If you’ve managed a project on SourceForge.net over the past, oh, decade or so, you’ve probably noticed how the administration pages slowly became more and more horrendous. In a lot of ways, they resembled my cable drawer at home – when I first started putting cables in it, everything was very neat. I took special care to coil the cables up with twist-ties, separate the ethernet cables from the USB cables, and label the AC/DC converter bricks so I’d know which devices they powered.
But things never stay that way. These days, my cable drawer is a frustrating, hateful rat’s nest and it’s hard to find what I need. That’s what happened to our project administration pages; we kept adding bits and pieces of functionality and in-line documentation until they were only truly useful for causing widespread despair and fatigue. We had the best of intentions, but after ten years some things just end up being a mess…and all you can do is dump the drawer out, go through everything, and throw half of it away to restore your sanity.
That’s what we did. The sixty (sixty!) or so project administration pages have been reduced to a handful. All of the in-line documentation has been replaced with helpful links to our site docs. Things are simpler to use, easier to understand, and organized in a much more logical way.
Take a look and let us know what you think! If we’ve forgotten anything, or left out your favorite bit of functionality by accident, feel free to drop us a line or file a support request.