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We’re only a small team here at PetRescue, but we make big and bold platform updates to help more pets get seen, and adopted, every day!
From time-saving features for rescue organisations, to matchmaking, to security and stability patches and speedy optimisations; we’re all hooves on deck to remove the boundaries in animal welfare!
Check out some of the most recent updates our pawsome Devvies have recently shipped!
Got a suggestion for us?We're all ears
April 2024
Finding the right blog post just got a whole lot easier! We’ve sorted the blog post categories alphabetically to help you quickly locate the topics you’re interested in. Whether you’re looking for tips on pet care or the latest news in the pet community, everything is now organized for your convenience. Dive in and explore!
We noticed that our postcode search wasn’t behaving as expected due to some legacy code. Our team have rolled up their sleeves and fixed the issue, ensuring that your search results are accurate and reliable. Now, you can find what you’re looking for without any hiccups.
The enquiry form’s button layout was a bitruff, causing some confusion. We’ve fixed the layout to make sure it’s clear and user-friendly. You can now submit your enquiries with ease, knowing exactly where to click.
Our location search on the rescue directory was a bit under the weather, but we’ve given it the attention it needed. Now, it’s back to full health, providing accurate and efficient search results to help you find rescues nearby without any fuss.
We made some adjustments to the blog panels to ensure they display correctly across all devices. Your favorite articles and updates are now presentedpaw-fectly, making for a seamless reading experience.
March 2024
First up this month, the crew encountered a pesky new security issue - exploitation of donations! We created a filter to stop the exploitation of donations as a security feature and enabled the ability to ‘block donors’ in the case ofdodgysituations, keeping everyone safe.
It was business as usual as we proactively looked into the future and caught bugs before we even knew they existed, by adding a testing library for the React front end.
In good news for pet lovers everywhere, we updated our blog postcat-egories! Now, when everyone frompaw-tentialadopters to existing pet guardians visit ourma-hooo-sivelibrary of content and resources, they can much more easily find what they’re looking for. You can check out PetRescue’s blog (and fall down the rabbit hole of pet content)here.
The only rouge dots we like are the adorable spots on our pet’s fur! We fixed afurr-stratingbug that caused random bullet points to appear when members were listing pets on some browsers.
While we were busy fixing bugs, we also fixed a bug that caused therescue directorynot to load properly. Now, you can search away for awesome PetRescue member organisations near you til the cows come home.
Last but certainly not least, we caught and released a bug that caused an issue with pet’s feature photos coming through when exporting from Sheltermate. Don’t worry, you can now view these pet’s adorable feature photos when browsing rescue pets!
February 2024
At PetRescue, we’re all about helping pets to become their best selves by using only positive reinforcement, and educating folks about what to look for when selecting a trainer for their furry family member! We’ve now popped the link to ourforce-free trainer guideinto the header of the website, ensuring this resource as accessible as paws-ible to help pet guardians and their doggos to find a force-free professional for their pooch.
Hackers beware! Every month, they come up with crafty new ways to hack the software used for the PetRescue website. In order to stop those pesky hackers, we updated this software and its underlying tools, which allow us to bring the website to pet lovers just like you.
We want to ensure that ourim-paw-tantMember communications are as convenient as possible for the PetRescue Member community - which is why we updated our article email template. With a preview of the article name, excerpt and a clear call-to-action now available, it’s much clearer to Members what a new article is all about when they receive their alert, improving accessibility as well as the overall Member communications journey!
January 2024
Usually, we can’t get enough of adorable pet videos... Well, except for when they cause pesky problems! The team fixed an issue that caused videos in pet profiles to show up in the gallery list and start to play - they’ve now been relocated to a dedicated video gallery.
While it’ssu-purrimportant for us to make sure we’re meeting state-based legal requirements for pet listings, such as Property Identification Codes - we don’t want to cause unnecessary headaches for Member organisations who don’t require them for their pets! This is why we implemented PIC number exemptions for organisations who aren’t legally required to obtain them.
While the team had their handyperson toolkit out and were fixing things left, right and centre - they also repaired the adoption fee field for Member organisations, which previously wouldn’t allow text and would automatically set the amount to zero dollars! Consider this one rectified.
