Entry tags:
Weekly Update: 2 November 2009
We've got a really full update this week, so I shall spare the intro and just get straight on to it!
In this week's news: major milestones, presents for everybody, a bunch of things we need your opinion on (including the chance to ticky some boxes), some new toys, noveling madness, results of last week's invite code discussion, and a pony. (Okay, maybe not the pony.)
Our big news this week is that today, thanks to the unrelenting effort of our developers, our code reviewers, and our code committers, we have hit 1500 resolved bugs in our bug tracking software. That's since we started tracking stuff in Bugzilla. (And, really, most of it is since January, even: on January 1, we had 33 resolved bugs -- we've resolved 1476 of them this year, which means an average of nearly 5 bugs per day.)
Really, I can't even begin to explain how huge this is.![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
mark and I never fail to be amazed at the incredible development team we've got here. We've got some pretty smart users, too: 31 of those bugs were suggestions that came through ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_suggestions. (That's out of 145 suggestions that have been sent to Bugzilla, giving us over a 20% implementation rate so far -- and we're still working on them!) There are graphs of our bug counts over time, for those of you who like the visual input.
This week's code tour is up, and it includes accessibility fixes, bugfixes, usability improvements to the Inbox and the notification system, some changes based on last week's invite code discussion (more about that in a few), some backend tweaks to make the site more efficient, and a few other nifty things.
As many of you have already noticed, we've increased the icon limits!
The new limits are:
Free accounts: 15 icons
Paid acounts: 100 icons
Premium paid/Seed accounts: 250 icons
If you have inactive icons that aren't showing, even though you have space for them, just visit the Upload Icons page while you're logged in. (You don't need to do anything, just load the page.)
We were able to do this because we originally set our limits very conservatively (to make sure that we weren't overpromising). Six months of data show us that we could go ahead and expand the limits. Enjoy! (And if you've got favorite resources for finding new icons, or if you make them for use yourself, drop a link in the comments.)
Also new this week: we've expanded post-by-email to all users, not just paid users. This will let you email entries into your Dreamwidth account, for when you can't access the website directly.
You can set up email posting at the Mobile tab of the Account Settings page, and get posting instructions on how to post. (There are also advanced options, if you'd like to set defaults only for your email posts.)
Looking for new content to read on Dreamwidth? We've implemented our version of the Latest Posts feed:
http://www.dreamwidth.org/latest
This page,mark's brainchild, shows a stream of recent public posts. It's on a five-minute delay, so if you accidentally post something publicly that should have been access-locked, you can edit it right away and it won't appear. It only shows public posts. (If you still don't want your content to appear there, you can go to the Admin Console and type "set latest_optout yes", but we really hope you won't; the more interesting content people can see on Dreamwidth, the better the site will do.)
You'll also notice, up on the top of that page, a tag feed for the tag nnwm09. If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, use that tag on your posts, and they'll appear in that tag feed.
The tag feed is a new feature we're playing with; future enhancements include the ability to "associate" tags, so that (in this case, for instance) we could set "nanowrimo", "nano09", etc, all to appear in the same feed. If there are tags you'd like to see added as a tag feed in the future, let us know in the comments.
Yeah, it's that time again: November, where novelists across the land stare at the screen blankly, then bang their head against the keyboard until the pain stops.
As a celebration of this insanity, we've released color themes made by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zvi to match the NaNo '09 participant badges. There's one for each layout. Check them out among the themes designed by zvi -- we'll have the previews up as soon as possible (we wanted to get them out for the beginning of the month), but you can preview the theme on your journal by hitting the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of each (empty) preview box.
For those of you looking for a place to put your NaNo musings, or who want to lure a forum friend over to the dark side, check out our account creation offer for NaNo participants.
Also, everyone cheermark on; it's his first year doing NaNo, and he's well on track to make his word count! Me, I've been doing it since '01, but I'm not really feeling it this year -- Dreamwidth is sucking up a bunch of my attention. Fortunately, afuna had an idea: NaPaWriMo, or National Patch Writing Month, in which Dreamwidth coders commit to a certain number of patches. We'd love to have you doing that with us, too.
And, while I'm at it, I have to just say in passing that this week,mark and I had an awesome moment. We were hacking on backend things to support that NaNo promotion -- he was doing bug 1988; I was writing the announcement text -- and we were AIMing back and forth discussing things, and there was one perfect moment: we were both hacking on the same end goal together, at the same time, in order to support our business and our community. It was one of those moments that really made it clear to both of us how awesome it is that we're doing this, and we both wanted to say thank you to everybody who's made it possible for us to go for broke and live the dream.
It's been a while since we've last re-visited the question of what layout should be the default for newly-created accounts, and since the last time we updated it, we've gotten a ton of really awesome layouts we didn't have before. So, we've decided that we're going to let you guys pick what layout should be the new-user default!
This will not change anybody's existing layout, even if you haven't customized your journal from default. It's just going to be the one we use for accounts that are created past the date that we change it.
We figure we'll rotate the default every three/six months or so, and we'll pick it by first polling to see what base layout you guys think should be the default. Then, the week after that, we'll take the 'winner' and poll to see which color theme from that layout should be default.
So, pick a layout:
As always, we're still looking for new themes and layouts. If you've come up with something awesome for your journal, whether it's a color theme or a whole new layout, check outdreamscapes for information on how to submit it.
This week's community spotlights tie into the writing theme. We bring you two communities revolving around writing, one fannish, one nonfannish. In their maintainers' words:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
nano_writers, a NaNoWriMo-oriented community for wrimos, writers and would-be-writers on Dreamwidth! We're all about writing challenges, contests, advice and debate to help you reach that 50K finish line.
kink_bingo: Since there is never enough kink-stuff in the world, and since games are a good way to challenge people to go outside of their usual comfort zones, we have designed Kink Bingo, a multifandom, multimedia community in which fans write, vid, draw, manip, or otherwise create fanworks to fit a set of kink prompts. It's your standard bingo game, except with tv shows and bondage. (November's challenge began 11/1.)
(Do mind the warning thatkink_bingo is an adult-oriented community! Caveat lector.)
We picked these communities from our list of the 50 communities with the most subscribers on Dreamwidth, but we're always on the lookout for new comms to spotlight. If you've got a favorite community that gets a bunch of traffic and generates a bunch of discussion, leave a link in the comments!
There's alsodw_community_promo, for all your community-finding (and promoting) needs.
So, I've finally gotten sick and tired of the settings on our Account Settings page being in any-which-order, and neithermark nor I think that they're properly grouped. We're running a card sort test to redesign the settings page. (This is the same technique we used to design the core site menu, for those who remember that.)
This is going to be a two or more step process. The first step is an open card sort: we ask you to group the existing settings any way you think is logical and then name the groups. It will take about 10 minutes to complete the activity.
If you'd like to help out, you can take the survey here: http://dreamwidth.optimalsort.com/dwsettings/
(Alas, this is the only online card sort tool we've ever found, and I really don't think it's screenreader-accessible. If you run into problems with a screenreader, email feedback@dreamwidth.org and we'll give you a list of the cards and the instructions, and you can send your results back to us and we'll enter them for you. I'm really sorry about the workaround.)
Last week,mark started a conversation about invite codes on Dreamwidth that has proven to be pretty lively. One thing that's been clear from reading the discussion: opinions are highly mixed!
Our opinions are mixed, too, which is why we asked in the first place. We haven't made any final decisions on whether or not to get rid of invite codes yet, but the discussion did produce some really good ideas on how to make it easier for people to find invite codes if they're uncomfortable with emailing somebody. Two that we've implemented already:
* We've opened up posting in thedw_codesharing community, and allowed nonmembers to post. Anybody can now post an entry containing invite codes for anyone to use. New users can check out the Codes Available tag to find invite codes. (Read the announcement for ways to keep it from filling up your reading page.)
* We've added a link to the codesharing community on the logged-out homepage, so people will be able to find it more easily. (This won't be live until the next code push.)
These are only a few of the improvements we're making, and if you've got any other suggestions about how to make it easier for people to find an invite code and create a Dreamwidth account, we'd love to hear it, either as a comment here or through the site suggestions process.
Meanwhile, if you're moving a community (in either sense of the word, either 'a group of people who have similar interests' or 'specific members of a group on another social networking site') wholesale from somewhere else, we'd love to make it easy for you. Just email accounts@dreamwidth.org, or open up a Support request in the Account Payments category, and we can hook you up with a promo code to make account creation easy for the members of your community. (We can even set it up so that people who use that promotional account creation code have your Dreamwidth community automatically suggested for them to join upon account creation.)
A while back, we made it possible for us to define custom terms in the spellchecker, so that silly things wouldn't happen like the spellcheck not recognizing the word 'Dreamwidth'.zvi pointed out a few other words that should be added, and I figured we'd do a roundup, since it requires a code patch: what else should the dictionary recognize? Answers on a postcard in a comment to this post, and we'll build a list from your suggestions and get it updated in a future code push.
So, a while back, when LJ added it, pinging weblogs.com was a really big thing: the best way to let the internet know that you'd updated. These days, though, with the spread of RSS/Atom and the release of PubSubHubbub (which Dreamwidth supports), it's sort of become obsolete. We're thinking about removing it from the code as part of our ongoing cleanup tasks, since it's been superseded by other technology.
Our records show that only 162 accounts (out of thousands!) have ever turned it on, and it was always one of the lowest-used paid features. At the same time, though, we don't want to take it away if someone's really relying on it. So, if anybody would really miss this feature, speak now!
*
Whew -- it's been a busy 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; if you just want to come and hang out with us, join us in irc at irc.dwscoalition.org, channel #dw. (Warning: #dw is not only occasionally NSFW, it's occasionally Not Safe For Brain...)
And, finally, I believe that I promised you a pony.
We'll see you next week for our next update.
In this week's news: major milestones, presents for everybody, a bunch of things we need your opinion on (including the chance to ticky some boxes), some new toys, noveling madness, results of last week's invite code discussion, and a pony. (Okay, maybe not the pony.)
1. The Week in Development
Our big news this week is that today, thanks to the unrelenting effort of our developers, our code reviewers, and our code committers, we have hit 1500 resolved bugs in our bug tracking software. That's since we started tracking stuff in Bugzilla. (And, really, most of it is since January, even: on January 1, we had 33 resolved bugs -- we've resolved 1476 of them this year, which means an average of nearly 5 bugs per day.)
Really, I can't even begin to explain how huge this is.
mark and I never fail to be amazed at the incredible development team we've got here. We've got some pretty smart users, too: 31 of those bugs were suggestions that came through dw_suggestions. (That's out of 145 suggestions that have been sent to Bugzilla, giving us over a 20% implementation rate so far -- and we're still working on them!) There are graphs of our bug counts over time, for those of you who like the visual input.This week's code tour is up, and it includes accessibility fixes, bugfixes, usability improvements to the Inbox and the notification system, some changes based on last week's invite code discussion (more about that in a few), some backend tweaks to make the site more efficient, and a few other nifty things.
2. Icons, Icons, Icons
As many of you have already noticed, we've increased the icon limits!
The new limits are:
Free accounts: 15 icons
Paid acounts: 100 icons
Premium paid/Seed accounts: 250 icons
If you have inactive icons that aren't showing, even though you have space for them, just visit the Upload Icons page while you're logged in. (You don't need to do anything, just load the page.)
We were able to do this because we originally set our limits very conservatively (to make sure that we weren't overpromising). Six months of data show us that we could go ahead and expand the limits. Enjoy! (And if you've got favorite resources for finding new icons, or if you make them for use yourself, drop a link in the comments.)
3. Email Posting
Also new this week: we've expanded post-by-email to all users, not just paid users. This will let you email entries into your Dreamwidth account, for when you can't access the website directly.
You can set up email posting at the Mobile tab of the Account Settings page, and get posting instructions on how to post. (There are also advanced options, if you'd like to set defaults only for your email posts.)
4. Latest Posts Feed
Looking for new content to read on Dreamwidth? We've implemented our version of the Latest Posts feed:
http://www.dreamwidth.org/latest
This page,
mark's brainchild, shows a stream of recent public posts. It's on a five-minute delay, so if you accidentally post something publicly that should have been access-locked, you can edit it right away and it won't appear. It only shows public posts. (If you still don't want your content to appear there, you can go to the Admin Console and type "set latest_optout yes", but we really hope you won't; the more interesting content people can see on Dreamwidth, the better the site will do.) You'll also notice, up on the top of that page, a tag feed for the tag nnwm09. If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, use that tag on your posts, and they'll appear in that tag feed.
The tag feed is a new feature we're playing with; future enhancements include the ability to "associate" tags, so that (in this case, for instance) we could set "nanowrimo", "nano09", etc, all to appear in the same feed. If there are tags you'd like to see added as a tag feed in the future, let us know in the comments.
5. NaNoWriMo
Yeah, it's that time again: November, where novelists across the land stare at the screen blankly, then bang their head against the keyboard until the pain stops.
As a celebration of this insanity, we've released color themes made by
zvi to match the NaNo '09 participant badges. There's one for each layout. Check them out among the themes designed by zvi -- we'll have the previews up as soon as possible (we wanted to get them out for the beginning of the month), but you can preview the theme on your journal by hitting the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of each (empty) preview box.For those of you looking for a place to put your NaNo musings, or who want to lure a forum friend over to the dark side, check out our account creation offer for NaNo participants.
Also, everyone cheer
mark on; it's his first year doing NaNo, and he's well on track to make his word count! Me, I've been doing it since '01, but I'm not really feeling it this year -- Dreamwidth is sucking up a bunch of my attention. Fortunately, afuna had an idea: NaPaWriMo, or National Patch Writing Month, in which Dreamwidth coders commit to a certain number of patches. We'd love to have you doing that with us, too.And, while I'm at it, I have to just say in passing that this week,
mark and I had an awesome moment. We were hacking on backend things to support that NaNo promotion -- he was doing bug 1988; I was writing the announcement text -- and we were AIMing back and forth discussing things, and there was one perfect moment: we were both hacking on the same end goal together, at the same time, in order to support our business and our community. It was one of those moments that really made it clear to both of us how awesome it is that we're doing this, and we both wanted to say thank you to everybody who's made it possible for us to go for broke and live the dream.6. Default Layout Poll
It's been a while since we've last re-visited the question of what layout should be the default for newly-created accounts, and since the last time we updated it, we've gotten a ton of really awesome layouts we didn't have before. So, we've decided that we're going to let you guys pick what layout should be the new-user default!
This will not change anybody's existing layout, even if you haven't customized your journal from default. It's just going to be the one we use for accounts that are created past the date that we change it.
We figure we'll rotate the default every three/six months or so, and we'll pick it by first polling to see what base layout you guys think should be the default. Then, the week after that, we'll take the 'winner' and poll to see which color theme from that layout should be default.
So, pick a layout:
Poll #1598 November Style Poll
This poll is closed.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 260
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 260
What base layout should be the default for new accounts?
Bases
10 (3.8%)
Basic Boxes
18 (6.9%)
Blanket
11 (4.2%)
Boxes and Borders
1 (0.4%)
Brittle
2 (0.8%)
ColorSide
13 (5.0%)
Crossroads
27 (10.4%)
Drifting
12 (4.6%)
Fluid Measure
11 (4.2%)
Funky Circles
29 (11.2%)
Modish
23 (8.8%)
Negatives
0 (0.0%)
Skittlish Dreams
36 (13.8%)
Stepping Stones
5 (1.9%)
Sunday Morning
10 (3.8%)
Tranquility III
14 (5.4%)
Transmogrified
38 (14.6%)
As always, we're still looking for new themes and layouts. If you've come up with something awesome for your journal, whether it's a color theme or a whole new layout, check out
dreamscapes for information on how to submit it.7. Community Promo
This week's community spotlights tie into the writing theme. We bring you two communities revolving around writing, one fannish, one nonfannish. In their maintainers' words:
nano_writers, a NaNoWriMo-oriented community for wrimos, writers and would-be-writers on Dreamwidth! We're all about writing challenges, contests, advice and debate to help you reach that 50K finish line. kink_bingo: Since there is never enough kink-stuff in the world, and since games are a good way to challenge people to go outside of their usual comfort zones, we have designed Kink Bingo, a multifandom, multimedia community in which fans write, vid, draw, manip, or otherwise create fanworks to fit a set of kink prompts. It's your standard bingo game, except with tv shows and bondage. (November's challenge began 11/1.)(Do mind the warning that
kink_bingo is an adult-oriented community! Caveat lector.) We picked these communities from our list of the 50 communities with the most subscribers on Dreamwidth, but we're always on the lookout for new comms to spotlight. If you've got a favorite community that gets a bunch of traffic and generates a bunch of discussion, leave a link in the comments!
There's also
dw_community_promo, for all your community-finding (and promoting) needs.8. Card Sort: Settings Pages
So, I've finally gotten sick and tired of the settings on our Account Settings page being in any-which-order, and neither
mark nor I think that they're properly grouped. We're running a card sort test to redesign the settings page. (This is the same technique we used to design the core site menu, for those who remember that.) This is going to be a two or more step process. The first step is an open card sort: we ask you to group the existing settings any way you think is logical and then name the groups. It will take about 10 minutes to complete the activity.
If you'd like to help out, you can take the survey here: http://dreamwidth.optimalsort.com/dwsettings/
(Alas, this is the only online card sort tool we've ever found, and I really don't think it's screenreader-accessible. If you run into problems with a screenreader, email feedback@dreamwidth.org and we'll give you a list of the cards and the instructions, and you can send your results back to us and we'll enter them for you. I'm really sorry about the workaround.)
9. Invite Codes: the discussion
Last week,
mark started a conversation about invite codes on Dreamwidth that has proven to be pretty lively. One thing that's been clear from reading the discussion: opinions are highly mixed!Our opinions are mixed, too, which is why we asked in the first place. We haven't made any final decisions on whether or not to get rid of invite codes yet, but the discussion did produce some really good ideas on how to make it easier for people to find invite codes if they're uncomfortable with emailing somebody. Two that we've implemented already:
* We've opened up posting in the
dw_codesharing community, and allowed nonmembers to post. Anybody can now post an entry containing invite codes for anyone to use. New users can check out the Codes Available tag to find invite codes. (Read the announcement for ways to keep it from filling up your reading page.)* We've added a link to the codesharing community on the logged-out homepage, so people will be able to find it more easily. (This won't be live until the next code push.)
These are only a few of the improvements we're making, and if you've got any other suggestions about how to make it easier for people to find an invite code and create a Dreamwidth account, we'd love to hear it, either as a comment here or through the site suggestions process.
Meanwhile, if you're moving a community (in either sense of the word, either 'a group of people who have similar interests' or 'specific members of a group on another social networking site') wholesale from somewhere else, we'd love to make it easy for you. Just email accounts@dreamwidth.org, or open up a Support request in the Account Payments category, and we can hook you up with a promo code to make account creation easy for the members of your community. (We can even set it up so that people who use that promotional account creation code have your Dreamwidth community automatically suggested for them to join upon account creation.)
10. Spellcheck
A while back, we made it possible for us to define custom terms in the spellchecker, so that silly things wouldn't happen like the spellcheck not recognizing the word 'Dreamwidth'.
zvi pointed out a few other words that should be added, and I figured we'd do a roundup, since it requires a code patch: what else should the dictionary recognize? Answers 11. weblogs.com
So, a while back, when LJ added it, pinging weblogs.com was a really big thing: the best way to let the internet know that you'd updated. These days, though, with the spread of RSS/Atom and the release of PubSubHubbub (which Dreamwidth supports), it's sort of become obsolete. We're thinking about removing it from the code as part of our ongoing cleanup tasks, since it's been superseded by other technology.
Our records show that only 162 accounts (out of thousands!) have ever turned it on, and it was always one of the lowest-used paid features. At the same time, though, we don't want to take it away if someone's really relying on it. So, if anybody would really miss this feature, speak now!
*
Whew -- it's been a busy 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; if you just want to come and hang out with us, join us in irc at irc.dwscoalition.org, channel #dw. (Warning: #dw is not only occasionally NSFW, it's occasionally Not Safe For Brain...)
And, finally, I believe that I promised you a pony.
We'll see you next week for our next update.