Entry tags:

weekly announcements

Hi Dreamwidth! I'm sorry for missing last week's update -- at first I was waiting a bit so we could finalize some stuff, and then it was the weekend and fewer people read DW on the weekend, and then I just said, eh, screw it, I'll wait until it's time for the next week's update. So, y'all get me now.

Behind the cut:

* Development
* Feature Design
* Code Push
* Icon Keyword Renames
* Stats!
* Sad News
* DW Community News

Development

Last week's code tour, containing 30 patches: Code tour: 2010 October 08 to 2010 October 13

This week's code tour, containing 18 patches: Code Tour: 14 October to 20 October

Huge welcome goes to new contributer tyggerjai (who hasn't been afraid to dive straight into the big stuff!) and to teamdestroyer, a university course team consisting of previous contributor Erin and new contributors Alicia, Josh, and Will. Welcome, guys!

Feature Design

We've had some discussion lately about the "linked accounts" feature we want to add -- where you'll be able to, say, specify your fic journal/your RP journal as yours, and make it easier for you to comment as that journal while logged into your main journal without having to log out/log in, use LJLogin, or do complicated cookie swap extension shenanigans.

I've just posted an entry in dw_biz with our current thoughts on the matter to get feedback. If you have a second, please read it over and give your thoughts: RFC: Multiple Account Model

Code Push

We've resolved to have smaller, more frequent code pushes, in order to minimize the length of time we have to wait to get access to new features and bugfixes. We've got one tentatively scheduled for this weekend, which (if we do it) would include the following code tours:

(Some of) Oct 1 - Oct 7
Oct 8 - Oct 13
Oct 14 - Oct 20

Keep an eye on dw_maintenance for scheduling and details.

Icon Keyword Renames

The work we've been doing to re-enable icon keyword renames has been going a little more slowly than we expected (we're being cautious!) So, we're still migrating people to use the new setup -- we're about 10% done so far, and each day does around 50,000 users. You can check to see if your account has been migrated by going to your Edit Icons page and changing a keyword -- if you've been migrated, you'll have the option to rename the keywords retroactively, while if you haven't been migrated, you'll see a note that you can only change the keywords and not have it apply to your old comments/entries.

This does not mean you can't change keywords! You totally can. It's just the process of making that change apply to older entries/comments that's still disabled for some users. We're working to make sure that we re-enable it for everybody slowly but surely. (The old way of doing it turned out to be too much database load.)

Stats!

The last code push introduced some awesome enhancements to the Dreamwidth site stats page:

Dreamwidth Site Statistics

This was a Google Summer of Code project by anarres, and it includes all kinds of crazy awesome graphs and visualizations. There's also the legacy stats page, which contains some data that the new stats page doesn't. (Yet.)

One of the things that really makes me happy is the percentage of accounts that are paid users. We did our initial calculations based on a 5% paid user rate past a certain level of membership, and it makes me really happy that we're at over twice that (if you count over active users -- it's around 4% of total users.) This doesn't mean we don't need your support -- we totally do, since your payments are our only form of income -- but it's really helpful, and I wanted to say thank you to everyone who's supported DW with their payments!

Sad News

I'm very sad to announce that last week, we lost one of the DW family. skywardprodigal passed away last week after a short illness. She was a good friend, a wonderful person, and a passionate advocate for social justice, as well as an enthusiastic DW supporter, and I (and a lot of her other friends) will miss her a great deal.

If you'd like to donate somewhere in her memory, the cause that was nearest and dearest to her heart was help for Haiti, since it was her spiritual and familial home. Charities she recommended include Bethlehem Ministry, National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians, and Partners in Health.

As a reminder, if one of your friends on Dreamwidth should pass away, we can make the account a memorial account -- this will block anyone from having new entries posted to it, and in the future will prevent posts from being deleted and people from logging in (in case someone should break into the account). It doesn't prevent comments being made, so you'll still be able to leave memorial comments. If you'd like us to do this for a friend's account, contact us by opening a support request in the Account Payments category with the name of the account and we'll take care of it for you. (This is one of the things that I always dearly wish I don't have to do.)

DW Community News

* The Dreamwidth photo pool on Flickr is still open for new members! If you're on Flickr, consider sharing some of your photos with your fellow dwenizens. (Or just browse everyone else's art.)

* Still, the photo of the week is totally this one of haruka's gerbils modeling some DW swag.

* If you've got some gerbils of your own to clothe, the DW store is waiting for you. Check out Zazzle's currently running deals if you're looking for a bargain. And if you've got any designs that you'd like to submit for DW merch, just drop me a line!

* yvi is hosting a Braunschweig, Germany DW meetup at her place on November 20! If you're in the area, head on to her entry for details.

* I made a DW users Etsy treasury for last week -- DW Treasury, 10/13/10 -- and then the news post didn't get posted, so I shall use last week's treasury for this week! Check out some of the art your fellows have been making. (And if you've got a shop of your own, let me know in comments, so you can be featured in a future week's treasury.) (Disclaimer: this week has a piece of mine and sarah's in it -- we're faultlesspajama -- since one of the items I'd added last week subsequently sold out and I didn't have the time to go through and figure out whose it was to replace it.)

*

That's it for us for another week! As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion. (Even though I am totally behind on the suggestions queue omg.)

We'll see you next week for our next update.