September

This month Discovery and Advanced Search leave Early Access. New Smart Suggestions (called v3) also launches.

This is a significant month for releases and updates on Kenmei. First of all, Discovery and Advanced Search are now public and available to everyone, no longer being part of Premium's Early Access roster. Moreover, a completely redesigned version of Smart Suggestions (called v3) has been launched.

Check out the Changelog for the full list of changes ->

Discovery & Advanced Search Public Launch

I am delighted to announce that the first Early Access feature is graduating and becoming available to everyone. A year has passed since Discovery was originally released, and I am now satisfied with its functionality to make it public. There are still many improvements and updates planned; I have a comprehensive roadmap for Discovery in particular, but it is in a good enough state for everyone to use and benefit from it!

You can find the more in-depth overview in the original announcement here ->

But let me reiterate what these features provide. Discovery, as the name implies, is a page you can visit daily to discover new series to read. You'll find new releases as well as the most popular series released in the current month, separated by series type. The carousel at the top shows the most popular series overall but is subject to algorithmic changes.

Advanced Search, on the other hand, gives you comprehensive tools to find specific series, unlike Quick Search, which lets you find series simply by title or URL. Currently, the following filters are supported: series type, tags, sites series readable on, when it was added to Kenmei's database, and finally, a couple of sorting options, such as Most / Least Popular or Newest / Oldest.

As Kenmei grows and adds access to more data points, expect Advanced Search to support more and more filters, rivaling those at alternative manga / manhwa / manhua tracking sites.

My main focus this month has been the evolution of Smart Suggestions. Taking into account all the feedback gathered since the launch last year, I am pleased to present everyone with Smart Suggestions v3.

The main difference is that all your smart suggestions now live in a separate menu, called Smart Suggestions Manager, avoiding the long-standing issue of having to scroll through pages, especially on large lists, to find suggestions. That is especially crucial for series that are planned to be removed, whether deprecated or blacklisted.

Moreover, you can now bulk apply or ignore suggestions, letting you very quickly go through all the suggestions, even if you have over a hundred. And while not yet extremely useful, it's possible to filter by suggestion type. As more types are added, it will become more and more useful.

A final and very important announcement - Smart Suggestions are now becoming a permanent feature for Premium Lite. If you don't have a Premium subscription, you will still be able to see suggestions for blacklisted and deprecated sources, but better source suggestions, as well as future types of smart suggestions, will require it.

The final significant change this month is a completely redesigned Pricing Page. The previous version has been quite basic, so I wanted to not only make it more interesting but also provide more information, as many have provided feedback that they are not quite sure what Premium provides.

I've also collected reviews from existing Premium members, hopefully giving everyone a better idea of whether Lite is worth the money or not, as well as which features existing Premium members enjoy the most.

You'll also find an FAQ section at the end, with some common questions, which I plan to expand if I see more recurring questions. Check it out if you haven't already, and I hope the new page will answer all the questions you might have had about Kenmei Premium.

I had a lot of ambitious goals this month, so I was quite worried I wouldn't be able to finish everything I wanted. Most notably, I got the flu in the first week of the month, making it even more challenging to complete everything I set out to do.

But I am extremely happy to report that I have managed to complete 78% of what I set out to do. Most importantly, I've finished Smart Suggestions v3 as well as added the last remaining bits to Discovery and Advanced Search to make them public.

I am keeping the next month open-ended -> I plan to focus on refactoring and miscellaneous features, so I won't be providing the new priorities until I am ready to commit to the next batch of big updates.

But here's the list of priorities from the previous month, updated to reflect progress made: