I planned on waiting until version 0.9 was released to post this, but I thought it deserved it’s own article.
Unfortunately, this will be the last major revision of HSR until sometime between February and May. There will still be some minor revisions to fix bugs that we may have missed or to grab features that we didn’t have time for in 0.9, but 1.0 won’t be released until late-winter to early-spring.
There are a couple of big reasons for this delay:
- The next release will be version 1.0 and I have big exceptions for it. I’m thinking total redesign of the backend, a couple of solid looking themes that ship “in the box”, and some monster features that I’m keeping quiet for now.
- I’m starting college in the fall and I don’t want to promise a release in December and then not be able to deliver. I’m going to take everything as it comes and I don’t want to set a bunch of deadlines for 12/24 and have to decide what to finish.
Another, more minor thing, that went into this decision was that fact that it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to release 1.0 in the middle of the school year, when many schools wouldn’t be willing or have time to update the software, in addition to the fact that early spring would be a perfect time to get the new software rolling out so that it is installed in time for alumnus to start planning their reunions.
This really isn’t any different from what happened last year with the software. There was the initial release in the fall, and then it took me until the spring to release the next version (0.8). I just wanted to notify everybody of the plan because of the accelerated development schedule as of late.
HSR 0.9 is due out in under 2 weeks and it looks like we’re going to make it in time. The newest version will include moderate visual changes well as some user feature requests. We are also implementing some features which will make development run a lot quicker and smoother.
Check back on Saturday, August 22 for the new download link.
The trac and svn servers are moving to http://trac.gigabetz.com and http://svn.gigabetz.com respectively. I realize the inconvenience that this may cause, but given the small user base and youth of the project, I thought it would be better to switch now rather than later. The change will ultimately make these services easier to use and manage.
The next “point point” release is available. There are about 6 bug fixes. You’re not breaking security if you skip this one, but we still recommend it for optimum performance. This will be the last one before 0.9, unless somebody finds a security whole that needs to be fixed or a few bugs that can’t wait.
I setup the new domain name for the High School Reunion site, as you can see. The new domain is http://highschoolreuni.com. It might seem weird, but I got the idea when I tried to register “highschoolreunion” on twitter and it got truncated to “highschoolreuni”. The domain name was available so I got it and set it up as the new domain. The old domain, http://hsr.joshbetz.org, is set as a permanent redirect to the new one.
If you’ve seen the “Docs” button on the menu bar recently. If you were wondering why it didn’t go anywhere, I was in the process of installing the documentation wiki and had a few more problems than I thought there would be. Thankfully I’ve gotten that taken care of now and the wiki setup is done.
I will start to get it setup and make the link live shortly.
I am proud to announce that High School Reunion 0.8 is now publicly available. This release includes a few new features and a bunch of bug fixes. You won’t notice a big visual change, but the building blocks are put in place to make the next couple of releases big. Some of the changes include:
- The ability to define a homepage in the site options
- When deleting a user, the manage users page no longer jumps to page one.
- When a user adds an event and email is sent to the admin with a link to the post management page to publish (approve) the event
- The email class page no longer skips the first registered user from the class
Download Link: High School Reunion 0.8
As we release HSR 0.8 to the public, I’d like to share some notes about what’s going on for the rest of this year.
Right now I’m working on getting the website finished. It’s been about 92% finished for 9 months now and it’s time to finish it up. I’m going to get the blog layout done very soon. Something that I am very excited about is the new documentation wiki.
It’s easy to see that I haven’t kept up with documentation nearly as well as I would have liked. My goal is to have a short README packaged with the download, just enough to explain the installation with a link to the online documentation. Then, online I want everything to be documented. Every function will have it’s place. With the next version I hope to have some more theme functions.
With this next three or four weeks I’m going to get the blog design setup and get the wiki setup with a good start on it. The next point release is already in development and will hopefully be available at that time as well, with the next major release coming at the end of the summer.
As the days wind down to the 0.9 release, there are a few things that I’d like to announce.
First of all, the trac site now allows anybody to create a ticket. This would be a great way to request new features. Go check it out, but be careful, as I’ve implemented a spam catcher, so I don’t have to hire somebody to sift through the spam. I’d love to get feedback though.
Second, we now have a twitter account. “HSR” was already taken so I went for “highschoolreunion”, but it looks like they truncated it to “highschoolreuni”. I kind of like it, so I’m not going to complain. So follow “highschoolreuni” to get all the updates. I’m going to try to see if I can get it to automatically update when I commit to the svn repository, but we’ll see.
I registered HSR in the ohloh database. Apparetnly it was a little bloated, because at first they thought the primary language was javascript. I got rid of some of the extra TinyMCE files that I wasn’t using and I think we’re down to where we should be. I just wanted to note some of the interesting facts that they give you about your project.