Akin to your pets’ ability to find the warmest spot on the bed, we like it when our own processes are also intuitive! This is why we shifted the order of the ‘draft’ status in the pet listing platform to sit before ‘active’ - making life that little bit more straightforward for the busy Member organisation folks listing adorable pets for adoption.
This just in: after a pandemic-sized paws - PetRescue’s Pet Transport Program, supported by Jetpets, is now available to member organisations to fly homeless pets in need to their new families once again! We popped information about this exciting program into ourMember Benefitspage to ensure it’s accessible and easy to find for all of PetRescue’s Member community to learn more, and apply!
December 2023
Farewell to conflicting vaccination details on pet profiles! We've removed a glitchy vaccination flag on profiles listed via external animal management software, which showed a pet as being unvaccinated, when they actually were! Now, when the vaccination status comes through to our platform as unknown from the external software - this is now indicated visually a straightforward "-", rather than a firm no, to keep things as clear as can be!
In Australia, the term "pound" carries the weight of outdated community safety and amenity practices that do not meet modern expectations for how lost or homeless pets are cared for. While the term is synonymous with council facilities, it does not fully encompass the heart of community and welfare services that progressive Council-run shelters provide. Additionally, PetRescue values the role pets play in our lives beyond their legal position as property to be impounded and held by councils, and recognises that language matters. In order to advocate for all pets to receive the sheltering and support they deserve while in care of a council, we must move beyond acceptance of 'pound only services' as a minimum level of care. PetRescue aims to redefine the narrative, so we have updated our platform to embrace the term "council" over “pound”- in an effort to transform perceptions, while transforming language!
We’ve proudly added a shiny new The Australian Charity Awards ‘Outstanding Achievement’ winner logo to the platform for the third year running, making space for a victory strut to celebrate a big win for us as a team. This award recognises charitable organisations that have achieved outstanding results through initiatives that have significantly benefited charitable causes, and is a nod to the collective achievements of our pet-loving community!
Our Member benefits page just got apaw-some upgrade! Now our Members can explore their exclusive perks with our newest partner, Pet Circle, and hop on board as we re-launch the Pet Transport Program - helping to relocate homeless pets in need around Australia, and fast-tracking their journey into safe, loving homes!
November 2023
We've fixed a bug which resulted in the navigation bar being cut off of the page, preventing visitors from finding their way, ensuring it now stays on the page - keeping your adoption journey as smooth as a cat's purr.
Rescue organisations utilising animal management software to manage their pets listings can now draft profiles with ease, following our release of API access. Now, Members can trulyunleashthe paw-tential of this listing management feature, available to them on our platform.
Time to say goodbye to accidental copy-cat moments! We fixed a glitch in profiles listed via a synced animal management software, which resulted in pet photos appearing as duplicates on the website.
Similarly, we also resolved an issue where pet images were stuck in the past, preventing them from updating on the platform. Now we can guarantee pet profiles are all up to date with picture-paw-fect snaps!
We've ensured only thefur-iendliest emails make their way to our rescue organisation Members and limiting the opportunity for phishing opportunities, by locking down on conversation senders. Members can now pre-approve email addresses with our snazzy secure allowlist feature - ensuring their inbox is a fortress of onlyfur-tastic communication!
October 2023
We'vepurr-fectedimports by from external animal management systems feeding in to our platform by converting our fetching URLs to secure versions - ensuring a smoother process and fewer sync errors from here on out!
Our mobile layout got afurr-bulousfacelift! We've fixed a bunch of mobile-related visual issues, ensuring that browsing on your phone is now as delightful as watching a bunny hop around with joy!
This month we survived a major systempaws-asterand emerged with newfound agility! We faced some databaseruffpatches causing the site to take regular catnaps. Our resolution not only fixed the glitches but gave our database a turbo boost - making the platform speedier than a rescue pup chasing a tennis ball.
No more automated off-boarding for our Vets & Council rescue members! They're sticking around like a loyal companion and have now been exempt from our quality assurance process which sees idle rescue organisation members who haven’t utilised their PetRescue account in a long time automatically offboarded. This will ensure they can access our platform to list pets they have available for adoption at any time, regardless of how often pets may come into their care!
We proactively implemented an internal policy around how to handle, and swiftly respond to any data breach issues, ensuring the safety and security of your information and keeping a vigilant eye – or should we say, vigilantpawon any potential threats to our platform.
