Pierrick on Piwigo

Piwigo 2.2 was planned for Fall 2010. Obviously we have been late! Even if that doesn’t really matters, I would really like to shorten the release cycle. In my opinion, having less features is not a problem at all. Piwigo 2.1 was out on May 2010 and coding for Piwigo 2.2 really started in September (we made other useful stuffs than coding for 3 months).

Here is a review of past release cycles:

• 1.4 = 16 months
• 1.5 = 8 months
• 1.6 = 8 months
• 1.7 = 10 months
• 2.0 = 21 months. Far too long (with 6 months between RC1 and final version)
• 2.1 = 14 months. Better, but still too long.
• 2.2 = 11 months. Still Better, but can be improved.

Why is a long release cycle a problem? Because it encourages the coding team to add many new features at the very last moment (even after RC1) and to add nothing new right after the major release is available. If you have a short release cycle, there is no problem to say:

ok, let’s postpone this feature, I’ll add it for next major release

With a long release cycle, this would be:

oh no, if I don’t add this feature right now, I’ll have to wait another 10 months before it’s available in a stable release! let’s try to add it now and postpone the release date

The consequence is a release cycle becoming longer and longer.

A good compromise is a 6 month release cycle. There is no real problem as soon as we’re not forced to add a fixed list of features. Instead of a list of features, we set the release date, and we’ll have the stable features available that day (after a 1 month release candidate period RC1, RC2, RC3…). Piwigo 2.3 will probably have less new features than 2.1 or 2.2 but it doesn’t matters at all.

Piwigo 2.3 planning on Piwigo.org forum

Last week on Piwigo.com contact form, we’ve received several questions from customers of Fotopic.net. They told us that their photo sharing website had closed down. Of course they are searching for a replacement. Here is an anonymous extract of a message we’ve received:

My question is if I sign up for your site, like it and pay a subscription, will it be reliable?  It takes a lot of hours creating a nice site and disappointing to lose it. Hope you do not mind the question but I am having difficulty finding a suitable replacement to the defunct fotopic.

And my answer looks like:

I perfectly understand your concern about reliability and sustainability. Piwigo.com is a commercial offer, so we can’t promise we will last for a hundred years (not even Microsoft or Google could promise that) but we have a major advantage compared to our competitors: Piwigo.com is based on Piwigo and Piwigo is a free software (open source).

It means that in case you’re not satisfied with Piwigo.com services or if Piwigo.com is closing for any reason, you can get your data back, including photos, user comments, visit history… and move your gallery on any other host and you won’t lose anything

(the best is to have your own domain name so that your visitors won’t have to find your new address if one day you decide to move)

This is what I call the no vendor lock-in advantage! I truly believe it makes a big difference with any other photo sharing website.

A few weeks ago, we’ve received a message from DreamHost team on Piwigo.org contact form:

Hi there folks!

We’ve received an application submission from a customer to have Piwigo included in the DreamHost One-Click Installer’s application catalog.

[...]

Since a user submitted it and not the developer, we had to reject the application submission, without even so much as reviewing it.

Piwigo is already available in 1-click installers Softaculous and SimpleScripts, but DreamHost has its own 1-click installer system. So I have added Piwigo, next to Zenphoto and Gallery2 in the category “Gallery”. Today it is available to any DreamHost customer and this is one of the biggest web hosting in USA.

Piwigo on DreamHost : 1-click install

Considering their 1-click installer for Piwigo, we have added Dreamhost in the list of recommended hosting for Piwigo.

Read the full release notes on Piwigo.org.

I have worked on the user upload, on ImageMagick and high definition resizing options, on multisite, and on the new Batch Manager. P@t has worked on themes and languages updating system, on new versions of jQuery, GIF support on upload and has removed the Adviser Mode . rvelices has worked on automatic merge of CSS and Javascript files, on CSS sprites for icons, on renaming “category” into “album”.

ddtddt has managed the translation effort and the result is 14 new languages: Catalan by josep.torne, Íslenska (Icelandic) by Jimmy Wallster, Québecois (Quebecois) by TiOger, Latviešu (Latvian) by Aivars Baldone, Norske (Norwegian) by atlew, Slovenšcina (Slovenian) by Klemen, Slovensky (Slovak) by dodo, Svenska (Swedish) by Jonas and Jimmy Wallster, Српски (Serbian) by Ћирилица1, Українська (Ukrainian) by quest_tom, עברית (Hebrew) by Adirbiton, فارسی (Farsi) by mohammadN, ქართული (Georgian) by geomagi, 中文 (繁體) (Traditional Chinese) by chouyh. You can find a list of the other translators on my blog post about release 2.1.

Piwigo gets a new logo designed by Jimmy Wallster (who made a great customization of Piwigo on Iceland My Way and who also translated Piwigo into Icelandic and helped on Swedish). I will soon post the history of Piwigo logos on this blog.

New logo for the Piwigo project

Thank you to everybody involved in Piwigo 2.2 creation!