Updates

Today I've closed registration to Sublime Ads. This won't affect anyone currently registered on the service.

This has been a hard decision to make, however I think, for now, this is for the best. I'd love to give more TLC to Sublime Ads, but I've been fighting internally with it.

Saying that, I've had tremendous feedback on it... but I have not pushed it in the direction I originally intended for it. Not to mention that everything just gets blocked by those ad blockers these days.

I also find myself in a small technical debt corner and wish I had the time and energy to make everything right. It doesn't require much effort, but it's going to be tedious if I want to grow it to its original vision. At this moment, and seeing where it's at financially, I cannot justify it.

So I find myself here...

If you've previously registered, your account will remain active. Payments have been cancelled and you will be able to continue to use Sublime Ads without issue, for now.

Sublime Ads is also incredibly niche... but I have more fun with more consumer focused products, like shoutouts.lol.

If someone would like to buy it from me, without the customer data, please get in touch – I'd be open to discuss it.

I am still unsure how I will manage the service. My current plan is to keep it running for existing customers, and if you're interested, just let me know and I can see what I can do. I might rewrite it all from scratch, and launch it as a new product, but I am unsure right now.

Working on Sublime Ads has taught me a lot, and that is always the most important for me – not the money.

Feel free to email if you have questions or concerns.

Today we changed the length of a trial, which went from 14 days to 30 days, and today to 42 days.

It's always difficult to gauge the work needed to implement ads into your own apps or sites. Whilst 30 days is a "standard" offering, I didn't feel it was enough. So 42 it is, because it's the answer to a lot of things.

I hope this gives you plenty of time and opportunity to get started.

In addition, all new trials now come with all features unlocked. No more "limited" trial. Everything is enabled.

✌️❤️

Recently we added a new feature allowing you to change what appears on client portals, including simple payment links.

You can add/change:

Check out the documentation for more info: https://docs.sublimeads.com/getting-started/clients.html#portal-options

Update: You can also override these on a portal by portal basis.

Today I added settings that allow you define your default image resize options.

When calling the API, your images are automatically resized to 500 pixels wide with a quality setting of 95 (100 being the highest), without the need for you pass in extra parameters as per image resize options. This is done to preserve some bandwidth and make sure you're not sending huge images.

You can override these default settings on your settings page, to fine tune it to your needs for your app – removing the need to add extra parameters when calling the API. Useful when you just want to change things without having to update your app (unless you added image resize options).

Hope this is useful to some of you.

The other day I mentioned that the Edge API will be deprecated. This is now done.

The good news is that everything is working as expected and there was no downtime to serving your ads. I've personally tested this and have been using the Edge API in my own apps, and they are working as expected.

Whilst I don't anticipate any issues, please let me know if anything is no longer working for you.

With Sublime Ads offering an on "edge" API for simple category embeds for some time, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't meet my quality standards and not something I want to support in future.

That being said, I'll make sure to make existing integrations work as they should without you having to change anything in your apps or code.

I'm also making changes to the way image URL's are being handled, and will now support normal URLs, with image resizing options (as was the case), and no longer come from the special CDN endpoint – although they are still being served via a CDN (Cloudflare).

I'll update you here with a new post once the work is complete. Note that the direct API will continue to function as normal and should be you first point of getting to your data (with an API key).

You can now filter your ads, on the main ads list, by Client. Just use the new dropdown found in the filter section.

Excited to launch a new, good to have, PRO feature: The ability to link categories to a parent category, opening different possibilities for you all, for example having specific target groups within each parent category.

Documentation here on how to get started and new API options here.

I've added the ability to make portals public, without the need for a passkey. Just head on over to your portal of choice and select the "Make portal public..." button.

You can always make it private again too.

Check out the documentation on sharing a portal here.

Another day, another week, another month... another new feature. I am happy to announce the availability of client portals for your clients.

A client portal allows you to share a public page with your client, via a unique URL, allowing you to share real-time stats.

Portals are unique to the client and can be enabled, or disabled, at any time and are optional.

On top of stats, they’ll also be able to see the status of their ads, for example if they are active, inactive, or expired (if they have a schedule).

