We shipped a big release at the end of June. If you caught the official post from the CreateScene account, you'll have seen the "big-ticket" items: Stories, the rebrand of the Newsfeed to The Stage, and a bunch of smart tweaks and fixes.
But what did it take to get here? What changed, what didn’t, and what surprised us along the way? Here's a look from my side of the screen.
✍️ Stories
Stories came from a pretty simple question: "What if posts weren’t so rigid?" We wanted to build something that felt like a playground for longer-form creativity. Markdown wasn’t going to cut it for most people. Rich text needed to feel fluid, expressive, and native to CreateScene. No templates, no rules. That sounds freeing, but building with no guardrails can actually make things more fragile. We had to think carefully about UX and backend design. There was plenty of head banging, but we got there in the end.
🌟 The Stage
We debated renaming the Newsfeed for a while. "Newsfeed" always felt... functional. But CreateScene isn’t about broadcasting updates—it's about putting yourself out there. That’s where “The Stage” came from. It sounds small, but naming shapes behaviour.
🧠 Trade-offs and Tiny Decisions
The Scene Selection Prompt might not seem major, but it touches a lot of tech behind the scenes (pardon the pun). One of those changes introduced a late-breaking bug that could’ve prevented posts from publishing altogether. We fixed it, but not before sweating a little. Same with staff icons. Sounds easy. Turns out, designing a system-wide visual hierarchy isn’t as quick as dropping in a badge. Lessons were definitely learned though.
That’s the kind of work that doesn’t show up in a changelog, but it's the real story behind the release. And that’s what this series is for.
Frazer
CTO @ CreateScene