Hi all,
Congratulations on making it through (what always feels like) the longest month of the year. This is our February community update — you can read last month’s update here.
A high point of January was publishing our updated No-Code Manifesto. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day of Bubble as it currently exists and too comfortable with the way “no-code” is understood in the industry today. Updating this manifesto was a way to remind ourselves and all of you of what we’re working toward — the true north for all the product development and company-building work we do. We appreciate everyone who has shared and commented on it!
Finally, before I dive in, friendly reminder to update your third-party plugins by March 12, 2024 — we’ve started sending out email reminders to those affected. After that date, we’re going to start phasing out deprecated plugins to help minimize the impact on user apps as they lose functionality. If you don’t update, your app’s functionality may change or break.
Changes we made this month
You’ve been waiting patiently since we announced this feature at BubbleCon last fall: Yesterday, we launched the ability to return data from custom events! This gives Bubble’s custom events and workflows even more parity with traditional programming functions. Read more about it here, and check out a walk-through of the functionality here.
We also rolled out a new element styles tab, which has a cleaner UI and new functionality designed to make viewing, adding, editing, and managing your element styles smoother. For example, styles are now grouped by element type, and you can edit style names more quickly.
We shipped a new app plan page to help you better manage your subscriptions all in one place. Now you can see your workload consumption, add storage, manage your plugins, and more right from that page. We’ll even tell you the best way to pay for workload based on your app’s consumption.
As a part of our broader goal of improving observability and bulk operations, we made enhancements to the server logs for actions on a list of things. The logs now provide key insights that can help you understand what’s going on and troubleshoot issues, like the number of items in the list to run on or the criteria used to generate the list, including the evaluated values of any dynamic expressions used in the constraints.
We also launched the official certification directory! Bubble-Certified Developers can opt in to be listed here. (If you work at an agency, your agency will be listed and linked.) Freelancers, if you want your certification listing to link to an official profile on the Bubble agency directory to make it easier for others to hire you, double check that you’re on an Agency plan.
And a few smaller updates: First, the Table element got two new features. Now you can reference the table’s “is loading state” and the table’s “list of things” in dynamic expressions. And second, we added new DDoS protections designed to improve the resilience of individual apps to DDoS attacks.
Finally, we’re still committed to reinforcing Bubble’s technical foundation, and the team worked hard in January to resolve some operational rough patches, most tied to increased usage of the platform (a good problem to have, but still challenging). For example:
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We executed a time-sensitive overhaul to the way we manage data triggers. They used to share a scheduling system with bubble.io’s scheduled tasks, but an increase in volume started to overwhelm it, which caused a ripple effect of operational delays and issues. We’ve moved data triggers to a separate, more scalable system.
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We made changes and performance improvements that resolved a spike in crash rates on several databases that store main cluster applications, which were also caused by an increase in usage. We’re investigating any crashes that remain.
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We’re improving memory management to help Dedicated customers’ servers keep from running low on memory, which requires us to manually intervene.
What we’re working on
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Mobile: We’ve finished work that will allow native mobile apps to live side-by-side with web apps in the same project. Next, we’re working on automated testing and mobile components (like an improved button element and a top bar). We’ll be reaching out to our mobile waitlist for feedback in the coming months — if you’re interested, please join it!
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Making the editor easier to use: Next up to refresh is the elements tree! The team is excited to clean up the UI and add new functionality to make it easier to navigate layers and manage elements.
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Revamping the RFP system: We’re refining our matching system based on your feedback to improve the match rate between users and freelancers/agencies. This is coming soon!
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Updates to the marketplace: We’re rolling out a better template marketplace filtering system that lets you sort by more options like highest rated, price, and more. We’re also creating new categories based on the most popular search categories, like AI and SaaS. (FYI, once we make these changes, we’ll no longer be recommending templates that use our old responsive system. Template creators can update them to our new responsive system and resubmit to be listed again.)
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Improving observability: The team who just launched improved logs for actions on a list will be working on “schedule a workflow on a list of things” next.
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AI: We’re working diligently on implementation. Next month, we’re planning to conduct another round of usability testing, which is an important milestone toward launch.
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App plan comparison page: We’re making it easier to understand the key differences between our paid plans to help folks find the right subscription for their apps.
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Updating the Stripe plugin: Keep your eyes peeled for an updated Stripe plugin that will make integrating with Stripe easier and faster.
Further down the roadmap
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Version control changelog: One of the pain points you’ve expressed with version control is understanding what changed, when it changed, and who made the change in their branches. We’re scoping a potential project to expose a changelog in the editor. It would allow you to see all the changes made in the current branch — by individuals or through merges — at a glance and filter down to specific subsets of changes.
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Workflow tab redesign: The team is rethinking the way we organize and visualize workflows in the workflow tab. We’re learning a lot from user interviews and feedback, so stay tuned for more updates in the coming months!
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Expanded component library: We’re looking into adding new components that would make it easier and faster for new users to build popular use cases like marketplaces, dashboards, and more.
Help us spread the word about How to Build Day
On March 6, we’re hosting a live event called How to Build Day. It’s designed for people who are relatively early in their Bubble journey: those who are looking to either get to launch or take their app to the next level. We’ll be holding build-alongs and live Q&As on building backend workflows, using the API connector, and more — and I’ll personally be teaching a quick introductory session!
The event’s save-the-date page is live now. Please share it with any folks you know who might be interested in attending!
In case you missed it
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We published a few fantastic customer stories last month: Check out fintech startup BluBinder, helping folks navigate the paperwork involved in eldercare; Airspace, whose Bubble app allows their client to coordinate fast transportation for organ donations; and Flexiple, a global talent marketplace for developers.
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Razorpay, India’s largest payment processor, now has an official Bubble plugin! Read more about it here.
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We published a quick walk-through of using the ‘:group-by’ operator to help you visualize data more effectively.
Team news
We added two new folks to the team this month: Kelsey, joining us as finance and business operations lead, and Cheyanne, joining us as senior ecosystem associate. Welcome, Kelsey and Cheyanne!
And yes, we are hiring! Check out all our open roles here.
Have a great month!
— Josh and Emmanuel