As with the Client feature, portals are for PRO subscribers.

Head on over to the documentation to read more and get started. You can also read a little bit more about it on my blog, here.

✌️

Ah yes, it's been so long since I shipped anything new. Well, no more. I pulled my arm out!

Now you can add Clients and link them to your ads. This helps you get an overview how well everything is going and provide statistics if so required.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, without the drama though. No sinking ships either.

Having clients linked to ads opens up future possibilities that are not yet implement, for example balances and public stat pages. These are not ready yet, but just wanted to wet your appetite of the ideas floating around.

Clients is a PRO feature only.

Head on over to the documentation to read more. Or perhaps get straight in there.

If you don't use Clients, and you find the extra button and data annoying, you can hide this from Sublime Ads by heading on over to Settings where you can disable it.

Some other tweaks have been deployed alongside clients. This includes slightly wider sections throughout, better list views with alternating row colours, and some slight tweaks to the Settings section. Also added some snark throughout (more coming!). The stats graph now show a little loading indicator as you switch dates or load them... useful to see what's going on.

We've updated our pricing plans for Sublime Ads to accommodate more developers with varying budgets and to further make sure we stay on mission.

With prices being increased everywhere, we decided to go and do the opposite. All our pricing plans have been reduced by $5 per month (except the yearly) and are effective immediately.

This better reflects our values of where we want to go in the future. It's a balance of providing a great product and also making sure more developers can make use of Sublime Ads.

Our pricing plans now are the following:

If you have an active subscription, you will have been automatically swapped over to the new pricing plans, and credits will apply to your account if you have recently have been charged or subscribed.

Don't have a subscription yet? Well, get to it! I'm sure there is a plan for everyone.

Hey there.

We just updated the way the graph data is sorted when viewing them on the main dashboard or on the category sections.

Previously this data was sorted wrong and didn't make sense. Now it will sort the data by the highest total view or taps... just like it was intended.

Today I am happy to release a small change to the API. You can now authorise using the Authorization header with a Bearer token.

It's something I wanted to do for some time... and now it's here for you.

For example, set your header like this:
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN_HERE"

Check out the documentation for more info.

The old way of using tokens still works without issue, so you can pick and choose which suits you best.

Happy "Authorizing"

P.S. I wish auto-correct wouldn't correct "Authorization" all the time 😋

I'm happy to release support for "on the fly" image resizing for Sublime Ads, thanks in part to our CDN provider Bunny CDN.

We've been using this for just over a week now for embeds and it has worked a treat.

Image resizing allows you to grab any size you need for your images so they will better fit within your app, site or service without sacrificing the original image quality.

The resized images are cached and stored on the CDN, and are globally available in an instant, and it couldn't be any easier.

At the moment we support "width", "height" and "quality" to be set via the embed API and integration and also through the API.

If you use our embed script we automatically resize the image to 300px wide with a quality of 95%, if no options are set. You can see all the extra options here in our documentation. There is an option to disable it also.

If you're using our API endpoints you can also request to return the correct URL for your image resizing options without having to do anything special client-side. You can check out the documentation here for all the options. You can pass in these options on any API endpoint and your image URLs will always return the correct data.

Really excited to have this officially out now.

Happy resizing.

Hey there.

I've been busy the last few days to get a few needed things out the way. But first, let's talk about the new.

Your stats (the graphs) have settings for the day range and which view you have selected ("views" or "taps"). In the past that data was saved with the browser data in local storage. So when you used the same browser, it would have picked up which setting you have selected.

No more. Now these settings are saved across your device and are loaded automatically every time you make a change.

I thought this was nice and gives you a more consistent experience across devices.

This opens the door for a few more things I'd like to add at some stage... nothing like planning ahead.

Ah yes, always there are bugs. Whilst there were a few I fixed, the most notable ones are image lazy loading related.

This one took some time to get right, and yes there was some downtime... and I apologise if that has caused any troubles for you. Anyone using the Embed API was not affected by any downtime. However, I kept everything to a super minimum.

Migration is now fully complete and it allows me to sleep at night without problems. Namely I can easily create servers on the fly and scale where needed without headaches of managing this.