September 2023
At PetRescue - we’re all about inclusivity for humans and pets alike! We've rehashed the the user menu in our main navigation with some simple, but impactful accessibility improvements for keyboard navigation, screen readers and mobile devices. Along with all-round visual aesthetic upgrades, this piece of work will see our code prevent certain bugs, and be easier to maintain - to help future us!
Our pet search feed had a bit of arufftime this month, returning errors instead offetching purrfectresults for those searching for their future bestie. But fear not! We've chased down the bug, and now the search is sharing accurate results on available pets for adoption faster than a doggo whose just been caught chewing on something they shouldn’t be!
The account signup page recently received a little grooming session with layout and visual improvements.
As we strive for continuous improvement for all of our users, we've added somepaw-somequality tracking data to our internal reporting tools. Now we can measure the success of our newly-released pet listing features, such as ourAI Botprofile writer, ensuring they improve the lives of our rescue organisation users more than a catnap in a sunbeam!
August 2023
Avid fans of our platform may have noticed that it took a slow and steady approach momuntarily this month as a large image loading incident which resulted in cascading performance issues around the website (not the relaxing, waterfalley type either, unfortunately!). Our team quickly established the concern and powered through a resolution to get the issue resolved, so PetRescue.com.au is running at hares speed again!
A silver lining to finding bugs is then creating proactive improvement solutions to ensure it won’t happen again! As a follow up to the aforementioned incident - we implemented rules on image uniqueness, and limits to how many images can be parsed to our platform from external animal management systems, which will ensure our website will stay stable and running regardless of how hard it’s working behind the scenes.
We’re zooming with excitement because this month we announced on our platform thatPet Circleand PetRescue are now officially working together to create a better world where every pet is safe and loved. Their ongoing support of PetRescue and our rescue organisation members will see us collaborating to provide food and product donations, guidance and education resources for pet owners, monetary discounts for rescues and free vet advice, amongst other amazing benefits!
No moreruffdrafts! We've patched up a loophole that allowed previously saved draft profiles to go live on the platform without legally required identification, to ensure every pet profile now includes their microchip number for apurr-fectlysecure adopting experience
We’re all aboutpurr-fecttiming here! We updated the auto-counter on our website - so that PetRescue’s birth date changes on the actual day rather than at the start of the calendar year, ensuring wepaw-tyright on time.
July 2023
How about a new navigation bar to jazz up your PetRescue website experience? The team at PetRescue arepaw-ssionateabout inclusivity and making sure the website is accessible for everyone who visits it. The current navigation bar has now been rearranged to help those who might need a bit of extra help when utilising text-to-speech apps to browse. While this feature isn’t officially live yet, keep your eyes peeled because it’s coming soon to a browser near you!
When Dev teams work on new website updates - they are first saved on an environment called “staging” which should not yet be visible to the public before being released to the public, while they undergo thorough testing for quality before going live to users. Shout out, and equal parts commiserations, to the sneaky little kittens who may have caught a glimpse of this in the past - as this has just been fixed, meaning only the PetRescue admins can now view what we have in store for you next.Se-purr-ityis su-purr important here, and everyone loves a surprise, right?!
Uh-oh, did your Mittens walk across your keyboard while trying to log in and lock you out of your PetRescue account again? It happens. As does simply forgetting your password! However, the team have now limited login attempts to protect your identity and to make sure no pesky scammers can get through. This means if someone tries to log in to your account with incorrect information, it will be lock after five attempts. Don’t panic if this occurs and it’s actually you, though - you’ll be able to unlock your account successfully by simply checking your email, which will have instructions on how to get back in!
Science shows that looking at photos and videos of cute pets may contribute to a reduction in stress by improving blood pressure, heart rate and anxiety! So the last thing we want to do is impact your health by having the pet profiles on our platform load too slow! The PetRescue team are onto it, and have been working hard in the background to improve the way images are stored and managed. So this means all profiles (especially the older ones) will be loading in no time for all your viewing needs!
PetRescue has hit refresh on a new donation page website design. We’ve provided more detail around exactly what programs and initiatives you’re supporting when you kindly donate to us!
