6:56 PM - The Just Journal Roadmap
Many open source projects post roadmaps to let users and developers know the goals of the project over the next few releases. Up to this point, Just Journal has been considered at best alpha quality software. The site was not designed from the begging with open source or even serious code reuse in mind. There are many longstanding bugs and several design decisions I made that negatively effect the site's functionality.
My focus has been to compete with LiveJournal since this site's inception. I thought that I wanted to duplicate LiveJournal but without many of the annoying problems that LJ had. In some ways I've been successful. Overal, this site does not have the community feel I always wanted it to have.
I've decided to take a different path. I want the software to run on any site, and provide features people want. I want the software to be customizable which means a change in template design and other features. I'll outline the release targets for the next few versions of the webserver software. This roadmap does not cover client development aside from possible impact changes from the server code changing.
1.0 Alpha 2: Many of the site templates (xml/xslt) content will be converted back to jsp pages. The reason behind this move is that more people are familar with jsp than xslt and many of the outstanding bugs are the result of limitations or complexity in fixing them. Someday I may solve these problems, but for now I want everyone to be able to use the code. I'm also going to specifically look at the bug list and try to knock out as many as I can. The new Settings class needs to be integrated and a later version will use it for URL mappings which will solve the massive URL dependancies on the justjournal.com domain and / path.
1.0 Alpha 3: Fix any new bugs introduced by alpha 2, continue to generalize the templates and servlet output for general use. Clean up the remaining CSS documents and formally define the file system structure for just journal.
1.0 Beta 1: Setup an ant build instead of my custom shell scripts and try to get just journal to deploy as a war file in Tomcat. Possibly test in Sun's application server or webserver software.
1.0 Beta 2: Finish up any features that are half done, etc. Clean up any new bugs introduced and verify sql create scripts are up to date and well documented. Determine and remove any un-needed dependancies (jar files, etc).
1.0 Beta 3: Verify just journal works on another domain, clean up bug fixes, prepare for release.
1.0 Release: Release a directory structure or war file sutable for deployment with install instructions that are thorough enough for end users to get it running. Also do a source release at that point. Sync the windows client and assist with changes to the java client for this release.
Beyond 1.0 release:
Add Photo Gallery feature.
Add module customization to many of the journal viewer features (/users servlet) both for individuals and admins to control.
Add file based storage for thumbnails, images, avatars, and other parts of the site as an optional feature. (rss feeds?)
Design a more complex templating system for journals were admins or users can control the html output?
Add forum/message board feature. (communities?)
Add chatbox feature
Add private messaging feature.
...
My focus has been to compete with LiveJournal since this site's inception. I thought that I wanted to duplicate LiveJournal but without many of the annoying problems that LJ had. In some ways I've been successful. Overal, this site does not have the community feel I always wanted it to have.
I've decided to take a different path. I want the software to run on any site, and provide features people want. I want the software to be customizable which means a change in template design and other features. I'll outline the release targets for the next few versions of the webserver software. This roadmap does not cover client development aside from possible impact changes from the server code changing.
1.0 Alpha 2: Many of the site templates (xml/xslt) content will be converted back to jsp pages. The reason behind this move is that more people are familar with jsp than xslt and many of the outstanding bugs are the result of limitations or complexity in fixing them. Someday I may solve these problems, but for now I want everyone to be able to use the code. I'm also going to specifically look at the bug list and try to knock out as many as I can. The new Settings class needs to be integrated and a later version will use it for URL mappings which will solve the massive URL dependancies on the justjournal.com domain and / path.
1.0 Alpha 3: Fix any new bugs introduced by alpha 2, continue to generalize the templates and servlet output for general use. Clean up the remaining CSS documents and formally define the file system structure for just journal.
1.0 Beta 1: Setup an ant build instead of my custom shell scripts and try to get just journal to deploy as a war file in Tomcat. Possibly test in Sun's application server or webserver software.
1.0 Beta 2: Finish up any features that are half done, etc. Clean up any new bugs introduced and verify sql create scripts are up to date and well documented. Determine and remove any un-needed dependancies (jar files, etc).
1.0 Beta 3: Verify just journal works on another domain, clean up bug fixes, prepare for release.
1.0 Release: Release a directory structure or war file sutable for deployment with install instructions that are thorough enough for end users to get it running. Also do a source release at that point. Sync the windows client and assist with changes to the java client for this release.
Beyond 1.0 release:
Add Photo Gallery feature.
Add module customization to many of the journal viewer features (/users servlet) both for individuals and admins to control.
Add file based storage for thumbnails, images, avatars, and other parts of the site as an optional feature. (rss feeds?)
Design a more complex templating system for journals were admins or users can control the html output?
Add forum/message board feature. (communities?)
Add chatbox feature
Add private messaging feature.
...