Club editing and name history

Clubs are a core concept in outing.social — they're how local groups organize recurring activities. Today we shipped the ability to edit clubs after creation, including avatar uploads and a name history feature.

Why track name changes?

On a decentralized protocol, identity and naming matter. If a club changes its name, members should be able to see the history. Maybe "Portland Sunday Riders" became "PDX Gravel Collective" — that context is worth preserving.

Every name change gets recorded with a timestamp. The indexer picks them up from the AT Protocol firehose automatically, and the club page shows previous names in a subtle history section.

Avatar uploads

Club avatars use the AT Protocol's blob upload mechanism. You select an image, it gets uploaded to your PDS, and the blob reference becomes part of the club record. Sounds simple, but getting DPoP authentication right for blob uploads took some doing. The blob reference format is specific to atproto and the docs are... aspirational. But it works, and clubs can finally have proper visual identities.

Feeling lived-in

We also added sport filters on the clubs listing — quickly find cycling clubs vs. hiking clubs vs. everything else. Small features, but they're the kind of thing that makes a platform feel like people actually thought about it.