Changelog — 2.8–2.15

We were describing a transcription feature that didn’t exist

• Our ScribeFlow help page promised speaker labels. It shouldn’t have. It described “speaker diarization — identifies who is speaking and when” as part of transcription, and listed plain-text transcripts as coming “with speaker labels”. Neither was ever true. The groundwork was laid a long time ago, the part that would have actually labelled your transcripts was never finished, and the help page was written as though it had been. No transcript has ever included speaker labels.
• We’ve removed the claims rather than leave them standing — and retired the unfinished groundwork behind them. A description of something we don’t do is worse than no description, because it sends you looking for something you’ll never find.
• Your transcripts are unaffected — nothing about the transcripts you get changes. If anything, transcription should finish a little sooner, since it no longer waits on a step that produced nothing.
• We’re not building speaker labelling for now. In the years this has been half-present, nobody has needed it. If that changes we’ll build it properly — and say so here.

Prayer times — the small Reflections panel was showing London’s times

• If you are not in London, please check this one. The small prayer-times panel beside Reflections was showing London’s prayer times rather than your own — while still displaying your own city’s name above them. The main Prayer Times panel was always correct. The two now always agree, and both show times for your actual location.
• Why it was easy to miss — the wrong times were labelled with your own location, so there was nothing to give it away unless you compared the two panels directly.
• It corrects itself — you don’t need to do anything. The next time you open the site, the panel will show your own times.

More reliable prayer notifications

• Notifications should now arrive consistently — when a device stopped accepting notifications (for example after clearing your browser data, or reinstalling), we kept trying to send to it forever instead of noticing it had gone. That’s now handled properly, so notifications go to devices that can actually receive them.
• If your notifications have been unreliable, please turn them off and on again — this re-registers your device and is the quickest way to get them working. You only need to do this once.
• Reminder for iPhone and iPad — Apple only allows web notifications for sites added to your Home Screen. If you use the site in Safari without installing it, notifications cannot be delivered. Tap Share → “Add to Home Screen”, then enable notifications from there.
• Unsubscribing now really does delete your data — our privacy policy has always said that when you turn notifications off, your notification data is permanently deleted. We found that it was instead being kept and marked inactive. That is fixed: it is now genuinely deleted, along with the approximate location used to work out your prayer times. We also delete it automatically if your browser tells us the subscription no longer exists — because these subscriptions are anonymous, we have no way to contact you to ask.

Prayer times — corrected Fajr, Isha and midnight at UK latitudes

• Fajr was showing too early in summer — at UK and northern European latitudes the summer sun never dips far below the horizon, and our calculation was reading the earliest possible moment rather than applying the standard adjustment used for these latitudes. Fajr could appear up to an hour and a half early. It now matches published timetables (for London on 16 July: 02:56 rather than 02:05). Isha, Imsaak and midnight are corrected by the same change.
• Midnight is calculated again — for roughly forty days each summer the midnight time showed “could not be calculated”, and was slightly off on some other days. It now displays correctly all year.
• Clock-change days — on the two days a year when the clocks go forward or back, every prayer time was out by an hour. Those days are now correct.
• Updated times reach you straight away — corrected times now appear the next time you open the site, rather than waiting until the following day, and prayer notifications use the corrected times.
• Prayer times background — the artwork behind the prayer times panel could briefly show the wrong time of day, and occasionally stay wrong. It now always matches the current period.

Times outside these latitudes (for example Karbala, Makkah, Tehran, New York) are unchanged — this correction only applies where it is needed.

Events — readable meeting buttons

• Zoom & Google Meet buttons — fixed the “Join via Zoom” and “Join via Google Meet” buttons so their text stays clearly readable when you hover over them.

A new site in the header

• New site link — added We Must Rise to the row of allied-site icons at the top of the page (opens in a new tab).

App updates — always the latest version

• Reliable updates — the app now dependably loads the newest version after we ship an update, instead of sometimes holding on to an older cached copy.
• “Update available” prompt — when a new version is ready, a small “Update available” notice appears with a Refresh button, so you can jump to the latest whenever it suits you.

Events — clickable links, fuller images, tidier carousel

• Links & hashtags in descriptions — Web addresses written in an event or session description are now clickable links (opening in a new tab), and hashtags are styled to stand out. This applies on the homepage spotlight and the event, session and programme pages.
• Whole artwork, no cropping — Event images now show in full at the page width without being cropped or stretched, whatever their shape — wide, square or tall — with a sensible height limit so a tall image never overwhelms the page.
• Clearer homepage carousel — When several events share the homepage, the left/right arrows no longer overlap the text, so titles and descriptions stay easy to read.

