Issue #14 Post Mortem

[Paul Cutler <pcutler foresightlinux org>]

Now that I've caught my breath after today's release, I wanted to capture some thoughts of things that went right and things that we could improve.

This is not meant as a criticism of any individual, and I'm sure each release has it's own highlights.

* As we hadn't published in a while, we were lucky to have some content ready to go.  (Stormy interview, GNOME Asia Summit, and Gconf).

* Sri, Ken and Jim each wrote additional articles.  As Claus mentioned when talking about the release cycle, it took a little prodding, but they got done.  

* Editing:  We need more editors.  I thought I could do it with Jim's help, but after a few days of editing the same articles, I couldn't see the forest for the trees anymore.  Even after Jim had edited the articles I needed help, Lucas pointed out a number of small things that needed to be fixed.

* More on editing:  I ended up spending a few hours this morning doing more editing, than just the text.  Formatting changes, updating images, etc.  A couple days before the formal release, we should have an evening hackfest where the editors get together and do it together as the final proof.  To me editing is spelling and grammar, and I forgot about the formatting, such as headers and code samples.

* Code & Previews:  These tie together - even though you do editing, until you hit publish, you don't see the final formatting changes.  This would change once we move to Wordpress, as it has a real preview feature, and better code tags for displaying in a post.

WE NEED TO MOVE TO WORDPRESS.  Sorry for the caps.  But for many reasons, including the code formatting in this months edition, the preview function, and some of the bugs I ran into including one article that could no longer be edited after a while.  (Very frustrating).  Jim made a comment that our version of Textpattern is 4 or 5 years old, and is a preview release.

We are blocked on Jeff Waugh - no one has the login to our test site on blogs.gnome.org, and there are no other admins but him who have access according to Vincent Untz.  This is a high priority for me over the next few weeks, in addition to working with Lucas and Josh Adams.  (Lucas on the RSS import script, and Josh on the WP theme).


I would like to say a big thank you to everyone for getting this out.  To the writers, for spending the time interviewing or researching their subjects and writing about it.  To the editors for fixing grammar, especially Lucas on finding some last minute fixes.  To everyone who helped today in providing tips on editing and formatting, such as Claus for giving me pointers and meuserj who tired to fix the code samples. And last, but not least, to everyone who blogged, micro-blogged, and hit up the other social websites to pass the word on.

Take a deep breath, pat each other on the back and enjoy the weekend.  Come Monday, you'll see me send out another email kicking off issue 15!

Paul