Dotclear

The story of Dotclear started ten years (and one day) ago when, on August 13, 2003, Olivier Meunier, a young, promising, fiery and possibly slightly temperamental French developer, shared with the world a piece of software he had written for his own use.

At first, Dotclear is a simple zip file, hosted by Benoît Clair. Support merely consists in exchanging emails with Olivier. But quickly, interest for Dotclear starts to grow. A mailing list, then a forum appear; the first team is put together. Xave and Kozlika join Olivier and Benoît. Dotclear gains a written documentation and a support forum.

From the start, the goals of the team are clear: helping users, regardless of their computer skills, and leading them to autonomy. They must be able to install their own blog and take control over it without being specialists. Back then, personal weblogs are booming, and multiple online platforms welcome, free of charge, users that are soon disappointed by invading advertising and haphazard maintenance. In contrast, the alternative offered by Dotclear makes it possible to feel entirely at home in your own blog, and to give your readers a visual environment both original and aesthetically pleasing—Kozlika's incredibly refined first themes are miles away from what's then typically done.

Respecting good practices, without limiting their application to those in the technical know; giving accessibility a prime role, so that every and anyone can use Dotclear, including disabled users; united around the same desires and objectives, the team members become a tight group of friends, and this will always remain one of the prime aspects of the project. One day, a ten-year old boy writes to the forum to say he used Dotclear to open his blog on his favorite topic: firefighters. The team tells themselves they've managed alright.

Bloggers of all kinds have adopted Dotclear. Big names like Tristan Nitot, then president of Mozilla Europe^[1], or Daniel Glazman, chairman of the CSS Working Group of W3C^[2]. No-names that would soon become big names, like Maître Eolas^[3]. And, above all, you, me, and all the others.

Along the years, how many blog notes written, read, passionately commented, in a frenzy! In the French-speaking world, Dotclear pages have been the theater of great friendships, crushes, love, births, the premature departures of beloved buddies, long discussions, controverses, fits of laughter, disappointments, beautiful pictures, and awe. Or, in other words, life.

Year after year, the team grew bigger. Some had less time to give to the projects, others joined: Pep, Biou and Franck Paul have left the imprint of their personalities on Dotclear, while respecting its fundamental principles, for as the Prince of Salina in The Leopard, they knew that "if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change".

Dotclear remains a free (as in both beer and speech) software, supported by a team of passionate volunteers with a little touch of madness. Currently, projects abound and here's what's being discussed on the mailing list:

• soon, very soon, so soon that it's actually already here, version 2.5.2;
• fresh looks for the Dotclear and Dotaddict websites;
• more and more improvements in terms of ergonomics, accessibility, and good practices;
• a richer, more flexible editor.

Even when you don't understand (or read) half the messages on the mailing list, it's fantastic to see so much activity around Dotclear. Users, including silent, anonymous, unknown users we've never met, stay at the heart of the team's concerns, and this warms my cold, cold heart.

We have no doubt that in the future Dotclear will become such a sexy, ergonomic and powerful engine that our friend Laurent Gloaguen, who loves to tease us about our imminent death and pretends to hate felines, will move his blog to Dotclear and, in the same swift move, adopt a cat. This remains, after all, our true main goal.