Codexed.com

[Daniel]

In case you haven't been reading the forums lately, I am going to preface this by saying that this announcement is not that Codexed is complete. However, I hope that you will still be happy with what I'm about to announce.

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Introduction
Let me start this with some back story. It has been more than two years now since Diary-X died, and I know people have been waiting just as long for Codexed to be ready. I know that people have been waiting a long time just to get another update about the status of the project. I know that in the intervening time, many people have gotten fed up and left, expecting that Codexed would stagnate forever and they were wasting their time (in fact, someone even updated the Diary-X wikipedia page to that effect). I know that people have been disappointed with the various restarts we've had over the years and I know that not everyone agrees with every decision that has been made in the process.

Coming into this project, I know now that I was way too ambitious. I wanted to be able to move seamlessly from Diary-X to Codexed just as much as anyone else did. Unfortunately, reality (meaning school, jobs, illness and myriad other things that could be regarded as "excuses") got in the way. I was definitely naive in ever thinking that the project would be done quickly, because, with a project like this, especially since it has always been nothing more than a volunteer project, things take way more time than would be expected.

Anyways, last November, with the majority of the people working on the project having dwindled to just myself and Elliot (aka bean-with-bacon), we quietly sat down and discussed how we'd be able to break the project out of the rut it was in and finally start getting somewhere, as well as how to ensure that you, the users, are able to use something as soon as possible. We came up with a third version of our roadmap, which, unlike the previous two, actually delineated exactly what we were planning on doing at each stage of development. We decided that we were wasting our time, spinning our wheels getting a good PHP framework in place, and instead switched languages for a third time, this time to Ruby (a move that I'm sure will be troublesome to some users, but in the long run was a good idea).

And then reality set in again, for me at least; however, this time was different in that Elliot diligently got to work, and has been doing so for the last five months. In fact, the vast, vast majority of all the code that's been written so far has been written by Elliot, a fact that I appreciate immensely -- and you should too. Why, you might ask?

Because, it is my pleasure to announce that Milestone One has finally completed!

But there's more.

One of the important things Elliot and I decided upon while redefining our roadmaps was that each milestone would be as short as possible, and that each milestone would end with a public testing release. Which means: within the next 7-10 days, you will be able to use an early alpha release of Codexed.

[Daniel]

Things to be aware of
Now, before you get too excited, there are some things I need to point out. This is just an early alpha release, it is not the final version. It is not feature complete; instead, the basic, core set of features are going to be available to you. These features include the ability to work with normal and special entries, create templates, use basic substitutions, manage some options. It obviously is not everything we want to have in Codexed, but it is the smallest set of features needed to have something usable which can be the basis of something else.

As well, as this is an alpha (if you're familiar with the term "beta" in relation to software, an alpha is the stage before beta), you should go into it with the expectations that there will be bugs, but be pleasantly surprised if there aren't any. Please note that one major point of releasing an open alpha, aside from finally giving you something to use, is so that we can find and fix bugs early and quickly -- obviously there are no bugs that we are aware of, but bugs that don't appear during development often pop up when the software is put into use. More about this a little later.

Furthermore, I know that coming out of Diary-X, people have every right to be concerned or worried about data security. As such, this is something that we are going to be putting a lot of effort into. However, in this early alpha release, we have not yet gotten to that stage, and as well, it is possible that a user can accidentally (or intentionally) run into a bug that corrupts data. Although our host does (or at least should be doing) its own backups, we want to be as cautious as possible, and therefore, by deciding to participate in the alpha release, you will have to agree to not hold us liable or responsible if something happens to your data within the alpha release period. Honestly, it really shouldn't be any more hassle to you other than manually backing up anything you'd be upset about losing (for now, of course, later on you won't have to worry about this at all).

As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, participation in the Codexed alpha will be by invitation only; however, before you get worried, anyone who wants an invitation will only need to ask for one. What this means is that in order to register for a Codexed alpha account, you will have to have an invitation code, which you will have to ask for; however, everyone who asks for an invitation code will be given one. More details will be available about this in the coming days.