For anyone interested I am now using Cloud66 to manage the Sublime Ads servers. Another nice thing is that, in a way, these are now managed by Cloud66, including database backup strategies - which is a big win for the platform!

It is a little bit expensive but the peace of mind is comforting and worth it in my eyes.

If you find anything that isn't working anymore, let me know.

With the above changes I also took time to upgrade the version of Ruby to keep up with the security updates.

Anyway, this is it. Happy with the way it came together this week, and look forward adding a few more things in the coming week.

✌️❤️

— Vincent

Hey there,

Today I rotated the encryption keys that are used for data storage in the database.

There was a small issue with API keys and links to ads not resolving, however I believe it’s all working now as expected.

Let me know if you encounter any issues.

— Vincent

Hello there, it’s been a while!

You may have noticed a few changes to the design and other things like emails, in the past few months.

I’ve been hard at work with over 91 little changes here and there since the last update. Keeping it fresh and rolling.

Hoping to keep going with shipping more incremental changes, including a few new things for you all.

✌️❤️

— Vincent

Well, hello there.

We’ve been busy at work to enable something magic for our embeds and embed API. Namely, we now use, and serve, embeds through our edge network across the globe (powered by Cloudflare Workers).

This dramatically improves the speed and reliability for your embeds no matter where you are and hardens them from any downtime from our main server (as it is no longer reliant on it to serve an embed).

You don’t have anything to change if you’re already using embeds… in fact, your existing embeds are already served from the edge location.

If you are using the embed API directly, I have updated the documentation so you can take advantage of the edge.

The above goes hand in hand with the embed script also, which also is served through global availability.

In addition, images are now cached which means they load even faster.

For the future I am hoping to expand the edge API more as time goes.

I’ve written more about the above on my blog.

— Vincent

Now that we have ad scheduling, wouldn’t it be nice if we also had some way to filter them?

On your Ads overview page, you can now filter by what best suits you with the following options:

Have a play and see what you think. I think this is going to be useful to a lot of you.

Hoping to add a few more places for filtering as time goes.

— Vincent

Excited to launch ad scheduling for you this week, after some feedback and requests!

You can now schedule an ad to run on specific dates of your choosing. Add both a start and end date to have them run for a specific amount of time, or just mix and match to your needs by setting only a start or end date for fine grained control.

Easily see your ad schedule in the ad list or on the ad itself with updated "Active" statuses depending on how they’re set up.

To find out more, head to the documentation for adding and editing here.

You can also find additional API parameters to bring back extra data. Check out the optional Ad object API documentation for more info.

In addition to the above I have tweaked the UI a little bit… so now things look a little wider to fit in more data.

— Vincent

Well hello there.

I recently updated a few things in the database to allow for a future feature (*cough* Teams *cough*). This has caused me to revise how some of the data is saved against your account.

All going well, it should be working as normal ✌️

If you noticed anything, just let me know.

— Vincent

You may have noticed a slight change to the header bar… yep, Sublime Ads now allows you to upload your own profile image in the settings menu.

Of course it’s optional and you can remove it at any time.

Just makes it look nicer ✌️❤️

Hello once again.

In addition to allowing "views" to be triggered via the API (as per previous update) you can also now use the embed option to the same thing for your… embeds.

Check out the documentation for more info.

— Vincent

Hello and welcome to a minor little update for you.

On the dashboard, specific ad and category page, on the stats section, you now have the ability to switch between "taps" and "views" — which gives you two data points.

Note that views have to be triggered via the API, and you can find the details here in the documentation.

Can’t wait for you to give it a try and hope it’s useful for you.

Thanks as always and more to come ✌️❤️ 

— Vincent

Over the last few days I have changed the status page. This is run by a service that I’ve been using forever called updown.io.

They recently added status pages so I changed it across from what I had.

Some check might not have historical data, but the API and Website check is pretty much covered.

You can also click on any checks that are not greyed out to get more info.

One thing that I encountered was that I wish I could disable stats for a specific category — especially when using a category for test purposes when building apps.

You now have the option to do exactly that when creating, or editing, a category under the "Enable statistics" section.