Members - if you’ve received an email alert from PetRescue recently and it doesn’t lookfur-miliar? That’s because the team has been working on a whole new design! We wanted you to have an idea of what exactly it is you’re missing out on before you take the time to click through - so along with a much needed visual make-over, we’ve also implemented previews of the newest article to read in the alert up front!
June 2023
The team have done are-barkablejob working on the new ‘Draft Listings’ feature for the PetRescue member community which was launched this month. The feature enables PetRescue members to create draft listings when uploading pet information, but aren’t ready to publish the profile just yet. This means you can create a profile for the pet with the information you have on hand, upload photos from your phone and save it to complete later. It also assists teams to collaborate better while pet information is being confirmed because multiple people can make changes to the listing now. Draft mode will enable you to If a listing is in draft mode, it won’t be visible to the public.
PetRescue member group admins can now remove users who no longer work with their rescue or organisation. The only exception to this is, the person who originally created the group on the PetRescue website cannot be removed.
Whether your pet is a cat, dog or bunny, you’ll now find the ‘species’ box at the top of the listing form.
PetRescue website users canfur-getabout those errors popping up on listings and forms because the team have been on it. The new improvements will have usersfelinefine!
Se-purr-ityis superim-paw-tanthere at PetRescue and the team have been working very hard to ensure that your data is better protected from those pesky scammers!
May 2023
We hope our puns aren’t taxing because it’s that time of year again, tax time donation appeal is here! Firstly, a round ofa-pawsfor every single one of you who donate. Your donations support our big, hairy and audacious work towards creating happiness and saving lives, which you can read more abouthere. Every donation you make over $2 is tax deductible, we appreciate you, fur-real!
The team are feline-fine about how updates show up on our website because the whole process is now more secure.
If you uploaded a paw-some video to your pet profile as the featured image and couldn’t update it to the purr-tty new selfie you took, don’t worry this has been fixed. You are free to change your feature photos and videos as often as you want!
We had a pesky bug floating around the website this month which stopped our users from removing their group logos. Don’t worry this has now been fixed!
Paw-denus, a button that was reserved for PetRescue admins started showing up on group members admin pages - oops. If you spotted this, well done. If not, you canfur-getabout it because there’s nothing to see here anymore.
Breaking Mews: we have removed the option for member organisations to connect their Facebook accounts to their PetRescue account. This is to ensure our online community arepurr-tectedfrom those pesky scammers!
Are youpro-cat-stinatingwriting pet profiles? Don’t forget, our profile writing AI Bot is a claw-fully useful tool for you to use! If you need a refresher, check out our members benefits pagehereto make sure you are using the free resources available to their fullpet-tential.
April 2023
The team were busy fixing things this month. If you had trouble changing or removing your paw-some profile photo or rescue group logo, this has now been fixed. Make sure your photos are showing off yourpurr-sonalities!
When you release an animal into the wild, it takes some time to learn about its surroundings before adapting. Well, since we released our profile writing AI bot into the wild, it has been learning a lot. It is currently deciding what works well and what doesn’t to make sure it can write thepurr-fectprofile for your pet.
The team is always on top ofse-purr-ityand they’ve been busy updating our internal software.
Remember when we launched PetRescue TV? You’ll find banners displayed across our website topurr-suadeyou to click on it for a cuteness overload! Check it outhere.
March 2023
Callse-purr-ity!This month the crew set up additional security measures for the information we store in our database so that we can cryptographically secure more data. In layperson’s terms: we scrambled up some data to secure it - so only we can access it, and no pesky scammers can!
While we were prettying things up, we also added in a placeholder image with a pet logo to pet listing pages before the group uploaded an image.
Have you checked out the JustAdopted pagebefore? Good feels are guaranteed - you can check out just some of the happy faces who have just been marked as adopted on PetRescue! This month we popped in some quick links to happy tails of adoption to the page to keep the wholesome vibes going!
We were in fix-it mode this month! Previously, when groups were deleted and then re-instated, their name would be missing. Now, if groups leave the platform and then return, the name of their group will be correctly reset.
Two factor authentication issu-purrimportant for keeping everyone and their data safe and secure online. The team fixed a pesky bug which was causing the two-factor authentication toggle to not switch on when folks booped it - yikes!
