspective / Upvote in the forum

AMSAP Challenge Leaderboard

This idea started as a leaderboard for the monthly AMSAP Challenges, but the more I think about it the more I feel it might end up being a full rebuild of the existing Leaderboard page. Since each city, region, and country has its own leaderboard, that global leaderboard page doesn't make as much sense. I just need to strike a good clear balance between the time boxed recurring Challenge stats/placement, and the lifelong stats/placements.
Share your perspective / Upvote in the forum

I got around to creating the Nodevember 2023 badge a little late, but it's finally out & available as a sticker/magnet.

The next merchandise sale is coming up - from the 24th to the 28th this month, get 20% off everything in the store!
You can also still gift CityStrides subscriptions.

Thanks for reading this far (or 👋 hello/goodbye to those of you speed-scrolling down here for the unsubscribe link 🤣). If there's anything you'd like added/changed in this newsletter, please share your thoughts in the Newsletter Topics post in the forum.