Behind the Scenes: Matches, Makeovers and Seasonal Mischief
Behind the Scenes: Matches, Makeovers and Seasonal Mischief
SwingCircles has reached that satisfying stage where the individual pieces are beginning to join together and behave like an actual member journey, rather than a collection of attractive pages standing around waiting to be introduced. There has still been code, testing and the occasional firm conversation with WordPress, but this update is less about what is happening in the engine room and more about the things members will actually notice.
Seeing yourself as others see you
Once somebody has finished working through their profile, they can now click View My Profile as Members See It. The button automatically knows who is signed in and opens the correct member profile, which sounds obvious until you remember that websites are perfectly capable of showing everybody the same person and declaring the job complete.
This gives members a chance to spot anything they have missed, reconsider a particularly ambitious tagline or admire their handiwork before becoming discoverable. Profiles remain safely inside the members-only area, despite the phrase “view profile” occasionally sounding as though we might be placing them in the window for passing Google bots to inspect.
While I was there, I also tidied the Interests and experience section. It now separates things a member is experienced with from things they are interested in or would like to try. If the same choice appears in both lists, it is displayed only once under Experienced with. The mysterious double divider that kept returning to the page has also been removed again and warned that a third offence will result in permanent exile.
Mutual Matches have arrived
The larger new addition is Mutual Matches. This gives members a proper place to browse people whose preferences work both ways.
It does not simply show everybody who matches one side of the equation. A member appears only when their profile type is among the people you would like to meet and your profile type is among the people they would like to meet. This prevents the page from becoming a catalogue of people who have already indicated that they are looking for somebody else entirely.
Members who are Open to Meet Today appear first and receive a clear badge, while an optional filter can show only those currently available. Everyone else remains visible because being a good mutual match and being free this particular Tuesday are not quite the same thing. The nearby radar continues to focus on immediate availability; Mutual Matches handles the longer-lasting question of whether two people are actually looking for one another.
It has been tested with different member accounts, reciprocal and non-reciprocal preferences, and the appropriate amount of suspicious clicking. It works.
Profiles, but tidier
A smaller profile display bug also received its marching orders. If somebody selected the same item under both experience and interests, it previously appeared twice, giving the impression that they were either extremely enthusiastic or had forgotten what they had just said.
The profile now has two clearer groups: Experienced with and Interested in / want to try. Overlapping choices stay in the experience group, while the second section displays only genuinely additional interests. If there is nothing unique to show, the empty group quietly disappears instead of standing there looking awkward.
These are modest changes, but they make profiles easier to understand at a glance—which matters when somebody is deciding whether another member might be their sort of person.
A seasonal wardrobe for the website
SwingCircles has also begun acquiring seasonal outfits. I wanted something playful like the patterned backgrounds used for Halloween, but original to the site and wearing our own Bright Western boots.
The first designs now include Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Christmas. Halloween has tiny cowboy ghosts, bats, potion bottles and suspicious horseshoes. Valentine’s brings roses, heart-shaped locks, love letters and romantic cowboy boots. Christmas has holly, mistletoe, baubles, presents and hats that look ready for a festive night at the saloon.
These will eventually work as site-wide seasonal backgrounds behind the main content panels, adding atmosphere without making the words difficult to read. The website will therefore be able to dress for the occasion without requiring every individual page to undergo a festive renovation.
Awards, anniversaries and possible real-life trouble
Another idea has made its way onto the proper project list: the annual Circles Awards.
The ranking page could use the likes already collected by WP ULike to show the most-loved posts in each category. It would include the post title, category and number of likes, with a countdown leading to the SwingCircles launch anniversary.
That could remain an online celebration—or it could become a real-life anniversary and awards event. There is something rather appealing about presenting the year’s favourite articles and community moments in person, complete with tickets, a venue and everyone pretending they have not spent twenty minutes deciding what to wear.
A public Circles Awards page would also give us something friendly and non-explicit to advertise more widely. It would still be completely transparent about belonging to SwingCircles, but “annual community awards event” can stroll through advertising doors that might become nervous at a more direct description of the platform.
How far have we actually come?
Finally, I revisited the competitor-feedback research collected earlier in the project. It contained 35 recurring complaints, pain points and feature requests from another platform. Each one has now been checked against the current SwingCircles build.
Ten are fully addressed, fourteen are partly addressed, four are already planned and seven are things I have deliberately decided not to copy. That last category matters. Competitor research is useful for spotting genuine frustrations; it is not a shopping list requiring us to reproduce every button, feed and obscure forum section.
The biggest remaining opportunity is still Invite to Connect: the permission-based bridge between finding a mutual match and being allowed to interact privately. It is a substantial piece of work involving invitations, acceptance, decline, withdrawal, notifications, rate limits, blocking and reporting.
I may have been circling it respectfully while completing several smaller jobs, but the journey leading to it is now in much better shape:
Create a profile → See how it looks → Browse Mutual Matches → View a member → Invite to Connect
The runway is built. The large aircraft waiting at the end of it is clearing its throat.
Don’t forget to vote for this article to win ‘Best in Category’ at the annual ‘Circles Awards’ here:
