What we shipped.
Honest changelog. Every entry is something you can actually use today — no "coming soon".
Textual hero CTA — typography over chrome
The above-the-fold CTA is now a clean text-led cluster: a large bold 'Launch your academy free →' as a primary link with an animated underline + arrow slide, paired with a quieter 'or see pricing' secondary, and a single trust line below (no card · 60-second setup · cancel any day). Plus a tertiary nudge to try the certificate designer with no signup. Premium feel via typography + micro-animation, not visual weight.
Eight alternative-platform comparison pages
Dedicated /alternatives/<slug> pages for Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific, Podia, Gumroad, LearnWorlds, Graphy, and TagMango. Each one ships a side-by-side illustration, a savings calculator with real ₹ math, illustrated pain-point cards, a feature × rival matrix, a 5-step migration timeline, a per-rival FAQ, and a closing CTA — all tinted to a per-rival accent. Surfaced in a new featured panel inside the Resources mega-menu.
See the Kajabi comparison →Homepage hero rebuilt around the 4 USPs
New H1 'An academy that's actually yours' plus a live USP showcase in the right column — animated ₹ earnings counter, all-in-one teacher-side surface stack, export demo, India-native chip cycle. Below the hero: a dedicated Four-USP section, a feature × tool-category honesty matrix, and a 'Switching from?' chip rail. Every visitor-facing surface scrubbed of competitor brand names; alternatives live on their own pages.
Whiteboard feature page — 25+ teaching templates surfaced
The whiteboard page now leads with the template library, not the canvas. K-12 grade-band scaffolds (KG → Class 11-12), teaching scaffolds (lesson plan, K-W-L, Frayer, lab report), thinking templates (mind map, Venn, brainstorm), analysis (SWOT, persona, fishbone), planning (Eisenhower, OKR, retro). Three Indian-classroom scenarios show how vedic-maths, NEET-bio, and JEE-coaching teachers actually use the surface.
See the whiteboard →New quizzes feature page — 18 ready-to-fire templates
Entrance prep (JEE Mathematics drill, NEET Biology MCQs, GMAT data sufficiency), classroom (pop quiz, math fluency, physics laws, chemistry equations), higher ed (essay rubric, case study), engineering (code review, system design), management (PM scenarios, product sense). Five question types, auto + teacher grading, anti-cheat, leaderboard feed, cross-channel score notifications.
See quiz templates →Post types in cohort communities — and wins auto-cross-post to the Wall of Love
Composer now opens with a 4-way type chooser: Announcement (auto-pins, host-only), Question (mark answered with a green ✓), Win (auto-🎉, cross-posts to the public Wall of Love), Discussion (the catch-all). A filter chip rail above the feed lets students slice by type with live counts. Questions tracked through to resolution with an authored-by-comment credit for future helpfulness scoring.
Community health pulse + at-risk member nudges
Host-only collapsible strip on every batch detail page: 14-day DAU ratio, posts/day, reactions/post — each with a trend arrow vs the prior 14-day window. Expand to a drawer with the at-risk member list (no activity in 7 days) and a one-click 'Send a check-in to all' button that fires cross-channel notifications via the same dispatcher live polls use.
Dead-community recovery — auto-surfaces when a batch goes quiet
When a batch has >5 members and no posts in 14 days, a host-only amber banner appears with three one-click actions: send a templated 'we miss you' (auto-pins as a real post), schedule a Q&A session (deep-links the new-class form with course pre-selected), or archive (soft-delete via the existing trash with 7-day recovery). Dismissible for 7 days so the host gets a fresh nudge if it keeps drifting.
Up-next autoplay in the recording player
In the last 30 seconds of any recording, an 'Up next' preview card slides into the bottom-right with the next recording's title + duration. When the video ends, it promotes to a 10-second countdown with a progress bar — click the card to skip ahead, click X to stay on this recording. Same-course continuation preferred; falls back to next-in-sort-order.
Watch-history pill rail on the recordings list
Three sort-mode pills on /dashboard/recordings: Newest (default for teachers), Continue (in-progress recordings sorted by last-played-first, with a live count of your backlog), Recent (everything you've touched, last-played first). Default sticks per-browser via localStorage so a returning student lands in the mode they left in.
Raised-hand variants — Got it / Public / Private
Students raising a hand now have three intents on a chevron popover next to the main button: raise publicly (whole-room question, the default), ask privately (host sees the question in amber with a 'wants a DM, not a mic unmute' hint), or 'Got it — never mind' (lowers the hand and signals a tiny 👍 to the host instead of a silent disappear). Host queue colour-codes the two visibility states.
Welcome-back banner — signed-in users skip the marketing pitch
Signed-in operators visiting / now see a one-line banner at the top: avatar + 'Welcome back, [name]. Cohort 7 live class in 32 min.' with a direct 'Open dashboard' CTA. Pulls from the same liveSessions selector the dashboard uses, dismissible for 7 days via localStorage. The marketing surface still renders below for users who landed there intentionally.
