Milestone-ish
Finally. I feel like it's slowly starting to come together.
This may seem trivial, but given the amount of time I've had to work on the site and the fact that I'm doing a complete rewrite, it's not.
Today, I nearly wrapped up all of the login/logout/sign up/validation/security functionality of the site. The simplicity and elegance of the new site as compared to the old one is really motivating.
I think I've said before how amazingly hard it is to resist the urge to start tearing apart and changing the old site :)
Other than that, browsing and searching through maps is incredibly awesome and fast now. The Map detail pages are coming together. Nearly all of the user profile/preferences stuff is complete. Some of the "social goodies" are in place. Rating maps needs tweaking, but it's working and is awesome. The home page, which includes news/commenting is just about complete. And much, much more is halfway or a little more than halfway done.
Development is at a point where so much is partially complete that it's sometimes hard to focus.
My next major hurdle is the revamped map submission process, which I have been putting off because it's so daunting. I've designed an elegant submission tool that takes away a lot of the burden of submitting, but that means that the software will be doing more heavy lifting than ever — some of which is a bit "fancy."
Pulling it off will be a pretty good (and fun) challenge.
What I'm still on the fence about is opening up the submission process so that members can submit maps from anyone.
In the past it was my belief that only the original authors should be able to submit their stuff, and I occasionally do get an email from a mapper asking how his map got onto the site when I've submitted them. But the acceptance of social networking and sharing over the last few years has changed my opinion a bit.
All things considered, there are really only two issues I have with this:
- Someone will have to monitor the submissions and make sure nobody is taking credit for someone else's work
- Someone will have to editorialize the submissions as the quality will suffer more than it already does
And by "someone" I really mean myself :) Feel free to share your thoughts.
Comments ported from original blog:
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At 2:13 PM, Firefly said…
are things still happening?
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At 4:45 PM, John said…
Yes, they definitely are. I have been diligently working on the new version of the site and just haven't had a moment to update the blog :) I'll post a status soon, but basically, the database is done, the visual design is just about done and I'm probably half-way done with programming.
I'm actually working a lot more on it now, so the next 50% should (hopefully) go quickly.