What's the plan, Jimmy?

I just thought I would do a general development update to explain to everyone where we are at and what is going on with each of our products.

Particle Gallery 1.0.3 and Particle Whois 1.0.5 have just been released so, enjoy. They squash some bugs, fix some problems, you could argue those are the same thing but hey. It's all good stuff.

Particle Wiki 1.1 is the next big thing we are working on. We only have a few more bugs to get out of the first round of beta testing but then we have another big round of testing before we actually release it. It has some very flashy new features though so we're quite excited about the thought of releasing it. Hopefully we should have the demo online soon.

Particle Links 1.3.1 is also in development, it adds some new features as well as plenty of bug fixes (not that we have that many bugs :p) and we're at a similar stage to Particle Wiki, just a little further behind in that we have a small to do list to finish then we're ready to start the second round of beta testing before release.

After that we will probably put out another maintenance release of Particle Blogger. We don't really have anything to fix in it but we might add a few small features and bring the code a little more up to date. Then we'll see about getting Particle Top Sites into release candidate if not stable.

New release is coming

We don't normally blog about new releases but a) we're making more of an effort to and b) I think this is quite significant because it's the first new release we have made in quite a while.

It's actually been several months since out last release as we've been doing a lot of testing on our new products but we didn't want to be forgetting about our existing products, hence the release of Particle Gallery 1.0.2. It makes a few bug fixes and does a little bit of other cool stuff and is the first step in us updating our entire range to make things simpler.

For example, you no longer need to remove the install diretory after installing. We've also generally overhauled the installation script and will be doing this for our other products in the near future too.

Particle Blogger 1.2.1

We're on the verge of releasing a new version of PB which includes a few security updates (some quite important onces so I would recommend upgrading asap, it's a fairly small upgrade) and also includes the ability to include a Digg This link in your posts so users can easily submit interesting posts to Digg.

Another development update

I know it annoys me when I read a company blog and they haven't post an update on what going on in ages so I thought I would make a quick post about what is happening.

As you may now we recently moved Particle Top Sites into public beta and we're working away on that. It's shaping up to be a really good script and I'm really happy with what we done on it so far so hopefully we will be able to release that soon.

Plus on the horizon we have some new ideas for new versions of Particle Blogger and Particle Wiki. 

Forums pruned

We've just pruned a lot of forum accounts to get rid of most of the spam bots. I've also changed the way we send mail so if anyone wasn't getting confirmation emails they should be now. If you didn't get one and want your account to be activated then contact us via the contact form (yes, we're actually giving you permission to use it :p).

Summer sun

It's well and truly summer over here which unfortunatly means we spend much of the day lying around in bed complaining about how hot it is and waiting for summer so we can get coding again ;).

Ok that's not quite true. Thankfully it does sometimes cool down (such as about 4am) so we're making use of the time available to us. Given the amount of exciting stuff happening at the moment (as ever of course) the coding effort is coming along as well as ever.

First off, obviously Particle Fusion is already in beta. But hopefully it won't be the only other script we have in that phase. We have another script which if all goes to plan we will announce and launch a public beta soon and Project Orion isn't too far behind that either.

There is also another revision release of Particle Blogger on the horizon as we're working to add some extra stuff to it at the moment, most notably automatic Digg links so that your users can quickly and easily Digg your blog.

New version checker and downloads back online

Yesterday we updated our website as part of some on-going updates we are working on. Unfortunatly some of the new code did not get uploaded which resulted in the "get latest version" download links and the version checker built into our scripts which pings our website going offline.

This problem has now been cleared up though so if you were told you were running an unreleased version last night, don't worry, you weren't, if you check it again now it will be back to normal. 

Particle Links 1.3

I don't really like talking about things that are coming in the future as these things have a habit of never arriving once talked about. So don't hold your breath for a release tomorrow. Not that if everything went to schedule it would be released tomorrow as we still have plenty of work to do. But, let's say, in theory it all did work out, that what I am going to talk about.

What I am talking about is Particle Links 1.3. Because it's going to be AMAZING. The things we are putting together for it are going to be kick ass and I can't wait to start showing off the features. But I'm not saying anything until more development is done. Keep an eye out though, it's going to be good!

We are now running version 1.2.0

It's here! Sort of! After we finish development completely almost we always do at least two release candidate tests (even though they aren't usually public) and that is the stage we are about 75% of the way through at the moment. So you can expect the new version to be released every soon if all goes well. Indeed, even if things don't I think we are close enough to fix them and release it soon anyway.

