[Netjuke-devel] Netjuke Hosting Changes & Evil Plans

[Blake W. <sb...@ne...>]

Hi all -

As many of you may have noticed, the Netjuke project has recently 
migrated servers from our previous hosting solution at Ibiblio. The new 
server, graciously provided by Netjuke developer John Wulff, boasts 
significant performance improvements and provides our project with some 
new opportunities to grow and advance both the project and our
community. Over the coming months, we will begin releasing the Netjuke2 
platform for mass consumption. In preparation for this event, we will be 
introducing new services and revising our homepage to be more engaging, 
dynamic, informative, and just plain fun than in the past.

Enhanced Developer Site - We will soon be launching a
developer.netjuke.org site centered around Netjuke development,
developers, and projects deploying Netjuke for their media management 
needs. All developers will have their development environment optionally 
available as a netjuke.org host (i.e. my development copy can be found  at
http://sbw.netjuke.org). Extensive documentation of the module and 
templating systems will be forthcoming, as well as a project roadmap, 
developer tasks, and how-to/tutorial texts to help bring new members  into
the fold. Developer biographies, links, and mugshots should also be 
available.

Recruitment - As our project grows, we are increasingly needing more 
people. I'm going to actively recruit new developers, artists, and 
documentation contributors. We could also use forum moderators and a 
webmaster for the main site and the forthcoming developer site.

Jabber - I'm going to be bringing up a Jabber server for use with the 
project. I'll be available most of the time via IM for support, chat, or 
developer help. I've also been pondering some interesting ideas for 
Jabber/Netjuke integration, but those are a few months out.

IRC - Our channel has solidified into a place of idleing bliss. I'd like 
to try and draw more people in and be more helpful. Any suggestions on 
how to do this would rock.

Documentation - Touched on this a bit earlier. We are going to need a 
rich step-by-step installation guide, a basic administration manual, and 
extensive developer documentation. Much of the ground-work for the 
developer documentation has already been put down in the form of
comments in the source code. I'll be happy to provide much of the 
remaining developer documentation, but I'll need someone else to handle 
the user level stuff and better still, somebody who wants to spearhead 
coordinating documentation writers. It's going to be a bit before we hit 
this point, but it's time to begin searching for the right people.

Enhanced News & Advocacy - The front page of Netjuke.org is going to be 
redesigned to be more news centric. Project news and releases of new 
themes and modules will be posted on the front page and be viewable as 
categories. We will be moving the introduction and screenshots pieces 
into their own section, detailing the Netjuke platform very specifically 
and a gallery hosting screenshots that is available for community 
contribution to show off themes, modules, and systems built with
Netjuke. We'll hope to do some PR work late in the beta cycle and  solicit
reviews from interested web-sites and technology magazines.

Task Oriented Development - To expand our developer community and make 
our work more transparent, we'll begin breaking the work in a task 
oriented fashion, assigning tasks to specific developers, and hopefully 
time-tracking the development process. We'll also begin actively using 
bug tracking and formalizing all aspects of our work.

T-Shirt Contest - To engage the community, promote Netjuke, and just  have
some fun, I'd like to offer a t-shirt contest on the homepage.  We'll
accept entries for one month (?) and allow users to vote on their 
favorite designs. I'm currently thinking that we'll do the top 5 entries 
as CafePress t-shirts and the top designer $50 and a t-shirt with their 
design on it, the #2 $25 and a t-shirt, and the next 2 a t-shirt. 
Ideally, I'd like to use the PayPal and Amazon donations to fund this  and
perhaps we can raise the prize value, depending on donations during  the
contest.

New Sub-domains - As previously stated, the developer.netjuke.org and 
individual developer sites will be brought up. There will also be  themes,
modules, and news.netjuke.org domains, linking into their  respective
categories.

Alliances - We've already allied ourselves with the MPD project. I'd  also
like to contribute and implement the new XSPF playlist format
(http://playlist.musicbrainz.org/playlist/moin.cgi/FrontPage), bring 
musicbrainz integration to Netjuke2, and reach out to other media 
projects that could be integrated with our framework. I'd also like to 
reach out to independent media groups such as Downhillbattle and make 
Netjuke a valuable tool for music producers, DJ's, and consumers alike.

Anyway, we have ignition.

Happy coding,
Blake