Every Monday, I look back at the week and talk about what actually got done. Not in engineering-speak — just what changed for Glow Social customers, for my other projects, and for the business. Here's this week.
Glow Social (the app)
The big one: Smart Auto-Approve
This was a feature I've been thinking about for a while. Some of our customers log in, approve every post we generate without edits, and do that week after week. Those people don't need to approve anything — they trust the system, and the system should recognize that.
So we built a trust score. It looks at how often you approve vs. edit, how consistent you are, your publish volume. Based on that score, you can unlock two new automation levels:
- Semi-auto (trust score 60+): Most posts get auto-scheduled, unusual ones still come to you for review
- Full auto (trust score 85+): Everything schedules automatically, you get an email summary
The key design decision: it's always opt-in. The system unlocks the option; you decide whether to flip the switch. There's a new Automation tab in Settings with a visual trust score ring so you can see where you stand.
We also built a safety net: if something goes wrong during publishing, any auto-approved post rolls back to "pending approval" instead of disappearing.
Carousel publishing: fixed (for real this time)
One of our customers had 27 carousel posts fail in a row. Twenty-seven. The error message said "No social accounts selected" which made zero sense because he had three platforms connected.
Turned out to be two problems stacked on top of each other:
The fix: we now publish carousels as one unified post to all platforms and gave the endpoint enough time to actually finish uploading.
Smarter platform syncing
When a customer connects a new social platform (say they add Instagram after already having LinkedIn), all their upcoming scheduled posts need to go to the new platform too. That worked fine for regular posts — but carousels and videos silently failed because they need different media formats per platform.
Now the system detects whether a post needs re-publishing (carousel or video) vs. a simple metadata update, and handles each correctly.
Better error handling everywhere
We integrated Sentry user context so when something breaks, we know exactly which customer hit the issue. Before, we just had stack traces with no idea who was affected.
We also handled a specific Google Business Profile edge case where users connect GBP but don't pick a location — instead of a cryptic 500 error, they now get a clear message telling them to reconnect and select their business.
Image uploads: 10x smaller, 10x more reliable
Our AI generates images as PNGs that can be 4MB+. Uploading those from serverless functions was unreliable — too big, too slow, timeouts everywhere.
Now we compress everything to JPEG at 80% quality, capped at 1080px wide (matching Instagram's native resolution). A typical image goes from ~4MB to ~300KB. Uploads that used to fail now complete reliably.
Monthly post limit clarity
When a Core plan customer uses all 12 posts for the month, the old UI still showed swipeable content cards with a disabled button. People thought they were "out of ideas" when really they just hit their plan limit.
Now there's a clear "All caught up for this month" screen with the reset date and an upgrade CTA. No confusion.
Better stock video coverage
We switched our B-roll video source from Pexels (~150K videos) to Pixabay as the primary provider (~4.3M assets), with Pexels as fallback. Much better coverage for niche industries like HVAC, concrete, and landscaping.
Removed Reddit
Reddit was listed as a supported platform but never actually worked. We cleaned it out entirely — removed it from the database, UI, constants, everything. Honesty over optics.
Glow Social (the website)
Massive SEO overhaul
This was a content-heavy week for glowsocial.com:
- Expanded 15 thin blog posts from ~500 words each to 1,500-2,200 words with FAQ schema, internal links, and comparison tables
- Removed 9 duplicate/stub posts and set up proper 301 redirects
- Consolidated 6 cannibalized "time spent on social media" posts into one authoritative page
- Rewrote titles on high-traffic pages that had thousands of impressions but almost no clicks
- Created new comparison content: Later vs. Buffer, SM manager cost guide, affordable management guide
- Published 9 new competitive gap pieces targeting Vista Social, Hootsuite alternatives, and platform-specific guides
- Added FAQ schema across all comparison posts for AI engine extractability
- Built a comparison hub page linking to all our vs. pages
Client work: Schrock Construction
Built and shipped a complete website redesign for a Kitsap County remodeling/handyman company. Contact form hooked up, Facebook linked, favicon done. From zero to live in a day.
kathleencelmins.xyz
Launched this very site! Journal-style with Playfair Display headings, Courier Prime body text (typewriter vibe), warm cream/brown palette. Wrote up my own take on The Untethered Soul. Built a newpost script so I can publish a thought from the terminal in seconds.
Client work: Phil's Random Thoughts
Stood up a personal blog for a client. Card layout, sans-serif typography, fun scramble animation on the "Random" header. Simple but it's his.
The Well-Paid Expert
- Recovered 356 blog posts from the Wayback Machine (the old WordPress site was gone)
- Redesigned the whole thing with the original editorial branding
- Fixed 31+ broken category page URLs, 25 landing pages, proper canonical URLs
- Published a new blog post on manufacturing leadership
- Added proper redirect chains so Google doesn't lose the SEO equity
The theme
Looking at this list, the theme is reliability and reach.
On the product side: things that were silently broken are now fixed. Carousel publishing, image uploads, platform syncing — all working or failing gracefully with clear messages. On the content side: we massively expanded our search footprint. And on the client side: real websites, shipped.
Not every week is a "launch a new feature" week. Sometimes the most impactful work is making the existing stuff actually work.