Events — keep an event on the homepage

• Always show an event on the homepage — Editors can now keep a chosen event on the homepage even when it has no live or upcoming session. It shows the event’s most recent session (or its artwork if it has none yet), so favourite or recently-concluded programmes stay visible.
• Sensible ordering — These always-on events sit alongside any live ones in the carousel, newest first, so the most recent is shown by default.

Events — tidier homepage & live programmes

• Every event now shows its picture — An event highlighted on the homepage before its video is ready no longer appears as a blank card — it shows the session’s artwork, falling back to the event’s artwork, so it always looks complete.
• Browse several live events — When more than one event is on at once, the homepage shows them in a carousel you can swipe or arrow through, newest first.
• Pick what leads — Editors can mark one event to show first by default.
• Join live sessions — Events and sessions can now carry optional Zoom and Google Meet links, shown as “Join via” buttons when a programme runs live.

Events — smoother video playback

• Videos that just work, wherever you are — Some networks (schools, workplaces, some home filters) block embedded videos with a “Restricted Mode” message. If that happens, the player now notices and shows a clear, one-tap Watch on YouTube button so you can watch straight away — and there’s always a small “Watch on YouTube” link under the player, just in case.
• The full session, right at the top — Each session’s complete video now appears as the first item under “In this session”, so the whole majlis is one tap away, alongside its individual parts.
• Always the right wording — That first item reads “Full YouTube Premiere” around its premiere, then settles to “Full Video on YouTube” once it’s an on-demand recording.

Events & discoverability

• Upcoming sessions now show publicly — When an event has its show-all-sessions setting on, sessions that are scheduled (not yet published) now appear on the public event page, just as they already did in the admin preview. Draft sessions stay hidden.
• Past events stay browseable — Events you archive are no longer hidden — they move to an Archived events section on the Events page, so people can still revisit past programmes any time.
• Better discoverability — Search engines now get a complete map of the site’s articles and events, so more of the content can be found through search.

Events

• Read ahead before a premiere — An event can now reveal its upcoming sessions in full — the write-up, what each session contains, and the links — before they premiere, so you can see what’s coming and share it. The recordings and any scheduled write-ups still open on their own premiere day.
• The trailer leads the way — During the run-up an event now leads with its trailer (on the homepage and the event page), and a trailer can be set to keep showing right up until the first session premieres — so the build-up never goes quiet. On premiere day, the day’s session takes centre stage.

Security & maintenance

• Security hardening — Tightened how the site handles links it fetches on your behalf, and added stricter HTTPS enforcement for return visits. Nothing changes in how the site looks or works.
• Study & rulings AI assistant paused — The in-app AI assistant for the scripture and rulings library has been retired while we rebuild it as a dedicated product. The library itself remains available.

Refinements

• Event text now reads beautifully — An event’s description keeps its paragraph spacing on the homepage and on the event pages, instead of running together into one block — and on a wide screen the homepage event sits in a balanced, centred column rather than hugging the left.
• Like & share the featured event from the homepage — The event highlighted at the top of the homepage now has a heart and a share button, just like the daily reflection and the full event page.
• Like the daily reflection from the homepage — A heart now sits next to the share button on the Reflections card at the top of the page.
• No more sideways scrolling on phones — Fixed a layout issue where event pages with trailers could scroll left-and-right a little on a phone.

Fixes

• Event share links keep working after a rename — A short share link for an event (or one of its sessions) now always opens the right page, even if the event was renamed after the link was first created.

Events, refined

• “Sessions”, not “episodes” — Each gathering within an event is now called a session throughout — a better fit for a commemoration programme.
• Richer session line-ups — Every part of a session (the sermon, nohe, maqtal and so on) can now carry its own title — for example “Nohe: He is Gone” — and appears as a card with its own picture and Play / Read buttons.
• Trailers on their own schedule — An event can have any number of trailers, each shown on the homepage during its own dates, and all of them stay available to watch on the event page afterwards.
• Clearer priority — An event’s priority is now simply Low, Medium or High.
• Better tools for editors — A fuller, editable prompt for AI-generated artwork (with one-tap reset), roomier description boxes with a live word count, and a “Save & Preview” button.
• Every event has a picture — Events and sessions now always carry artwork before they go live, shown as clear image cards while editing.
• Accurate scripture closers — A session’s closing scripture can be chosen straight from the library (Qur’an, Sahifa, Mafatih and more), or suggested for you — so the Arabic, translation and reference are always correct — with the option to write your own.
• Automatic Hijri dates — A session’s Islamic (Hijri) date now fills in automatically from its premiere date and can be fine-tuned, keeping the Calendar accurate.

Refinements

• Prayer times now match everywhere on the homepage — A final follow-up to the earlier prayer-time fix: the large Prayer Times panel and the smaller times in the Reflections card now always agree — even before any personal adjustment — because they read from a single, consistent source.
• Smoother event publishing — Behind the scenes, our editors can now preview exactly how an event and each of its episodes will look before publishing — so every commemoration programme is just right before it goes live.

New — Like your favourite Reflections, Vignettes & Events

• A Like button across Reflections, Vignettes and Events — Tap the heart on any reflection, vignette or event to show it some love. Each like adds to a simple running total shown on the card and on the page.
• No account needed — Liking is open to everyone; there's nothing to sign in to or sign up for.
• Your likes are remembered on your device — So something you've liked still shows as liked when you come back, we keep a small marker in your browser. It never leaves your device, and you can clear it whenever you like.
• Privacy first — We never record who liked what — there are no per-person like records. For basic abuse-prevention we note only an approximate location (your city and country) and a shortened, partial network address against each like — never your identity.
• On the Events page — You can like a whole event (from its card or its page) and like individual episodes too. An event's count is the combined total of the event and all its episodes — so even an event with no episodes yet can be liked.
• Neater share links for Events — Sharing an event or an episode now uses a short, tidy link — the same kind already used for Reflections and Vignettes.

New — Events: Commemoration Programmes & Majlis Premieres

• A new “Events” section — Find it in the main menu, between Vignettes and Our Services. Events brings together our commemoration programmes — full majlis packages, recorded and released as video premieres — in one beautiful, easy-to-browse place.
• Today's programme, front and centre — On the days a programme airs, it appears right at the top of the homepage: the video ready to watch, with quick links to each part beneath it. When there's nothing on for the day, the section simply isn't shown — the homepage stays uncluttered.
• Every part of the majlis, one tap away — Each premiere is broken into its sections — recitation, couplets, the sermon, the maqtal, ziyarah, supplications — and every section can link you straight to that part of the video and to its full written write-up.
• Trailers in the run-up — In the days before a series begins, the homepage can show the series trailer so you know what's coming. If no trailer has been added, nothing is shown — no empty placeholders.
• Browse by event, with everything in one place — The Events page lists each commemoration as its own card — artwork, and a clear Past / Current / Upcoming label, with the current one highlighted. Open an event to see its full programme: the trailer and every night's premiere. On the day a night airs, that episode is featured right at the top, ready to watch — and an event that's been announced but not yet filled shows a friendly note rather than an empty page.
• On the calendar too — Programmes also appear on the Calendar and in the homepage's Upcoming Events list, so you can plan ahead and never miss a night.
• Built to be reused, season after season — The same system will carry Muharram, Arbaeen, Fatimiyyah, Ramadhan and more — each as its own series of premieres.
• Beautiful artwork in a click — If you don't have an image to upload for a series or a night, you can generate a reverent one with AI — symbolic, non-figurative artwork (calligraphy, shrines, candlelight, banners, Karbala-evocative landscapes), never depicting holy figures.

Hotfix — Prayer Times Now Match Across the Homepage

• The two prayer-time displays on the homepage now always agree — If you had set any prayer-time adjustment (the ±-minute offsets in prayer settings), the times in the main Prayer Times panel and the smaller times in the Reflections card at the top of the page could differ — because your adjustment was only being applied to one of them. Both now apply your adjustments identically, so the times match everywhere on the page.
• Adjustments apply instantly — When you change a prayer-time setting, both displays update straight away, with no page refresh needed.

Hotfix — Long Voice Generation Sessions No Longer Lost to “Network Error”

• Long-form voice generation now completes reliably even if the page loses connection — Previously, a long voice synthesis (multi-paragraph reflections, sermon-length input) could spend a minute or two generating audio successfully, only to surface a “network error” right at the end and mark the job as failed. The audio had actually been produced — we just couldn't tell the browser about it once the live connection had dropped (a flaky moment in the network, a tab switch, a proxy timeout). The generation flow now completes its save-to-history work regardless of whether the browser is still listening, and the recoverable-jobs system serves up the finished audio when the user comes back.
• Completed jobs stay completed — A subtle related issue: if the connection dropped at exactly the moment between “saving to history” and “sending the final “done” event”, the system would briefly mark the job as complete in the database and then immediately re-mark it as failed when the error handler ran. The user would see a failed job they couldn't recover, even though the MP3 was safely saved. Fixed by tracking completion state explicitly — the failure handler now refuses to overwrite an already-completed job.
• What you'll see differently as an editor — Mostly nothing, because the failure case was a class of intermittent error you weren't generating on purpose. If you previously hit one of these mid-generation drops, you would have lost the work and had to re-trigger from scratch. From now on, you can also recover via the jobs API (Job History pane) if the page glitches — the audio survives even if the visible progress bar dies.
• Two related code paths flagged for the same fix later — Voice creation (Voice Clone Studio upload flow) and character reference image generation (Vignettes) carry the same code pattern that caused this. Marked in code for the same defensive treatment in a follow-up release. Neither has been observed failing this way in practice, but the latent vulnerability is identified.

