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2013 Jul 25

Logbook: July 24, 2013

By Krazy Kitty on Thursday 25 July 2013, 21:31

As promised, I am back with more news. They're very good.

Among the large number of people who subscribed to the mailing list after our invitation from July 10, many came firmly intending to contribute their little (or large) brooks of skills and ideas to the Dotclear river. Even better, they didn't just say so: they did it.

The first week after the (re)birth of the mailing list was, how to put it... intense. Between 200 and 380 emails per day; multiple different topics; newcomers to Dotclear (and to mailing lists, their uses, customs, and ancestral traditions) and hardcore coders; very short term plans and visions for the centuries to come. We have used and abused a framapad page to throw around ideas, and little by little an organisation around different poles emerged[1]:

  • development;
  • animation and creation of content for the numerous websites of the Dotclear/Dotaddict galaxy;
  • Internet presence management (social networking and others);
  • events to organize or to which to participate;
  • design update of the website and other work around the html/css/js toys.

We have opened a public Trello space where each of us was able to indicate which "cards" s/he joined. To this day, we are 36 contributors registered for one or more current or future tasks. From the magic-dev to the two-left-hands, there's work for everybody to do. The first quick and visible results have been the short time period between the beginning of testing and the publication of version 2.5.1, thanks to the daily feedback from the list members and forum users.

We also regularly chats in IRC meetings (irc.freenode.net #dotclear), every Monday evening at 8pm for the code and Thursday evening at 8pm for the design and integration, occasionally on other topics, continuously for those who login with their morning coffee and log out from their pillow.

A few brilliant or wild ideas have been welcomed and will be studied, a few modest and seriously effective ideas have been adopted. It is too early to know whether this dynamic will stand the test of time, but my personal impression (and Kozlika's as well) is that it will be the case. We will nevertheless have to pay attention to avoid our favorite guilty pleasure: that we bite off more than we can chew, and that one of us begins the ascent of the Annapurna without a single sherpa to their side.

Over the summer, each one of the five topics listed above will be developed in more details on this blog. It's not too late to come play with us, we'll make space!

Let me add here that while the team exchanges in French, there are many English speakers in the community, including on the forums and on IRC. Feel free to ask questions, test development versions, report bugs, and tell us that you love Dotclear!

Note

[1] ... and the number of emails per day became manageable for a normal human being.

2 comments

2013 Jul 21

Dotclear 2.5.1

By Krazy Kitty on Sunday 21 July 2013, 23:48

The possibility to update your installation should have appeared on your dashboard.

Here's the brand new 2.5.1, which only came out rapidly after our call thanks to the numerous testers who got together to help us finalize it. You've been perfect, don't change anything!

In this new version you'll find: bug fixes, cosmetic improvements, a better quality of thumbnails in the media manager, and, most of all, the replacement of the old Flash multiple media upload thingie by another thingie that does exactly the same but in Ajax and without any security vulnerability.

There's also a patch for the developers who prefer this method.

May thousands of roses flower under the steps of Nikrou, who has taken care of the conversion of the upload manager with selfless commitment and in the echo free desert of the last weeks. This silence, the last straw that made our ex-but-still-in-the-team-boss throw the towel, has been broken by a mailing list featuring ten times as many users as before and users at the ready every morning on the forum to test updates and report bugs.

I'll be back very soon to tell you more about what's being discussed on the mailing list, but that isn't the goal of that note.

For now, let's rejoice about that new step, update our installs, and for the Parisians, let's celebrate Monday night, from 7pm onwards, at Quigley's Bar.

Talk to you very soon, there's much to tell. Happy times!

3 comments

Something's in the air

By Krazy Kitty on Sunday 21 July 2013, 23:31

Wow! Quite a lot has happened in the Dotclear community recently. Let me try to sum it all up for you.

On July 9th, Franck, who had been in charge of Dotclear since February, around the time when version 2.5 came out, decided to leave and slam the door on his way out.

While he was full of hopes, projects and enthusiasm, the community didn't follow. Team members, from lack of either time or eagerness, were less and less available. The new projects he announced (redesign the admin interface, replace the wysiwyg editor by something more advanced, give the Dotclear and Dotaddict websites a fresh look...) weren't enough to drive the team. Most of all, Franck missed what was for him the most important in Dotclear: the conviviality and team spirit. So Franck was quitting, and what would happen to Dotclear?

The door slamming certainly did one thing: suddenly, the community awoke.

People started talking, on Twitter and the Dotclear blog more particularly. On July 10th, Kozlika started outlining three possible futures for the project.

The first possibility is that a number of new, motivated and energetic developers (and, more generally speaking, contributors of all sorts) join Dotclear. The problem hasn't so much to do with money, marketing or communication, but mostly with contributions. With a vibrant community, there is no doubt that Dotclear can find its second wind.

The second possibility is to focus on simply keeping Dotclear afloat. No major changes, no projects for new features, simply a small team of developers, testers and webmasters devoted to fixing bugs and updating the code with new versions of PHP.

The third possibility is to slowly move to a close. Take the time (one or two years) to help users migrate towards new solutions, to ask the developers of other CMS for migration plugins, and so forth. This only requires a small team of people, with few programming skills, for a short time.

Then Kozlika opened the discussion on the dev mailing list. Everyone, independently of skills, was invited to join. Dozens and dozens of people did. Hundreds of messages were exchanged. Looks like Dotclear's not quite dead yet...

... And, indeed, we're releasing a new version !

Thanks to the wonderful community, changes are coming. Stay tuned for further updates!

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