Let's be honest with ourselves: 24-hour days suck.

So, now that I'm off of school for spring break, I've moved onto a highly productive 31-hour schedule. Booyeah! Progress on Pony.fm has been lightning-fast as a result, and the main reason you haven't seen me blogging much about it lately is because I've been so focused on pushing out all the code I can.

Today, I'd like to take some time between the coding to talk about a fundamental Pony.fm feature you'll run into a lot: the user profile.

First things first: where do you physically live on Pony.fm? It couldn't be simpler:

How much better does it get?

Keeping the URL's so short and simple makes them stupidly easy to remember and share. Meeting with a friend and want to tell him where to find your pony tunes? He'll probably remember "pony dot eff emm slash your name here" a lot better than "pony dot eff emm slash user slash four six nine seven two four one" or something else with an account ID in it. You're a human, not a number, and Pony.fm's profiles reflect that.

Pony.fm's profiles are divided into three sections: you, your content, and your social circle.

You

The header is all about showing people who you are, at a quick glance. With a huge avatar, your name front and centre, and a 250-character blurb to express yourself, it's truly your space on Pony.fm. Here are a few headers from the alpha testing team:

Your Content

The cutest avatar means little for an artist's profile page if there's no content for potential listeners to enjoy. So, Pony.fm profiles put the stuff you've made on the left half of the page, in full view.

Albums are up top. As they're larger and rarer than single releases, they receive a large, unmissable tile. Beneath them, you'll find a complete set of a user's tracks, in reverse chronological order and ready to listen to without even leaving the page.

Your Social Circle

One misconception I've observed as that Pony.fm is only for artists. Nothing could be further from the truth. With a central commenting framework, a meticulously designed notification system (it's better than the one here on MLP Forums), user-curated playlists, and more, Pony.fm comes battery-loaded for social interaction, and future development will only increase the richness of the experience.

To that end, the right half of every profile is dedicated to your social presence on Pony.fm.

The users you follow and that you are followed by are shown in tabbed grids. Simple name/avatar blocks save space on your screen, and a paginated wall of profile comments appears below (currently, a page is created every 10 comments). Leaving a comment on someone's profile sends them a notification, but you won't receive one for leaving a comment on your own profile.

The Future

Web applications are never truly "complete", so there comes a point when I have to put the keyboard down and publish something for the world to see. However, that doesn't mean I can't keep making things better afterward; as a developer, I just need to set some priorities for what needs to make it into the MVP, and what I can procrastinate on while I hope it magically drops out of existence leave in the task tracker for later.

So, here are a few ways in which I intend to improve profiles in the hopefully not-too-distant future:

• Ability to upload a background image for your profile header.
  
• Limit the number of tracks and albums shown straight-up on the profile, and push the full discography onto a dedicated page or two (ie. https://pony.fm/feld0/tracks).
  
• Make tracks on profiles a little less "samey" by displaying their cover art (if they have any) beside their inline players.
  

Please remember that, as this is software development, intentions are not and cannot be treated as promises or guarantees that something will be implemented. However, all development begins with some form of intention, and these are three features I feel pretty sure about at this point.