Global Moxie

Fifty. A milestone. Photo by duncan.

Today’s beta update marks the 50th pre-release version of Big Medium 2. Yep, count ’em... 50.

Beta testing started 60 weeks ago, which means that I’ve released, on average, a new version every eight or nine days over the past year. These frequent small releases have added up to lots of new features and, even more important, a lot of polish.

Fifty versions have made for lots of downloads and installations for Big Medium’s hard-working beta testers to stress-test. A merry band of 50-100 brave souls have nevertheless agreed to play along with my reindeer games. Their real-time feedback on this rapid flow of updates has provided invaluable guidance in adjusting features, adding new ones and improving the interface.

It’s been a much longer process than I intended. But happily, thanks to testers’ generous suggestions and criticisms, the end result is shaping up to be a product that’s more sophisticated and fun to use than I ever imagined it might be. I hope you agree: With Big Medium 2, maintaining a website has never been so... pleasant.

Not everyone wants to be a guinea pig, of course. I’ve heard from lots of folks who prefer not to be part of the grand software experiment called a beta process. They’re sitting out the beta and instead waiting for the final commercial release. Friends, your wait is nearly over; I’m itchin’ to get this thing out the door, and it’s mighty close.

Here’s a progress report.

No significant bugs

Photo by pantagrapher.

There are currently no significant known bugs in Big Medium 2. In fact, I have just 13 bugs in the bug tracker, all of them either so minor or so rare as to be practically unnoticeable. But I’ve still got ‘em in my sights.

I’m aiming for zero known bugs in the final release of version 2.0. Why would it be otherwise? It’s just plain unethical to ship production software with known bugs. If you care about your customers (and baby, I do), you just don’t do it.

Nearly feature complete

There are two must-have features that remain to be added to Big Medium 2 before it’s finished:

• Site-copying Create a new site based on another site’s design theme, structure and/or content.

• Simple site search

No promises, but there are also a handful of other nice-to-have features that I will add if I have time before the deadline.

Deadline? So there’s a date?

Sorta. My plan is to continue development of new features until August 20. At that point, enough’s enough. After all, my job isn’t to code, it’s to give you a finished product. I need to get ready to ship this thing.

So, after August 20, I’m putting Big Medium 2 into the cold-storage locker. What’s cold storage? Software developer Daniel Jalkut has a nice explanation:

It’s my off-the-cuff name for the process of leaving source code unmodified while continuing to test the product. Many smaller businesses fall into the trap of releasing software “hot off the presses,” which often means some bug was fixed mere hours before release, inadvertently introducing five undiagnosed problems for the public to uncover. … Not only does it give you time to think of the “oh crap” mistakes that you might have made, but it (ideally) gives you have a little pre-launch vacation time to relax and prepare for the (hopefully) large influx of new customers.

Yay, new customers!

Cold storage. Photo by kiddharma.

So August 20 will mark the first Big Medium 2 release candidate. After that release, no new code or features except for bug fixes. If bugs are found, there will be additional release candidates, each followed by a cold-storage period to make sure that no new bugs turn up.

I don’t have a final date for you, but I think that the final version will arrive at least six weeks after the initial release candidate. If all goes well, October seems like a likely time to celebrate a bouncing baby Big Medium.

In the meantime, I have plenty of other stuff to do behind the scenes to get ready for the final launch of Big Medium 2:

• New software registration system.
• New site: This beta site will replace the long-in-the-tooth Global Moxie site.
• Live demo of Big Medium 2 for potential customers.
• Documentation of the developer’s API for writing Big Medium plugins.

All of this is just to say: It’s shaping up to be a busy summer. But I’m really excited about the end result.

What’s new

So what exactly are you getting in Big Medium 2 that the current 1.3.7 version doesn’t already give you? A quick overview:

• New interface
  Big Medium gets a facelift, with a new look that’s not only pretty but more intuitive and efficient.

• Image galleries and slideshows
  Any page of the site can have its own image gallery with a slideshow feature and a gorgeous “lightbox” effect.

• Image thumbnailing
  If your server has the supported software installed, Big Medium automatically sizes images for you; load your original image, and Big Medium takes care of the rest.

• Unlimited subsection depth
  Previous versions of Big Medium limited you to top-level sections and a single level of subsection categories. Now you can have unlimited levels of subsections (and sub-sub-sub-subsections, etc.).

• Version control
  Review the edit history of any page.

• Dropdown navigation menus
  The navigation widgets generate dropdown menus to allow easy navigation to your site’s subsections.

• Libraries
  When you add images, documents and authors to your site, they’re added to a library for easy reuse. Batch-upload images and documents to the library by uploading a single media-packed zip file.

• Scheduled publication
  Set times to publish/unpublish pages.

• Podcasting
  Create your own radio or TV show; add media files to your site, and Big Medium generates your podcast automatically.

• Visitor comments
  Make your site a two-way conversation by allowing visitors to post comments on your pages. Sophisticated anti-spam tools keep your comments free of Viagra, porn and ringtone ads.

• Theme library
  The theme library replaces the “skins” feature in previous versions and makes it much easier to add a new design to your site.

• WYSIWYG style editor
  The new style editor gives you a live preview of your style changes for over 50 page elements.

• Easy CSS and template editing
  The editing process for custom style sheets and templates is streamlined with easy access, in-browser editing and the elimination of clunky file uploads.

• Sitewide templates
  Previous versions required you to load a set of templates for each and every section of your site. Now you can load a set of sitewide templates to use for all sections of the site, unless you specifically choose to customize a section’s templates.

• Markdown editing
  Big Medium 2 adds Markdown editing to the “rich text” and “raw HTML” editing options of previous versions. If you’re a writer or editor who prefers plain text to WYSIWYG tools, or who likes to add your own custom HTML to your text, you’ll find Markdown to be utterly sublime.

• Tags
  Tag pages with keywords to help visitors find similar content.

• All-new HTML markup
  Nearly all of Big Medium’s widgets get a HTML overhaul, adding lots of class “hooks” to give CSS-savvy designers complete control over every design element.

• Easy announcement editing
  Announcements are now available to publishers, not just webmasters and administrators, and may be edited using Big Medium’s rich-text tools.

• Custom sorting options
  Previous versions sorted pages by publication date only; now you can also choose to sort by your own custom priority, modification date or alphabetical order.

• Custom link formats
  Customize any and all link widgets with the specific content elements you want to include.

• Section-specific preferences
  Nearly all of Big Medium’s HTML preferences can be customized for individual sections.

• Section-specific privileges
  Set account permissions and privileges for individual sections to specify exactly which content editors are allowed to add and edit.

• Security improvements
  The security and permission settings on Big Medium’s data and HTML files now default to high-security settings.

• Smart related links
  When you add related links to other pages of the site, Big Medium automatically keeps them up to date, removing deleted links or updating moved pages automatically.

• Copy content between sites
  Copy pages, announcements and tips to other sites in your Big Medium system.

• Plugin architecture Big Medium’s new engine has a plugin architecture that allows third-party Perl programmers to create modules that add and extend features.

• Google sitemaps Big Medium 2 generates XML sitemaps behind the scenes, helping search engines to index all pages of your site.

Bottom line

I think Big Medium 2 will wow and delight you. The software is easy for web designers to install and customize without a scrap of programming know-how, yet keeps up with all of the innovative HTML and CSS goodness you can muster. Meantime, editors can focus on their words, images and documents without knowing a thing about HTML. No kidding, it’s actually fun.

I hope you’ll find Big Medium 2 to be software that anticipates your needs and then gets out of your way. It’s nearly ready, and I can’t wait.

Tags: beta, bigmedium, programming