[Netjuke-devel] Netjuke Hosting Changes & Evil Plans
Status: Beta
Brought to you by:
blakewatters
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From: Blake W. <sb...@ne...> - 2004-05-17 04:15:19
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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 |