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Weekly Post: October 5th, 2009
Monday, Monday, Monday. And time for another weekly update from the corrals down here at Ranch DW. Okay, while we might not be anything like a ranch (yet), it is still time for us to tell you what's going on this week.
During the last news post I mentioned that![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
denise was off on vacation to Disney World and was wishing everybody was there. What she didn't tell me until her return was that this wasn't just any vacation. No, there was a dark and sinister purpose...
That purpose can now be revealed. I am extremely proud to announce (with Denise's permission!) that she and her girlfriend![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sarah have decided to tie the knot. The wedding is planned for early 2011, at Disney World, and I cannot tell you how extremely excited and happy I am for the both of them.
Congratulations to you both!! I look forward to the wedding. :)
This is nowhere near as exciting as the wedding announcement. But hey, today was officially the first business day of my full-time employment by Dreamwidth Studios, LLC. While we don't have healthcare (or any other insurance...yet), it is a very proud milestone for us. To have two full-time employees on top of dozens of active volunteers is, frankly, amazing.
Next step: have enough money to actually pay livable salaries. I cannot express enough my gratitude to my smart, beautiful wifejaninedog who not only agreed with my crazy plan but encouraged me to do it. Janine: I could not be a luckier man. Thank you.
And with that out of the way...
I need to spruce up my office! Yes, I have cordoned off a corner of our bedroom and put in a desk and some hardware I had lying around to build myself a little Dreamwidth space. However, the walls are a little drab and I'm thinking that the perfect thing to spruce them up would be ... postcards! That's where you come in.
If you feel up to sending in a postcard, I'd love one. You can mail it to Mark Smith, 29059 Lassen St, Hayward, CA 94544. If you feel like writing your username on the back, I'll write you a custom limerick! If that isn't compelling, I don't know what is...
Our mistress of documentation,rho, has returned from some time off galavanting around the countryside. Upon her return (and suitable recovery from the lagging jets) she has worked hard to catch up on updating our FAQs. She's also currently putting together the specifications for a rewrite of our FAQ system.
One of the things that we have promised we'd do with Dreamwidth, and we're holding ourselves to it, is spending time working on the core functionality to make the site friendlier and easier to use. The ability to get people to use the site, figure it out, and know how to get help when they need it cannot be overstated.
The same sort of work is going on with our support triumvirate (zarhooie, domtheknight, and chemicallace). They're speccing out a support system that will actually work for a site like Dreamwidth and will scale up as we grow. They're making good progress on that, and then we'll dive into implementation.
This week's code tour was put together byzarhooie and is available here:
http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/25808.html
We had 23 separate bugs marked RESOLVED FIXED (that means we fixed whatever the problem was, usually through a commit). You can read all about them above.
This week, my personal focus is going to be on getting the review queue down to manageable numbers (patches no older than 72 hours in the queue at any time). I'm also going to be working on implementing site-wide search, which we intend to roll out in 2-3 weeks.
Now that I am on the scene full-time, we expect things to start moving along at a much quicker pace, specifically around larger features. Traditionally it has been hard for people to find time to work on anything large because all of our developers have been volunteers with lives. We've made some amazing improvements even given that limitation, and now our range is expanding up to include the larger scoped items we haven't really had much time on yet.
Some of the things that you will see coming down the pipe in the next few months:
* Site-wide search (find things on the site! everywhere!)
* Draft and scheduled posts (better post management in general)
* Photo hosting (and emailed photos)
* Payment system work (recurring payments, virtual gifts)
* Cross-site friends page reading (still tentative, but we're hopeful)
This isn't an ordered list, really. We know that we're going to do site-wide search this week. We'll probably tackle the draft/scheduled posts next, which gives us some good features. After that, we'll see what's up next.
There are many, many ways to contribute to Dreamwidth, and not all of them require you to do any coding! In fact, right now, what we're really looking for are people who are passionate about some of our upcoming features to help us shape them and figure out how they're going to work.
The current big example is photo hosting. While we're not going to start working on it in the next few weeks in the code, we should start now on putting together the design so that when we do sit down to code it, we know what we're going to do. If you're interested in participating in this process, please see Denise's post:
http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/2794.html
Thank you for contributing!
One of the reasons that I choose to do my blogging/journaling/writing on Dreamwidth is because of the community that we're building. I think that people connecting to people is one of the most amazing things about the Internet and is probably one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful!) tool of our lifetimes.
If you are looking for places to connect with like-minded people, here are a few suggestions:
*![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
omnomnom and boilingwater are cooking-focused communities for people who like to make things to eat. The former is having a contest right now, too, you can win some paid time by posting Autumn appropriate recipes.
*endings is an interesting community for people who like the ends of things. Stories, poems, movies, anything. Just don't spoil it and give away where it comes from!
*metaquotes is a place where people go to post "amusing, insightful, witty (etc.) things said on Dreamwidth". Some very amusing stuff here.
*earwormhole ... for when that blasted song just won't go away!
And, as always, you can watch or contribute to![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_community_promo if you want to get a little more hands on in your search for members (and content).
Whew, long update this week. A few parting words, and then I'll be out of your hair -- until next week!
We sent out about 20,000 invite codes a little while ago too. Hopefully you got them, and if you didn't, it's probably because you still have some that haven't been used yet. Get cracking! :-)
Once again, congratulations to Denise and Sarah. See you next week!
1. Totally Trumps Everything Else
During the last news post I mentioned that
denise was off on vacation to Disney World and was wishing everybody was there. What she didn't tell me until her return was that this wasn't just any vacation. No, there was a dark and sinister purpose...That purpose can now be revealed. I am extremely proud to announce (with Denise's permission!) that she and her girlfriend
sarah have decided to tie the knot. The wedding is planned for early 2011, at Disney World, and I cannot tell you how extremely excited and happy I am for the both of them.Congratulations to you both!! I look forward to the wedding. :)
2. First Day of Work
This is nowhere near as exciting as the wedding announcement. But hey, today was officially the first business day of my full-time employment by Dreamwidth Studios, LLC. While we don't have healthcare (or any other insurance...yet), it is a very proud milestone for us. To have two full-time employees on top of dozens of active volunteers is, frankly, amazing.
Next step: have enough money to actually pay livable salaries. I cannot express enough my gratitude to my smart, beautiful wife
janinedog who not only agreed with my crazy plan but encouraged me to do it. Janine: I could not be a luckier man. Thank you.And with that out of the way...
I need to spruce up my office! Yes, I have cordoned off a corner of our bedroom and put in a desk and some hardware I had lying around to build myself a little Dreamwidth space. However, the walls are a little drab and I'm thinking that the perfect thing to spruce them up would be ... postcards! That's where you come in.
If you feel up to sending in a postcard, I'd love one. You can mail it to Mark Smith, 29059 Lassen St, Hayward, CA 94544. If you feel like writing your username on the back, I'll write you a custom limerick! If that isn't compelling, I don't know what is...
3. Documentation and Support Team Updates
Our mistress of documentation,
rho, has returned from some time off galavanting around the countryside. Upon her return (and suitable recovery from the lagging jets) she has worked hard to catch up on updating our FAQs. She's also currently putting together the specifications for a rewrite of our FAQ system.One of the things that we have promised we'd do with Dreamwidth, and we're holding ourselves to it, is spending time working on the core functionality to make the site friendlier and easier to use. The ability to get people to use the site, figure it out, and know how to get help when they need it cannot be overstated.
The same sort of work is going on with our support triumvirate (
zarhooie, domtheknight, and chemicallace). They're speccing out a support system that will actually work for a site like Dreamwidth and will scale up as we grow. They're making good progress on that, and then we'll dive into implementation.4. Development Progress
This week's code tour was put together by
zarhooie and is available here:http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/25808.html
We had 23 separate bugs marked RESOLVED FIXED (that means we fixed whatever the problem was, usually through a commit). You can read all about them above.
This week, my personal focus is going to be on getting the review queue down to manageable numbers (patches no older than 72 hours in the queue at any time). I'm also going to be working on implementing site-wide search, which we intend to roll out in 2-3 weeks.
5. Development Roadmap
Now that I am on the scene full-time, we expect things to start moving along at a much quicker pace, specifically around larger features. Traditionally it has been hard for people to find time to work on anything large because all of our developers have been volunteers with lives. We've made some amazing improvements even given that limitation, and now our range is expanding up to include the larger scoped items we haven't really had much time on yet.
Some of the things that you will see coming down the pipe in the next few months:
* Site-wide search (find things on the site! everywhere!)
* Draft and scheduled posts (better post management in general)
* Photo hosting (and emailed photos)
* Payment system work (recurring payments, virtual gifts)
* Cross-site friends page reading (still tentative, but we're hopeful)
This isn't an ordered list, really. We know that we're going to do site-wide search this week. We'll probably tackle the draft/scheduled posts next, which gives us some good features. After that, we'll see what's up next.
6. Shaping Dreamwidth
There are many, many ways to contribute to Dreamwidth, and not all of them require you to do any coding! In fact, right now, what we're really looking for are people who are passionate about some of our upcoming features to help us shape them and figure out how they're going to work.
The current big example is photo hosting. While we're not going to start working on it in the next few weeks in the code, we should start now on putting together the design so that when we do sit down to code it, we know what we're going to do. If you're interested in participating in this process, please see Denise's post:
http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/2794.html
Thank you for contributing!
7. Community Promos
One of the reasons that I choose to do my blogging/journaling/writing on Dreamwidth is because of the community that we're building. I think that people connecting to people is one of the most amazing things about the Internet and is probably one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful!) tool of our lifetimes.
If you are looking for places to connect with like-minded people, here are a few suggestions:
*
omnomnom and boilingwater are cooking-focused communities for people who like to make things to eat. The former is having a contest right now, too, you can win some paid time by posting Autumn appropriate recipes.*
endings is an interesting community for people who like the ends of things. Stories, poems, movies, anything. Just don't spoil it and give away where it comes from!*
metaquotes is a place where people go to post "amusing, insightful, witty (etc.) things said on Dreamwidth". Some very amusing stuff here.*
earwormhole ... for when that blasted song just won't go away!And, as always, you can watch or contribute to
dw_community_promo if you want to get a little more hands on in your search for members (and content).8. Final Words
Whew, long update this week. A few parting words, and then I'll be out of your hair -- until next week!
We sent out about 20,000 invite codes a little while ago too. Hopefully you got them, and if you didn't, it's probably because you still have some that haven't been used yet. Get cracking! :-)
Once again, congratulations to Denise and Sarah. See you next week!
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