2008 Dec 29
The end of year 2008 is nearing, we can now look back on what we have achieved. The outcomes are both positive and encouraging, but it's certainly nothing compared to what is coming up in 2009.
2008, year of Dotclear 2
For various reasons, Dotclear 2's development had stopped for 8 months then started again early in 2008. The delayed release of Dotclear 2 led many of you to worry about its future, which was perfectly understandable. We put an end to these doubts as we released version 2.0, and confirmed the project's vitality with version 2.1.
You gave Dotclear 2 a very warm and motivating welcome. For version 2.1, we listened to your needs and implemented some of them, particularly the automatic update feature. Thanks to you all for your trust all along this busy year.
The importance of the community
Near the end of the year, many of you expressed their support by financially contributing to Dotclear, which demonstrates your interest into the project and its future. Thanks again for donating.
Though in 2008 we focused on releasing Dotclear 2, in 2009 we intend to make all the necessary efforts to grow the user and contributor community, and we've already taking steps in that direction.
Dotclear's main website is now in English, featuring an (almost) full documentation, and the original French website is now at fr.dotclear.org. Other languages will soon be available, and if you have any linguistic talent, we'd be happy to count you in our translation team (to translate Dotclear or the website).
And as we don't want to leave anyone aside, theme and plugin creators will soon receive a nice Christmas present. We will tell you more about this in the next few days.
Finally, because it is a crucial aspect of the project, in 2009 we wish to invite you to join in and participate. We don't aim at playing "who's got the most themes and plugins around". We only wish to see you get involved and enjoy it.
See you next year
It will be 2009 in a few days and on behalf of all contributors, I sincerely thank you for your support and wish you great holidays as well as an excellent new year 2009.
More personally, I would like to thank the team for holding on when the times were hard, as well as the new contributors who joined us at the end of the year. You are all doing a great job, thank you!