Now if a link goes through Sublime Ads, but you have stats disabled for the category, it will no longer track them. You’ll still get the redirect of course.

If you had statistics previously, they will still be in the system — you just won’t see the graph anymore on the category. At the moment there is no option to delete previous stats.

For more info, read the documentation.

Hey there,

Two changes today for you.

Categories:
When creating a category you now have the option to add any existing ad to it. Hurray! Just makes it a little easer for everyone. Also true for editing.

Check out the documentation for more info.

API changes:
You can now request additional data for your ad object when querying the API. Hope to expand this more as time goes. These have been added to allow for more flexibility whilst keeping the initial response small. So if you need more data, you can.

Check out the documentation for more info.

— Vincent

A small update to allow you to add a tag to your ad. This can be very useful for displaying alongside your integrations — for example if it’s a "Podcast" you can set that as your tag and display it nicely.

Next up is the accent color. This is actually the same as the previous "label color" but has now been re-purposed. Set an accent color specific to your needs, which will show on the statistics graphs and also on the ad overview screens (and the API of course).

Both of these values now come through via the API Ad object. Check out the documentation concerning the ad object and for general info on adding an ad.

Also made a few minor UI tweaks.

— Vincent

It's launch day! The doors have opened. If you are here for the first time, thank you so much for signing up! Really really appreciate it.

Sublime Ads is built with easy of use in mind and nothing is ever buried away in the interface!

We have awesome documentation that you can find here: https://docs.sublimeads.com

Also check out some of the "use cases" in the wild: https://docs.sublimeads.com/#use-cases

We also have first class support that goes straight to me directly. I used to do this for a living and also look up to companies that get it right, like Basecamp. Find the support page here: https://sublimeads.com/support

Help is never far away and you'll see in the bottom right we have a "?". Just click, or tap, on that and choose your option.

If you can't find anything, or have a feature in mind you want to see, just let me know!

If you're interested I also run a development blog for all my projects I work on. You can find the Sublime Ads one here.

I'm just getting started, but I do hope you find it useful.

Here's to the future and look forward what you use it for!

✌️❤️

— Vincent

Today, I released a smaller update just to tick off a few things before launch.

API changes:

Website:

— Vincent ✌️

We’ve added a dedicated status page, for uptime monitoring, that you can find here.

It’s all grouped together and gives you a quick overview if anything is ever amiss. We sure hope not, but no-one is perfect and it will happen! 😱

We’re covering the following:

A nice benefit to the status page is that you can subscribe to the RSS feed to keep an eye out for issues. Found here.

— Vincent

Sublime Ads is launching very soon, on February 1st, 2021. It’s been quite a ride to come and get this far in under a year. The first commit was on the 26th of March, 2020… and now we’re over 500 commits in! Wow.

It all started with a basic idea and a need to get ads, or whatever else, into my own apps and sites with ease. This is what you’re using now, my small vision for something incredibly useful. It might just be exactly what you’re looking for too — got a podcast app, a blog, or anything else? Got you covered!

Sublime Ads was always intended as a MVP (minimum viable product) type of service just to see how far I could get. I’m super happy with the result so far… I’ve learned a lot of new things and, most importantly, I’m having the time of my life. I really live for this!

I am one person that just wants to make a little dent in the inter-verse. I am human, I run the show and I have no shareholders to please. That allows me to keep Sublime Ads simple, clean and "agile" without any red tape. Plus I’d hate to have a boss! (I already have 2, not including myself 😭).

I want to thank everyone for your kind words and feedback to date, I really appreciate it — you know who you are. Without you, it would not be where it is today.

This is the first "official" release note, but worry not, there are more to come. I have to start somewhere.

I’ve been prepping the site, documentation, and working on a few other things to get it all ready. There are probably things that you think are missing, and that’s totally fine! You can always get in touch — speak your mind, or ask a question, give some feedback.

I’ll generally add new feature updates here on this page, however there is also a development blog that you may follow on my very own site. You can see all related posts to Sublime Ads there. I welcome you to have a read.

Really excited where it’s going. Thanks for being part of it.

✌️❤️

— Vincent