General Lussumo Status Update
Mark
Jul 16th 2007
Development, New Projects, New Developments
Over this past weekend I *finally* got the alpha version of my secret project up and running online. A few of my oldest developer-friends are testing it as we speak. It will not be going public for quite some time yet. The application itself is such a simple concept that it took ages for me to come up with a usable interface for it - and we will likely be changing the look and functionality of it over the next few weeks.
The good news is that heavy development of it has now ceased and I can spend some more time browsing the community forum and getting caught up with everything I've missed over the last month or so. I know there have been a few changes and bugs that have come up which should get some attention and I plan to address those asap.
I'm also hoping to get a bug tracker set up for Vanilla and grant a few community members access to that AND to SVN so I am not always a bottleneck for Vanilla getting important fixes.
Finally, the Google Adsense adverts have been on the community forum for a few months now, and they really do nothing for me. I've made a little bit of money, but not enough to warrant keeping them in there (I know that will make a few of you happy). On the flipside, my hosting costs are quite huge at the moment, and I've had a few other advertising agencies contact me about some linking strategies which aren't as in-your-face as the google adsense, and will also be much more lucrative. Hopefully some of that will pan out in the near future and I can offset some of the costs of running this community and giving away this software for free.
That's all for now!
11 comments
Jump to LatestThis new project sounds really exciting. I really wish you didn't have to keep us all in such suspense. Good luck with the testing and I hope it pans out to be a huge success, seeing as it will be a retail product, right?
@Nathan - I wouldn't call it a product so much as a service. The same way that flickr is a service (although it's nothing like flickr).
I hope everyone isn't expecting something huge. Like I said, it's very simple. Just a useful little tool - something I've been thinking about (and wanting for personal use) for a long time.
@woods - SVN is already in place for the core Vanilla code, but not for extensions yet. I'd like to get that going as well.
...Mark, any chance you'd be up for posting a breakdown of your hosting costs to see if anyone in the community has any recommendations on reducing those costs?
Everyone wants Lussumo/Vanilla/Elephant to succeed, and reducing your hosting costs would be an excellent way to secure Lussumo's future.
For instance, some hosting companies will support some creative projects with free high-end VPS hosting in exchange for some discreet promotional banners.
Others here in the community may have experience with hosts that offer better value and good service.
Hmm, so it doesnt pay to develope open-source AND downloadable code. Interesting lesson.
@rayk - I don't know. That's my biggest concern. I think about ditching the project daily for something bigger and better. It's still not what I wanted it to be, and until it is I will keep working on it and changing it.
@Toivo - I hadn't realized I was the champion of open source! I wanted to write something for myself that wouldn't be looked at by other people. I haven't been able to do that for years. I did it, and it felt great. No lesson involved besides: It takes a lot longer to develop open source than closed source.