Recordings now have shareable timestamp links
Every recording has a standalone route at /dashboard/recordings/<id>?t=<seconds>. The player exposes a 'Copy link to this moment' button that writes the current playhead into the URL so you can paste 'watch this at minute 12:30' into a community post or email. Direct visits auto-seek and resume from the deep-linked moment.
Unified filters popover on the recordings list
The two parallel chip rails (watch state + visibility tier) collapsed into a single 'Filters' button with grouped checkboxes inside a popover, plus an active-pill rail so you always see what's narrowing your results without re-opening. Same pattern coming to other list pages next.
Resume overlay countdown + Enter/R shortcuts
Opening a half-watched recording now shows 'Resume from 12:30?' with a 4-second auto-resume countdown. Move the cursor over the overlay to cancel the countdown, press Enter to resume, R to start over. Calmer than the previous 'wait forever for a click' pattern.
Per-community notification preferences + 24h snooze
A bell popover in every batch header lets members pick one of four notification levels (Everything, @Mentions + replies, Announcements only, Off), plus a separate 'ping me when a live class starts' toggle that's independent of feed activity. A 'Quiet for 24 hours' snooze pill defers everything except class-start alerts. New defaults are 'mentions + announcements' so a fresh member isn't drowned on day one.
Sticky 'live now' bar in every community feed
When a class attached to the community is live or starting within 15 minutes, a colour-coded bar pinned to the top of the feed shows the class title, the countdown, and a one-click Join / Hop into the lobby button. Auto-hides when the class ends or the host dismisses it.
New batches now ship with three seeded posts
Fresh batches no longer open to an empty feed — they ship with three real posts the host can edit or delete: a pinned welcome card, an 'introduce yourself' thread, and a 'what you'll get from this cohort' post. The first student to land sees an active-looking community instead of dead silence.
Comprehension check inside live classes
Students get two pill buttons during class: 'With you 👍' and 'Lost 🤔'. The host sees a live ratio with an automatic alert when more than 30% of votes flip to Lost — 'slow down or ask a question.' Votes expire every 2 minutes so the ratio reflects current mood, not cumulative drift.
Host connection health bar — recording survives a wifi drop
Floating bar in the top-left of the live host stage. Green when connected with student count + recording state. On disconnect, flips to amber 'Reconnecting — your class is still live, recording continues' and auto-mutes the host mic so garbled half-connected audio doesn't blast the room. After three failed reconnects, escalates to a red 'Connection lost' card with a one-tap 'Refresh & rejoin' button.
End-of-class wrap — one screen, not three steps
The wrap wizard collapsed from a 3-step form to a single recap card with everything pre-filled: outcome defaults to 'held', summary auto-drafts from the agenda items you ticked off, follow-up defaults to none. Host's only required action is one click: 'Looks good — send to students'. Edit anything inline before publishing.
Recording-processing card — no more dead time between class end and player ready
The 30-180 seconds between class end and the recording URL landing used to show nothing. Now: a processing card on the class detail page with three synthetic stages (Saving → Encoding → Uploading) and a live pseudo-progress bar. Students see the recording is on its way; the host email still fires when the file is genuinely ready.
Live class right-rail panels — one expanded at a time
Host stage panels (Agenda, Polls, Hands, Breakouts) now follow mutual-exclusion: only one is expanded at a time. When a hand goes up, the Hands panel auto-previews for 4 seconds then restores whichever panel was previously open. Counters live on the panel pills so the host sees backlog depth at a glance.
Inline AV preflight strip — no more first-visit modal wall
First-time visitors to a live class lobby no longer get a blocking modal asking to test camera + mic. Replaced with a silent traffic-light strip inside the waiting room (📷 mic / 📹 camera / 📶 network), auto-probing in the background. The full AV wizard still mounts but only opens when the student clicks 'Run a full setup check' OR a probe fails.
Removed unverified review count from structured data
JSON-LD on the homepage previously declared aggregateRating with a specific count + score that wasn't backed by a public review page — Google's rich-snippet policy disallows that and would have suppressed the snippet (or worse, flagged in Search Console). Removed pending a real reviews surface.
Hover-revealed CTAs now visible on touch devices
Dozens of feature tiles across the marketing site used Tailwind's opacity-0 / group-hover:opacity-100 pattern for 'See how it works →' affordances. On touchscreens (which never fire hover) those CTAs were permanently invisible. A single CSS rule in @media (hover: none) now forces them visible at 70% opacity so a tap target is always clear.
White-label your portal — strip platform attribution
The Brand → Advanced tab now exposes two toggles: hide the “Powered by The Big Class” footer line, and a stronger “hide every platform-branded element” switch that reserves headroom for email footers, error pages, and share previews. Both gated behind Pro (and up) so the lock icon points to billing; once enabled, the public portal footer drops the attribution row entirely.
