We rebuilt QueUp from scratch

QueUp has been around for 14 years, and in that time we've shipped a lot. New features, a couple redesigns, changes to how the site works, and plenty of things that have come and gone over the years. But we've never done anything quite like this. We've rebuilt the foundation that QueUp runs on from the ground up.

Pretty much everything you see and use on QueUp today is new under the hood. It's faster, uses less of your browser's resources, and should feel a lot more responsive than the old version. More importantly, it's given us a codebase that we can actually build on again.

For years, adding something new often meant spending just as much time working around the old code as we did building the feature itself. That's been one of the biggest things holding us back, and it's something we can finally move past.

It's still QueUp. The rooms are still here, the music is still here, and everything that makes QueUp what it is is still here. We've just replaced a lot of the stuff underneath it that had been there for a very long time.

Thank you to our early supporters

Before we get into what's next, we want to say a proper thank you to our early supporters. Your support has helped keep QueUp running over the years, covering the costs of the servers and everything else that goes into keeping the site online. That's a big part of why we're still here after 14 years.

A lot of you also spent time testing this version before anyone else got to use it. You reported bugs, pointed out things that didn't feel right, and gave us plenty of feedback along the way. A lot of that feedback has directly influenced how this version works today, and having people willing to test it properly before we opened it up to everyone has made a huge difference. Thank you!

Your turn

The new version is now live for everyone! That also means we're going to find things we haven't found yet. That's inevitable when a change this big goes from a few testers to everyone using the site.

So if something's broken, feels clunky, looks wrong, or just doesn't feel quite right, please let us know. You don't need to know what's causing it or even be sure that it's a bug. Just tell us what happened and we'll take a look. A lot of the improvements we've made during testing started with someone simply telling us that something wasn't quite right.

The best way to give feedback is via our Discord server in the suggestions forum. You can also use the #suggestions channel

What's next

For now our focus is on this version. We'll be working through the feedback that comes in, fixing anything that surfaces and getting everything settled now that more people are using it.

Once that's done, we've still got the other half of this project to tackle: the backend. The version you're using today is the frontend rewrite; the part of QueUp you actually see and interact with. Behind it is a backend that's been around for a long time too, and it's carrying a lot of the same old limitations that we've been dealing with for years.

Rewriting that is going to be a big job, but it's one we're looking forward to. Once it's done, we should be able to stop working around old constraints and start building and shipping things much more quickly. That's ultimately why we started this whole project in the first place.

Fourteen years, and counting

QueUp has outlasted a lot of platforms that came and went during those 14 years, and that's really down to the people who kept coming back. Some of you have been here almost from the beginning, while others might have found us last week. Some of you have queued up ten songs, others have queued up ten thousand.

However long you've been here, thanks for being part of it. We've got a lot more we want to do with QueUp, and now we have a much better foundation to do it on.