May 2023 update

Still preparing to oer optional auto- renewing subscriptions

Working on adding support for automatically renewing subscriptions and country-specific pricing tier is still on going, but I'm almost finished now and this should be released some time in June.

This took longer than expected for several reasons, chiefly the fact that AstroBin supports multiple payment processors and multiple subscription types, while being backwards compatible and preserving things as they were for you if you bought a subscription model that has been changed (Lite and Premium features changed slightly in 2020, and Ultimate was added).

The other reason is that this is delicate work: I really don't want to have any bugs in the payments and subscriptions department, as that would give a bad impression to anyone affected.

Testing is also very time consuming: I've setup hundreds of automated tests, but many things still need to be tested manually, and with so many combinations of subscriptions, recurrence units, automatic payments or no automatic payments, things escalate quickly :-)

In any case, while the final changes will be announced in the coming weeks, here's the most important points:

• There are no price increases. Prices are based on the following principles:

  • Lite is still CHF 20

  • Premium is still CHF 40

  • Ultimate is still CHF 60

  • When prices are converted to other currencies, they are rounded up to the next 0.50 for yearly payments (same as before), and the next 0.25 for monthly payments.

• If you have bought a non-automatically recurring subscription in the last 2 years, you may continue to do so.

• Monthly subscriptions will be about 20% more expensive than yearly subscriptions. You can cancel your monthly subscription if you don't image during the summer because of lack of darkness or other reasons, and AstroBin won't delete anything. In fact, AstroBin never deletes anything any time there's a gap in a subscription, or if you stop paying forever, unless you choose to delete something.

• AstroBin will be cheaper in certain countries. I'm using the list of countries sorted by GDP per capita and the top 25% countries get the full price; the next 25% countries get a 25% discount, and the bottom 50% countries get a 50% discount.

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Bug fixes and minor improvements

As always, thanks to your feedback, I've implemented several bug fixes and minor improvements.

Here's the bug fixes and small improvements in May:

• AstroBin now preserves the PNG file type for all thumbnails, when you uplaod a PNG file. Please not that this is not always preferrable, because, for technical reasons, AstroBin uses minimal PNG compression when resizing. If you upload a JPEG, AstroBin will automatically apply a compression level that matches the one in your original image.
  Please note that, of course, this compression only applies to resized thumbnails and not your full-size image.

• I fixed a caching issue that caused your gallery page not to be immediately when you moved an image between your Public and Staging areas.

• I added a widget to the image's page to show which of your Collections this image appears in.

• I fixed a UI issue that made the user avatar and information, the Like button, and the Bookmark button not be displayed on large tablets.

• I added the Maksutov-Newtonian telescope type.

• I added Gain and ISO properties to acquisition details for solar system images.

• I fixed an issue when inputting dates on older browsers without a native date input.

• I fixed an issue with the image cropper in the image data editor, that was showing a weird white background for images taller than wider.

• I fixed an issue in the IOTD/TP staff queues that prevented images on pages other than the first to load unless you began scrolling the page.

• I fixed an issue that made the new equipment item form not appear if you started the process from the page where you can review equipment items pending review (this issue affected equipment moderators only).

• I fixed an issue with copying acquisition details from another image: in some cases, not all the additional properties were copied.

• I updated a lot of third-party libraries and dependencies to the newest versions.

• I added a page that explains the ad policy on AstroBin: welcome.astrobin.com/ad-policy