Open brand settings →Transcripts now actually surface on the recordings page
The recordings page wasn't fetching transcript_url from the backend, so the .vtt sidecar produced by Whisper never reached the player. Now each row fetches its room state lazily, badges with "Captions + transcript ready" when present, and offers a one-click Transcribe button on rows that don't yet have a transcript (handy for recordings made before GROQ_API_KEY was set).
Clearer live-caption state during calls
The captions toggle now shows real-time status (Starting → Listening → Captions on, with a "Listening — start speaking…" hint while you're still silent). Mic-permission denials surface as an amber banner with a fix-it instruction instead of failing silently. SR errors log to the browser console for support.
Billing / Payouts / Webhooks now respect your live session
Pages on /dashboard/billing, /dashboard/payouts, and /dashboard/developer/webhooks were showing a sign-in card to users who were already signed in but whose access token wasn't in localStorage (older signup, incognito clear, cross-device). They now try the refresh-cookie path first and only fall back to the sign-in card when the cookie session is truly gone.
AI course builder — free
Sparkles buttons on the course editor draft titles, descriptions, and full outlines. Powered by Llama-3.3-70b via Groq's free tier (OpenAI as a fallback if you'd rather). Shows up only when the backend has a key configured — no broken buttons.
See pricing →Auto-transcripts on every recording + live captions
Every class recording runs through Whisper-large-v3 after egress, producing a .vtt sidecar that the player picks up natively (CC button works) and a plain-text panel under the video. In-call captions overlay your own speech via Web Speech API — Chrome / Edge / Safari supported.
Publish changes — with 3-month version history
Edits to your portal (brand, pages, blog, faculty, testimonials) stay in a draft until you click Publish. Confirm-before-publish modal, label each version, restore from any snapshot within 90 days. The 3-month history + restore is paid-tier; publish itself works on every plan.
Plan-aware lock icons across the dashboard
Restricted features now show a small amber lock with a click-to-explain popover and a one-click upgrade CTA — instead of bouncing you off the page. Wired into the sidebar (Domain & URL), the storefront product cap, and published-courses cap; more surfaces will pick this up as we expand.
Analytics deep dive — real numbers, real charts
12-month revenue area chart, signups vs. enrollments overlay, acquisition funnel from signup to certificate, top courses by revenue with completion %, and a cohort-retention heatmap. The retention heatmap is Studio-tier (advanced analytics).
Open analytics →13 webhook events wired end-to-end
student.created/updated/deleted, enrollment.created, order.paid, course.published/archived, live_session.started/ended, recording.ready, certificate.issued — all firing from the right code paths. HMAC-signed payloads, automatic retries, delivery logs.
Manage webhooks →Wider native-language coverage on the customer portal
53 new strings translated accurately into Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi — covering home, courses, store, library, blog, footer, and sign-in flow. Other Indian languages fall back through English until natives land.
Refer & Earn — built in
Generate personal invite links with one form (friend's name, country, WhatsApp). Cross-tenant conversion log automatically flips invites to Joined when your friend completes signup. Reward: 1 month free per converted referral.
How it works →Wall of Love
A public showcase of student work, quotes, and wins. Upload an image, drop a quote, embed a video. Pin the best ones. Tag by vibe — Love, Win, Creative, Milestone. Lives publicly at /wall.
See community →Leaderboard with scoring rules
Students earn points for attending classes, taking and passing quizzes, submitting assignments, completing lessons. Best score per item counts. Filter by course or last 7/30 days. Visible scoring rules — no black box.
See leaderboard →Recurring live classes
Schedule a single class or a whole series — daily, weekly, every-2/3/4 days, or custom. One Meet link reused across instances. Bulk-edit, bulk-cancel, bulk-notify from the list view.
See live classes →Post-class recap + attach-a-quiz
After class, mark as held, drop the recording, paste the summary, attach materials — including quizzes and homework with due dates. Students see them on the class card with one-tap actions.
Recap workflow →Past Classes archive
Browse every past session across every course. Filter by missing-recap so nothing slips. Embedded recordings + materials render inline; videos are width-capped so nothing overflows.
See live classes →Certificate Template Designer
A drag-and-drop canvas editor for your own certificate templates. Six block types — Text, Rectangle, Circle, Signature (text or image), QR code, Image. 17 typefaces across Sans / Serif / Display / Signature / Mono. Bind any text block to a variable like {{student_name}}. Save, favourite, duplicate. Custom templates flow straight into the bulk-issue pipeline.
See the designer →Brand refresh
New wordmark — "the" + bold BIG + "class" — that visually echoes how the brand is said. New homepage with animated SVG orbit, six feature pages, dedicated pricing + use-cases + about pages.