Note that the only "finalized" aspect of the alpha release is the actual code. None of the graphical or layout elements have been finalized and are very likely to change numerous times before the final release. In other words, if you don't like how the main site looks at the moment, please be patient in that regard.

Edited to clarify a bit about invitations.

[Daniel]

Benefits of participating in the Codexed alpha release
Now that I've talked about the things you should be aware of in terms of the alpha, what are the benefits to you?

First and foremost, by participating in the alpha, you will be among the first to be able to use Codexed. Anything you put into Codexed during the alpha period will be compatible (and present!) in all future releases, so you will not have to worry about having to start over after every release.

Also, by joining the alpha now, you will have the opportunity to reserve the Codexed username that you want for yourself right away, before all the "good" ones are gone. This is one of the reasons why we decided to make the alpha invitation-only; we want to ensure that everyone has a fair chance of registering the username they want, and avoid having one person a number of "desirable" names in order to prevent other people from using them. Please note that, as mentioned at the beginning of the project, we cannot guarantee that you will be able to get the same username as you had in diary-x or that you have currently on the forums; however, signing up quicker (once available) will obviously give you a better chance of getting the username you wish. Note also that while it is not the case now, when we release the final, "live" version of Codexed, your forum username and Codexed username will be one and the same.

Furthermore, by signing up now, you'll be able to say that you were here since the beginning. I seem to recall the diary-x forum having "I've been here forever" or something like that next to some people's names in the forums; wouldn't you like to have a tag like that?

You will also be able to submit feature requests for us to consider. Now, I know that by revealing this, I will receive a deluge of various requests (many probably duplicates). This is perfectly fine -- as long as every realizes that we will not be able to complete every single request that is made, and that requested features will not necessarily be completed immediately either.

[Daniel]

A contest of sorts
As mentioned previously, half of the point of releasing this alpha is to be able to collect bug reports. In that light, we will be providing a form for you to be able to submit bug reports for us. This is where our mini "contest" comes in.

Starting from the next release (after milestone two), we will be creating a QA/Testing team to help us out. The QA team will be responsible for doing some testing of the system before the next release goes live. This means that if you are on the testing team, you will have access to future releases before everyone else. If that intrigues you, read on.

In order to choose our testing team, we will be considering bug reports that are submitted and choosing the users who write the most helpful and useful reports. A helpful report is something like "feature x is broken because of y, you can reproduce it by doing z". An unhelpful report is "I don't like the colours you used". After some period of time (yet to be specified), we will choose the people we think can help us the most and offer them a lucrative, unpaid QA position with the aforementioned benefit of early access to future releases.

Please note that even being considered for the QA team will be something you'd have to opt in to, so we won't consider you if you don't want to be considered. With that in mind, please still submit a report for any bugs you find, even if you do not wish to be part of a testing team down the road.

[Daniel]

Concluding thoughts
There are some things I hope to achieve by releasing the alpha now. I want you to finally have something to pay off for your patient (or even not-so-patient) waiting. I hope to receive lots of constructive feedback so that we can ensure that Codexed is a site that you will want to use. I hope that the once strong Diary-X community will have a chance to reconvene.

I want this to be an impetus for the people who were once on a development team to think about getting involved again, and for new people to get involved in the first place. This is an especially important part; moving forward we are going to need help from the other departments. Even starting with this release, there is immediately going to be work for other departments to do; writing help pages and FAQs will be an important early one, for instance.

If you know anyone who was ever even a little curious about Codexed, please pass on the news!

Finally, we hope to have Milestone 2 completed by some time in July 2008. We'll see how much reality gets in the way.

Links

• Revised Milestone Roadmap
  
• Alpha release discussion thread

[Daniel]

Alpha test invitation codes
As promised, you are now able to request an invitation code, by filling out the form at http://www.codexed.com/preorder. If you are at all interested in participating in the Codexed alpha (or later pre-release versions, for that matter), you will need an invitation code first in order to register an account.

Note that while invitations are now open, the actual service is not open quite yet. More news to that effect will be posted as it happens.