Two factor authentication continued to be a littlefurr-stratingthis month, with it giving a pesky message saying that the login code was invalid when entered. This is all fixed.
The crew also caught and released a bug that was affecting the bulk status update feature. Previously, nothing was happening when groups tried to update pets statuses to ‘removed’ - this is now fixed and includes a confirmation pop-up.
Social logins got an update this month in line with the social platforms also being updated to a new version.
February 2023
This month may just have been our biggest yet! The crew released PetRescue’s AI bot into the wild, which writes a whole pet profile from just a couple of bullet points entered! The new feature will relieve busy workloads for rescue workers and volunteers, and speed up the adoption process. As powerful as it is though, the AI Bot could never replace the task completely because every pet has a beautifully uniquepaw-sonality!Learn morehere.
The team have been working hard behind the scenes to launch PetRescue TV, the fun video streaming tool bringing you all the joy and happiness you’ll need today! You’ll be seeing videos of adoptable rescue pets from all across Australia currently looking for love, from big dogs, to quirky kitties, to bonded besties. But read the warning label first: there’s a cuteness overload of boopable snoots coming your way. You’ll find some basic details about each pet (like their name and location) next to their video, and you can easily click through to their profile to find out even more about their specialpurr-sonalityand the home they’re looking for.
We madeim-purr-vementsto the two-factor authentication input, making it easier to understand and navigate. This also included a fix that means if you need to get a new token, you’ll be sent one automatically, meaning folks can start enquiring about adorable rescue pets even quicker!
We fixed somefurr-stratingbugs too this month - the photo editing modal for PetRescue member groups wouldn’t open when they tried to crop images - this is now sorted.
Adorable pet photos are the best, but not when they’re duplicated! We caught and gently released a pesky bug which caused some pet listing photos to be duplicated when members uploaded them.
We were busy doing zoomies this month, transferring a lot of data that was in a clunky format into a new format that’s faster and easier to manage. This will set us up to make performanceim-purr-vementsin the future!
For all the love birds out there, we set up Valentine’s Day gift cards featuring some loved-up pets - an adorable way to support PetRescue’s mission to create happiness and save lives!
Boop! We switched on the PIC requirement for groups rehoming farm animals, as mentioned last month.
January 2023
Just like your nosy pet who loves watching the neighbours from the window, it’sim-paw-tantfor us to keep up with all the happenings in the world of animal listing requirements. With Property Identification Codes now required for organisations rehoming livestock in Victoria, we made this a listing requirement for all farm animals listed for adoption in Victoria.
PetRescue’s Home2Home program allows a pet owner to safety rehome their pet - with assistance from our friendly team, they can chat with potential adopters, arrange meet-and-greets, and finally select the right human for their pet. We created a new Home2Home donation page this month which allows pet owners using the program to ‘pay it forward’ by making a donation that will cover another pet owner’s program fee. As many folks using Home2Home to rehome their pet are experiencing financial stress, this helps to keep the program accessible for all!
Who doesn’t get that strong urge to share every cute pet listing they come across on social media?! This month we fixed the pet listing Facebook share link, so you can continue to spam your loved one’s new feeds with adorable snoots.
We know how busy member groups are, so it’s su-purr annoying when pesky issues slow down their pet listing process! We fixed afurr-stratingissue in our API which meant if groups using ASM used the wrong case when typing in a location, a location name wouldn’t appear.
Zoom zoom! The team started the process of doing a major reorganisation of our database structure with the big goal of making things faster and more affordable.
While we were making the site do extra fast zoomies, we also optimised the ‘Rehomed’ page to make it quicker - previously it was very slow and impacted the entire system and its responsiveness.
The crew fixed a bug that caused the main menu alignment on screens in between mobile and tablet sizes to bork.
We also fixed an exploding page! When a large number of attachments were sent in a conversation (say, photos of a potential adopter’s backyard) the page gave up. Rest assured, this is now fixed.
Like when your doggo’s stuffed toy mysteriously explodes, it was time for a clean up! We cleaned up some old code and data, and also upgraded some software to new versions.
While we were in freshin’ mode, we removed some old code we no longer need for the PDF generator.
It’s su-purr important that the PetRescue platform is accessible, so as part of this, we made an update so that folks using assistive technologies can hit the ‘escape’ key to exit out of pop-ups.