New Voice Synthesis Engine — Better Quality, Editorial Tone Control, Smoother Captions

• All existing voices preserved across the migration — Every voice ID in the catalogue continues to work. Authors keep the same voice settings; the editor keeps the same dropdown picker. The voice you've been hearing for a given author is still that voice — it now comes from a more capable engine that reproduces the source recording with higher fidelity. No re-saving of preferences, no re-uploading of clones.
• New British female voice: Isabella — A long-loved voice that was missing from the picker (the system tried to use a name that wasn't in our voice catalogue) has been re-captured and added. Reflection videos and Vignettes can now use Isabella alongside Alice, Emma, and Lily for British female narration.
• Editorial tone tags for the Voice Clone Studio — A new toolbar of expression tags lets the editorial team steer the prosody of any synthesis. Drop [warm] before a passage of comfort, [serious] before a moral lesson, [reverent] before a scripture quotation, [gentle] for a child-directed line. Thirteen tags total covering warm, gentle, soft, cheerful, excited, thoughtful, serious, solemn, reverent, sad, cold, firm, urgent. The chosen tone applies to the whole rendered segment.
• Three named pause buttons replace the four numeric ones — [pause-short], [breath-pause], [pause-long] instead of 0.5s / 1s / 2s / 5s. Cleaner mental model — editors think in terms of natural conversational pauses rather than millisecond budgets. This change also fixes a quiet bug: the previous numeric buttons inserted markup that the new engine couldn't parse, so the literal text “pause 2 slash” would have read aloud. The new tags work correctly.
• Reflection video captions feel smoother — Previously, very short caption lines (one, two, or three words) could flash on screen for a fraction of a second between longer captions, which felt jarring. Two complementary fixes: short sentences are now merged with adjacent ones into a properly-readable phrase (minimum four words per caption), and consecutive captions bridge their transitions so there's no visible blank-screen gap as one swaps for the next. Net result: every caption stays on screen long enough to read comfortably, and the visual flow between captions is seamless.
• Real-time progress for long audio generation — Long-form text-to-speech (sermon-length input, multi-minute reflections) now shows live chunk-by-chunk progress: “Synthesising chunk 3 of 8…” → “Synthesised 127 seconds of audio — finalising…” → “Saving to history…” instead of the progress bar appearing stuck at 20% for several minutes.
• Auto-trim for long voice uploads — When an editor uploads a voice clone reference recording longer than 15 seconds, the system now automatically extracts a centred 10-second slice (the prosody-rich middle of the recording) instead of rejecting the upload. The editorial team no longer has to manually trim recordings in an external tool before uploading.
• Auto-heal voice synthesis errors — If a voice on the new engine appears missing for any reason (rare, can happen after maintenance), the system now automatically re-registers the voice from the original source audio and retries synthesis once before surfacing an error. Editors no longer hit hard “voice unavailable” errors that would previously have required admin intervention.
• Cleaner error messages across the synthesis flow — When something goes wrong, editors now see a generic “Selected voice is unavailable. Try a different voice, or contact your administrator.” instead of the previous error which leaked internal voice IDs and repository paths into the page. Server-side logs still carry the full diagnostic for ops debugging.
• Audio analysis services consolidated to a dedicated machine — Speech recognition, forced word alignment (used for Reflection caption timing), speaker diarisation, and Arabic/Farsi text-to-speech all now run on one well-spec'd dedicated machine instead of being spread across legacy infrastructure. Faster startup, fewer cross-network hops, simpler operations. No user-visible workflow change.
• Reflections + Vignettes simplified — Voice synthesis for Reflection video shorts and Vignettes now talks directly to the new engine instead of routing through an intermediate service. One less moving part, one fewer failure mode.
• System Status & Health pages updated — The admin System Status and LLM Health pages now show the new Voice Synthesis Engine alongside the consolidated audio analysis services. The previous voice synthesis services are still listed but tagged as “(Legacy)” during the post-cutover rollback window. Cloud LLM provider tier labels were also clarified: the on-prem AI is the actual primary, with cloud providers labelled Secondary and Tertiary in the order they're consulted.
• Behind the scenes — new shared voice synthesis library — All voice synthesis callsites across the website (audio preview, article TTS, Reflections, Vignettes, Voice Clone Studio) now route through a single shared library instead of bespoke code per feature. Single source of truth for voice catalogue, markup parsing, chunk handling, and error recovery. Future voice features start from a much smaller surface.
• Routine dependency maintenance — Third-party library updates rolled in alongside this release.
• Rollback insurance — The previous voice infrastructure is being shut down (not deleted) post-deploy as a rollback safety net. If anything regresses we can flip back in minutes. Full decommission follows after the new stack proves stable in production for some weeks.