Before Twitter Era (BTE)

The ListMessenger support forums have just been upgraded to the latest version of the forum software we use. All of the functionality of the forum appears to be working without a problem; however, the design has definitely changed and we were unable to port our usual forum look and feel to the new version of our forum software.

Over the next short while we will be updating the look and feel of our forums to match the new website we hope to release before the year is out. We fully recognize that the forums currently feel very “stock” right now, but please be patient until we are finished bringing a more “ListMessenger” feel to the forum.

Until then, enjoy the new forum features.

The ListMessenger public forum underwent a major upgrade this evening and was therefore offline from approximately 11:00PM EST until 2:45AM EST while we changed the server which the forum is hosted on, as well as upgraded our forum software to the latest release.

There are currently no known issues with the forum so if you happen to come across something please send me a message so I can resolve it.

This is a quick announcement to mention that the ListMessenger website http://www.listmessenger.com (including the forums and Members Area) will be down tomorrow morning for a few hours while we do regular maintenance and upgrades on the server.

The official upgrade slot is:
Sunday, November 13th, 2005 @ 6:00AM EST

We expect the upgrades will actually take roughly 5 hours to complete; however, the website and forums will be up and online most of this time. To ensure a positive experience for customers, the Members Area will be off-line until all upgrades are complete.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your understanding.

Despite working a great deal of hours over this weekend, I wasn’t able to get even a beta available for release of the next version of ListMessenger. Since this next version is a complete re-write of the original, the code base has changed which will not allow me to migrate older code. The new sending engine, which was what I worked on all weekend, is pretty much complete and is at least a twenty times improvement over the 1.0 version.

I am working hard to deliver this upgrade, thank-you for your patience.

On a separate note, I’m never going to do such a big upgrade again. There’s just too much in getting it ready for production, despite what I think sometimes when I “have a great idea”. I’m making it my goal for future releases to be more frequent, but less complex and less features.

I thought that I had better put out another release announcement to let everyone know the progress on ListMessenger 1.1.

I have been working diligently on the next release since my return from PHPWorks 2004 (PHP Conference) in Toronto on Sunday. I plan to have no less then a beta version of ListMessenger 1.1 available on the weekend, which will be available to all ListMessenger Pro customers. I will send out a notice to the ListMessenger mailing list when the release is available, as well as post another announcement.

In other news, users should be aware of a possible service outage of the ListMessenger website, members area and forums on Thursday evening and/or Friday morning as we will be upgrading our production server. We do not expect the outage to be long and we appreciate your patience.

With all the e-mails and questions I receive regarding ListMessenger 1.1, I felt it best to just release another announcement explaining the delay and the timelines I expect for this release.

Please be advised that ListMessenger 1.1 is indeed under development and that it is indeed very late. This is not because of programming complexities or any issues relating to the program, but because I simply have not had the time to complete it. I have roughly 15 to 20 hours of programming left to complete it which really isn’t all that much; however, the deadlines that I am under at the University are preventing me from spending that time on ListMessenger. We’ve had two large, top priority projects dumped on our lap last minute and it’s very frustrating for me and unfortunate that it has hindered the development this much.

The number one top priority project was completed on time by September 1st and the second top priority project is required to be completed by September 15th. I am going to spend as much time as possible during the next two weeks on ListMessenger; however, development will be delayed until the end of September. So in other words, you can expect that ListMessenger Pro 1.1 will be released by the end of September, 2004; however, my hope is that it is released sooner than that.

I would also like to take a minute to state that I really sincerely do apologize for the inconveniences and delays of users waiting to upgrade. I completely understand your frustration and I just want you to know that I feel the same way.

The sooner this version is out, the better the following version will be! I always look at it that way, but at the same time, I don’t like to release stuff early.

I’m decided to release some teaser screenshots of ListMessenger 1.1. There’s still some development work that needs to be done before I can seed it for beta testing.

Development has slowed due to members of my wedding party that I haven’t seen in a long time coming down to visit and I have one more coming this weekend. I also am going to be doing a server upgrade shortly so this will take a bit of my time away from development. I’ll be sure to post as soon as I have any further information.

Screenshots:

Sadly, I couldn’t find the 4 screenshots to include here. Sorry.

Matt Simpson

As much as I was hoping to have this done or at least seeded as a release candidate by Monday, it really doesn’t look like that’s going to happen now. Some code complications and feature modifications are taking much longer than I ever thought; basically just figuring out how things are going to work with each other properly is what’s taking the time.

The way I designed it on paper was flawed, of course, so I want to make sure I get it correct in the code. If absolutely nothing else, I will definitely release some screenshots by the end of the weekend (I want to wait until all the new icons are in place).