April 2026 site updates — search overhaul, photographers page, profile redesign and more

We shipped a batch of improvements over the last few days. Here's a quick tour of the visible changes, so you can try them out.

Profile page redesign

The /@username profile page is completely reworked. A three-photo mosaic headers it, with big numbers for species observed, areas visited, the year you started, and your site-wide rank.

The new Rare species section automatically surfaces species you've photographed that have 5 or fewer observations sitewide. At a glance you can tell which of your finds are unusual.

We also added dynamic OGP cards: share your profile on X or LINE, and the preview shows your name with species count and area count. Great as a digital business card.

New: Likes

You can now press ♥ on species / observation photos / blog posts. Everything you've liked shows up on your Likes page.

• Works well as a "species I want to photograph" wishlist
• Your public profile gets a "Liked species" section
• If someone likes your observation photo, you get a notification (and a push notification if you've enabled push)

Notifications cleanup

A red dot on the avatar in the header means you have unread notifications. On mobile the dot sits on the hamburger icon itself. The notifications list has moved to /mypage/notifications as its own dashboard.

We also fixed a long-standing bug where deeply nested replies stayed unread and kept the red dot on. Opening the notifications page now correctly marks everything as read.

New: Cover photos

The single photo featured at the top of each species page is now called the cover photo, and we tightened up the workflow around it. Cover photos are picked by the site operator (Kimoto), based on how clearly the image shows the species' diagnostic features.

• When one of your photos is chosen as a cover, you get a notification (plus a push notification if push is enabled)
• Profile pages now show a new "Cover photos" section — every species whose top photo was taken by that user is listed in one place
• Behind the scenes, the admin tools were updated so the current cover photo is shown side-by-side while editing, making it easier to compare and swap

Take a look at a profile and you'll see the cover-photo species lined up with a ★ badge — a small badge of honour for our contributing photographers.

AI-powered species suggestion from photos

On the upload screen, press the "Identify from photo" button and a model (BioCLIP-based) trained on the sea slug photos accumulated on this site will suggest several candidate species that look similar to yours. This is not automated identification — treat it as a helper that narrows down the likely candidates, and make the final call yourself.

To limit server load and abuse, the feature becomes available once you have 5 or more published observations. The more observations everyone contributes, the smarter the model gets — so your records directly improve the suggestion quality for all of us.

Glossary & auto-linking

Our glossary now shows a permanent footer link, and species names (common & scientific) and glossary terms are now auto-linked inside blog posts and on species detail pages. See an unfamiliar term while reading? Just click it.

Photo licensing inquiry (pilot)

We've set up an inquiry path for publishers and researchers who want to license photos for commercial or editorial use. For now it's limited to photos taken by the site operator (Kimoto), but each observation page has an "Inquire about licensing this photo" button that collects the use case, publication info, and requested resolution.

Pricing is fixed and tax-inclusive (Web ¥1,100 / editorial book ¥5,500 / advertising ¥16,500 / academic ¥0, etc.), and we can issue a Japanese qualified invoice (適格請求書) when needed. If you're a contributor who'd like your own photos to be licensable too, please reach out via the contact form — we'll roll this out gradually on an opt-in basis.

Support page refresh

/blog/support now aggregates note membership, Amazon gift cards, BOOTH merchandise, and monthly sponsorship into one place. We support detailed analytics disclosure and qualified invoices for corporate sponsors.

Lots of small fixes and tweaks under the hood as well. If anything looks wrong or behaves unexpectedly, please let us know via the contact form.

Site-wide search overhauled

The search bar in the top-right (PC) and behind the ???? button (mobile) has been significantly upgraded. Previously it only matched species; now it searches across species, taxa, blog posts, glossary terms, and areas in one shot.

Type "rhinophore" and you get the glossary entry plus related species; type "Osezaki" or "Okinawa" and you jump straight to that area page; type "Chromodoris" and the genus card shows up. Each result type uses a distinct card style so you can tell at a glance whether you are looking at a species, an area, or a glossary entry.

Under the hood we upgraded Meilisearch to v1.12 with Japanese morphological analysis enabled, so kanji compounds (e.g. "小野") now match properly across blog text. English queries continue to work as before.

Photographers page improvements

The default sort on /photographers is now most recent posts first, making it easier to discover contributors who are actively shooting right now. You can still flip to "by species count" or "by area count" from the toolbar.

A dedicated slot for long-term sponsors now appears at the top of the listing, and the sort labels were tightened up to match what they actually show ("species count" rather than "post count").

Things to try

• Open your profile at /@yourname and check the hero, rare species, and liked species sections
• Press ♥ on a species page to start building your personal list
• Like someone's photo (they'll get a notification)
• Share your profile on social media and see the new OGP card
• Enable push notifications on /mypage/notifications to get alerts when someone likes your photos

The core mission stays the same: "A community-built sea slug encyclopedia." Thanks for keeping us going with your observations and records.

Web Push outage and a request to re-subscribe

To be honest: Web Push notifications didn't actually deliver from launch in June 2025 until 26 April 2026. The VAPID signature and payload encryption on the server side weren't quite spec-compliant, so push gateways (FCM and friends) kept rejecting them. The subscribe UI on the site looked fine, so the problem went unnoticed for far too long.

We've fixed it by switching to the standard library (minishlink/web-push) and added automated tests (PHPUnit + Jest) to catch any regression next time. If you had push notifications enabled before, please re-enable them from your mypage ("Enable push notifications"). After re-subscribing, you'll start receiving them properly with the new keys.