Presenting SuttaCentral 2019

Today we are proud to release the next update to SuttaCentral. We’ve been working hard on this for the past few months, and there’s a lot that’s new. This is not like the update last year, where we completely rebuilt the site. It’s a step forward, building on the 2018 site and laying the foundations for the future.

Finding things in your Language

We’ve got thousands of translations on SC, but it has never been easy to find translations in your own language, especially if there are only a few. We’ve introduced a range of new features to make that much easier.

  • Language selection: Choose your language from the menu. It will highlight the suttas translated in your language and show where those suttas are.
  • Language pages: These may be selected via the toolbar menu. They give an overview of the content on SC, what is translated in each language, who the translators are, and what remains untranslated.
  • Yellow Brick Road: Well, that’s what we called it, but what it actually shows is not yellow bricks but green dots. These highlights in the sidebar show you where to find translations in your language, once you have selected it. When in doubt, click a green dot!
  • Site translation: The site interface has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese. See these through the language selector.

Sutta cards (suttaplex)

  • New design: We present the details for each sutta in cards, which we call a “suttaplex”. The design of these is greatly improved, so that they show much more clearly what is what.
  • Find in page: This was broken previously on the suttaplex lists, now it works.
  • SuttaCentral Voice: The awesome voice app by Karl Lew, developed in close conjunction with dedicated SuttaCentral volunteers, is now live at voice.suttacentral.net.
  • Audio support: Each relevant suttaplex has an audio icon, where you can listen to suttas on SuttaCentral Voice.
  • Compact view: If you prefer to see more suttas on a page, enable Compact View in the toolbar menu. Click on the suttaplex title to toggle the full view.

Content

  • Verses of the Senior Monks and Nuns (Thera/Therī-gāthā): A long-awaited release of my latest translations.
  • Corrections and improvements: Some thousands of minor updates to my translations of the nikayas, with a focus on consistency.
  • Reading guides: New Reading Guides to the Pali Suttas by myself are live, too.

System

In addition to these apparent changes, there’s a lot more that went on under the skin.

  • Platform upgrade: The entire app has been upgraded from Polymer 2 to Polymer 3. This was a lot of work, but is essential going forward, as it builds on modern standards. We also upgraded multiple parts of the site to the brand-spanking new LitElement, to which the entire site will eventually be migrated.
  • Performance: We made various fixes and adjustments, and the site feels snappier now.
  • PWA fixes: Using the site offline is one of our best features, yet it has proven difficult to ensure it works reliably. We have completely gone over this.
  • Use webpack: The site is now bundled with webpack, allowing greater control over versions and cache.
  • Many bugfixes and other small improvements: Many.

See the full list of completed issues here:

We hope you enjoy the new and improved SC. Of course, I see so many things that can still be improved, but right now it’s the “two bricks in the wall” time! We’re super-proud of what we have achieved.

Thanks so much to the team from STXnext who did the bulk of the work: Jan, Przemysław, and Robert, as well as Jose for his management support. In what is truly an unprecedented gesture, the developers, together with STXnext, have offered to continue working part time on a pro bono basis for SuttaCentral over the next few months. This will be on their own time, but with the support of the firm. It is an expression of the enthusiasm and genuine care that they have for the project.

Special thanks for the site translation are owed to Teo Yew Thong, Hansen Sun, and Mei Zuan for Chinese, and Gabriel Laera, Marco Quaresma, and Robson Silva da Silva for Portuguese.

And of course, thanks to everyone on the SC team, especially Aminah, who took on the task of IT team management and did it like a pro; Blake, who has been with us each step of the way; and Deepika, who has looked after our finances.

Finally, a huge sadhu to all our donors, who have made it possible. Professional IT development is not cheap, and it is sometimes hard to see the long, complex work that goes on behind the scenes. We have striven to respect every cent that is offered, and to work hard to make it as good as possible.

The suttas are the best: so beautiful and so wonderful. They deserve the best. I cannot think of a better way to serve you all than to keep on making our site better and better, in gratitude and love to all sentient beings.

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You can easily recognize the new site by the green dots in the sidebar. But because of our aggressive caching and service worker, sometimes the old site will be quite persistent.

If you’re not seeing the green dots, try a hard refresh (ctrl + shift + R or whatever it is on your system).

If it’s still not showing, delete your cache for the site.

  • Chrome: Right click → Inspect → Application → Clear Site Data
  • Chrome: Right click → Inspect → Storage → Select and clear everything.
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Congratulations to everyone involved in reaching this milestone!! :heart_eyes::star::sparkles::balloon::confetti_ball::sparkler::fireworks::rice_scene::tada:

Thus the teaching has been well explained by me, made clear, opened, illuminated, stripped of patchwork—and has been well presented on SuttaCentral!

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It’s increasing in awesomeness everyday! :firecracker::fireworks::heavy_heart_exclamation: Good new version!

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Congratulations, its sooooo … my English is perhaps not sufficient to express it properly! Thanks so much to all those who put their efforts in! :anjal: :bowing_woman: :pray: :woman_cartwheeling: :woman_cartwheeling: :woman_cartwheeling: :heart: :tada: :balloon: :sparkler:

Just as someone was searching for the Mettasutta on SCV, I was browsing around that a little bit on the main page and came across—I guess—a little bug. Where should those be reported?

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Thank you Bhante @sujato and everyone else who contributed to the new release. Sounds like a lot of amazing features. One thing that really stood out to me was to be able to look at a sutta and see a speaker icon, which lets people know they can also listen to the sutta. And indeed they can! Not sure why, but I’m almost ecstatic regarding this feature. Another special thanks @karl_lew for helping to make this possible with the SutttaCentral Voice app.

with gratitude and metta,

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Thank you so much for this gift, Bhante. The verses are short and powerful!
:pray: :pray: :pray:

And the whole 2019 release is FANTASTIC!

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@Javier, would you be so kind as to include links to these translations on the Wikipedia pages Therigatha and Theragatha? :anjal:

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I can’t seem to find a link to the forum from the main suttacentral.net site.

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I answered your question here :slightly_smiling_face:

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Congrats!

SuttaCentral is definitely my favorite designed site on the entire web! :smiley: I was looking at the repository, I’d love to explore the code, and maybe even contribute sometime.

Fantastic job to all of the contributors!

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I am immensely grateful for the work you all have done on this my heartfelt connection to the wisdom and compassion of Buddha, and his work to liberate us all. Many, many thanks!

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I quite agree! The design is slick, easy to use and understand, and above all, it works!

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Looks like someone already did it for the Theragatha, but not Therigatha

on it

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