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So we're done... but are we ready to launch?
The answer is realistically: In a day or two.
We made great strides yesterday, but today was different and what was very obvious in my own work is that I am exhausted. Small frustrations with putting in a date picker and map proved too much and I just needed to get away from it.
So what's left?
Matt's working on some more tests to catch the few things that I broke in the last couple of days (when I was charging around adding the skeleton of the design).
And I'm going to get that date picker and map stuff working and write up a quick document to describe how Markdown syntax works on Microcosm.
And then... on Tuesday perhaps... we open the doors and invite people to try it.
What we're looking for from the doors opening on 1 test site is basic feedback about whether what we've built is the right thing. And that's really a question to you all as users of forums rather than as administrators.
If we have made a product that could power forums, and you find it easy to use, powerful, engaging... then we have a great foundation to build on. But... if we've got the foundation wrong then we need to correct that before we proceed too far.
So the whole point of launching isn't to say "It's done, we're finished", but it's to say "Enough is done to share it, and we really now want to start learning how it's used and to evolve it the right way.".
When we have the basics of the experience in place (very quickly we hope), then we open the alpha version to other little sites, and bed it in so that we can get to the beta.
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Well done.
Enjoy a rum and coke.
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Will let you know how it works for me. Do you not have a feel for it, you must believe it works...
Oh I do. I'm not in any way deflated or lacking belief. Just tired (35 days of back-to-back work.)
This thing is like an iceberg, and most of where we've spent the time putting the effort in to get the foundations right is the bit you can't see. So when we share it you'll all be judging us more by the small bit that in some ways has had the least effort to this point... the look and feel.
And there are changes, from LFGSS, that you guys have yet to experience. Simple things that work better over time, but may be a hard thing to re-learn.
Big example: On LFGSS the stuff you write is written in a syntax called BBCode, and on Microcosm the syntax is called Markdown.
Writing a link on LFGSS is like writing HTML, you need to know a tag [ URL ] and how to use it.
So you've learned that, and really you never should have had to learn that... and so with Microcosm I've done the right thing and changed it to something that doesn't require learning. Except, you guys need to un-learn how to do it the old way.
On Microcosm adding a link is a bit more natural... but I fully understand you guys are going to really struggle to not just un-learn the old way, but to get the new.
So you write a link by just putting in text and next to the text you put the link in brackets:
This is a link to Google(http://www.google.com).
And to make sure the system knows where the link should start, you hint by adding square brackets:
This is a link to Google.
And that gets rendered as:
This is a link to Google.
Which is more natural... but I can't help but be concerned about taking a large number of users who are really used to one approach, and to introduce them to an entirely new approach.
And then imagine that... but every single thing has changed.
It's not a lack of belief, it's a concern, worry, fascination and wonder about how you guys will experience new software after years of familiarity with this software.
Even if we were not building Microcosm, I'd have to consider other software for LFGSS and this concern would be present.
And for the business it's a really big question to answer. If we hope to migrate other forums and communities to this software... we need the answer to the question: Will users be able to adapt to the changes or will they reject them because the differences are too great?
It's a big question. And we do need the answer. And we hope to be judged on what the new system is already and what it promises... rather than what the new system isn't, which is vBulletin.
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Which I chose because of Primal Scream's first single, Velocity Girl. But then a company emerged called Velo City, and I realised my username could ambiguously be read as endorsement of them. Hence changing it to Velocio as it was near enough to not cause too much confusion on here, and had a joke built-in... that Velocio was an advocate of gears.
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How will usernames work, given that we're logging in using this Persona thing?
(I would ask this in the sandbox but Persona knows too much about me and I don't immediately understand where it got its data from so I am extremely wary of making any posts there until I can anonymise my username a shade)
dancing james
danb
mands
Backstop
skydancer
HatBeard
hippy
branwen
bothwell
6pt
kboy-
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About
Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS
Posted by
@Velocio
The rough roadmap is:
Alpha: Mostly broken, rapidly changing, adding features... next month or two (depending on the feedback). Limited to one or two small test sites that don't mind losing all of their data (multiple times).
Beta: Mostly stable, changing far less frequently... one to two months. Open to new small and medium sites, we will not lose your data. During this time we make smaller changes, but start writing the import/export stuff.
Launch: We import LFGSS, and any other forums that we have interest from, and we are open to everyone.
So you can see that we're aiming for LFGSS to be moved anywhere from 2 months in the future (extremely optimistic and unlikely) through to the end of Summer (extremely likely).
Feedback mechanisms:
1) This forum.
2) The forum we create on Microcosm... but we all acknowledge that may not always be possible (we might have broken it).
3) Github Issues.
That last one... an example of using Github for feedback can be seen here: https://github.com/microcosm-cc/microcosm-cc.github.com/issues?page=1&state=closed . But we'll open source the front-end project and that is where the issues should be raised.
We'll listen to every way anyone wants to tell us stuff though.