Like I mentioned previously, we are requiring the use of invitation codes because we do not want anyone to be able to snag a large number of usernames at this point. At the same time, there is no real way to distinguish a person other than by their email address, so I fully understand that the potential to exploit the system by signing up under multiple email addresses exists. We're going to have to work on the honour code, and I have faith in our users that they will not register more accounts than one or two for now. However, if we do find out at some point that someone is registering multiple accounts for the purpose of username-hoarding, all of that person's accounts will be deleted and they will be banned from using the service. As I said, though, I do not expect that this will be a concern.

While there is not yet anything open to register in, by requesting an invitation code now you can be sure to have one ready for when registration opens. That being said, it should not take more than a few minutes to receive a code, and the form to request a code will be open for as long as we're in a pre-release stage, or until further notice (we might decide in the future to close registration, but that is not in the plans at the moment).

If you have any trouble with requesting a invite code, please let us know by sending an email to admin@codexed.com.

[Daniel]

Status update
We really, really wanted to have the alpha open this past weekend. During the past week, we identified and fixed a number of bugs that existed in the code as of the end of Milestone One, so that things would be ready and working for the alpha test. This is now complete.

Unfortunately, however, we needed Dreamhost (our server host) to make some changes to our domain which we couldn't do ourselves, and while I sent them a message to that extent on Saturday afternoon, I still have not received a response back. I assume it's that they don't work on the weekend, but that proved to be unfortunate to what we wanted to do.

So what will happens now? Barring any other unforeseen circumstances, Dreamhost will hopefully take care of what we need them to tomorrow, and then we'll have to test to make sure everything still works as it should, and then the alpha will be opened to the (invited) public!

[Daniel]

Okay, finally the news that you've all be hopefully waiting for!
I am pleased to announce that the Codexed alpha test is finally opening for business! This means that if you have an invitation code, you can now use it, by going to codexed.com and clicking on the create an account link. And if you don't have an invitation code yet, you can still get one.

Some things to think about when using the alpha:

1. This is an alpha build. That means that a lot of features that we will be including are not available yet. We have a list of features that we plan on implementing, which you can take a look at by viewing the Milestone Roadmap. If you are unwilling or unable to use Codexed without it being feature complete, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for a future release because this one isn't. At the same time, all the basic journalling options you'd likely expect are already implemented or are set to be implemented in Milestone 2.
   
2. We know that the layout is not even close to being done. This is not the final layout (so if you were going to complain about it, now you don't have to). This is just a temporary layout for the alpha release. Chances are, the layout will change immensely a number of times before final release. For now, it's just something manageable.
   
3. We hope that most things are self-explanatory, but chances are, some things will be confusing to people. This is fine. We will have documentation, but we don't have it yet. If you have a question about how to use something, just ask us in the alpha release discussion forum and we'll be glad to help you out as soon as we can. Of course, once the documentation is written, things should become clearer. (I suspect a big confusion point at the start will be the template substitutions).
   
4. We know there will probably be bugs. That is half of the point of releasing the alpha to begin with (the other half being so that you guys can finally play with something). If you run into a bug, please report it. The easiest way to do that is to head over to the bug report forum and make a new thread (make sure to read the howto there first).
   
5. Similarly, we know that people will have ideas about what to add to Codexed. If your idea is not already in our roadmap, and it hasn't been suggested already, we've got a feature request forum that you can use. Again, make sure to read the howto first.
   
6. Remember, as stated previously, that because this is an alpha build, it is up to you to backup anything you add to your user account that you'd be upset if you lost. While we do not expect anything catastrophic to happen, we do not want to pretend that nothing can happen. This is a testing release, there will likely be bugs and while it is unlikely, it is possible that there could be a bug that would compromise your data. So all you have to do right now to avoid that is backup stuff you'd care if you lost. Note that during registration you will be asked to agree to a prerelease terms and conditions which stipulates this same point.
   

We sincerely hope you enjoy using the Codexed alpha and are glad that you've stuck around this long to do so!