I think I may have to blog more now, because I really do like the interface. Although I think it was that just not much either got said or I didn't feel the need to blog much, recently there has been plenty of blog posts, for us at least (my personal blog gets updated several times a day). I will have to get everyone else to come and make a blog post too.

Next version? It's coming soon

You may have noticed that we recently released a new version of Particle Whois, the main focus of which was a vastly improved admin interface. Well, it was the interface actually developed for Particle Blogger. As the scripts use such a similar backend though it easy for us to port it across as we wanted to update both of the scripts and just keep them fairly fresh.

The reason for the delay on the new version of Particle Blogger is that we are still tackling the new and upgraded WYSIWYG editor for writing and editing posts. Once that is done we will be ready to release the new version complete with all it's other new features too.

That said, there are many other ideas we are toying with too. Ideas like categories, pingbacks, a new look, even friendlier URLs (we have static URLs at the moment but you can always make something better) and probably a load of other ideas we will come up with as we are developing it too so don't hold your breath for an immediate release as we may put some more development time into it.

A nice and general update

You know, I like Particle Blogger. I mean, yeah, we authored it so I should but then I sometimes feel that our older scripts are not as good as our most recent releases. But looking back on what we have now, I like the script. It's got a whole cool interface, the login form tells you what details you have wrong, the text and general presentation looks good. I don't see any reason why Particle Blogger can't compete with our newer scripts.

Anyway, I thought I would post a general update just to let everyone know what we are doing at the moment. Particle Gallery is still in the final stages of testing. It's a really big and complicated script so we want to do as much testing as possible and make sure that we get it right before we do a full release but we will probably bring out a more up to date release, possible even a release candidate in the next month or two.

Secondly we have plans for a message board script. This was actually the foundation of Particle Soft, back when I wrote Particle Board. Well, there may be a new version on the was as we recently coded a custom forum for a new website project which could form the basis of the source code for a script development. If plans to go ahead it will be quite a lightweight board (though I don't like to push that angle as we plan to keep adding features until it isn't one any more :D) with some pretty neat features - most notably AJAX editing and deleting of posts and that is just what we have developed so far, we want to add loads of AJAX so that it's really fast to use.

As ever, it's been a while

I could really see us putting some more development time into Particle Blogger, there are so many new features and ideas I have for it. Hopefully it will get some free time as at the moment my schedule is pretty full on. The new version of Particle Wiki is the main concern about the moment, bar some possible more features to be added it's virtually ready for testing and releasing.

Particle Gallery update

Every now and then I wander over here and see and post an update. I would really like to rework Particle Blogger, the admin panel could be made a lot better, although it has pretty much all the function it needs. Anyway, last time I posted I was talking about the upcoming release of Particle Zine. Well that never happened, but Particle Wiki and Particle Links did come along. Now I'm on to talking about Particle Gallery.

We are on the verge of making a public release of PG, albeit in beta. I think there are probably plenty of bugs still to be found so I don't want to classify it as stable yet, I want to get some real-world testing done on it first. Other than that though it is pretty much ready. There are a few things to do in terms of features but these are minor details, the core of the script is ready, indeed we could ship it now and the extra features wouldn't be particuarly missed. That said, I do want to get them done.

So keep your eyes on the forums for a release that you will be able to download and play around with it. Although the official policy is going to be no-support, no-upgrades, if there are hardly any changes and bug fixes we might make upgrading available and the whole no-support thing is questionable anyway as we will take bug reports and try to solve problems. In other words, do have a play around with it!

It has been a while

When we first started writing this blog, Particle Soft was really in it's early stages of life - it still is, we are still new and feeling our way around. But gradually we are developing more and have moved from begin a one script company to on the verge of releasing our 3rd script (that being Particle Zine).

We mentioned a while ago that it was in development and our first release isn't that far off. If everything goes well it could be out in a few days. Of course the nature of this business is that it could also take weeks or even months, that's the way things go.

We have also been glancing at a few of the blogs and whois scripts that have begun appearing accross the web. And personally I have to say that I am impressed with what you have done with them. It's great to know that our scripts are actually get used by people. Anyway ramble over, keep your eyes pealed for more news.

Of our many subjects

There is a lot going on at Particle Soft at the moment. We are pretty pleased with the look of our new site as well as the integration of the forums. On top of that our all knew knowledge base now actually contains knowledge so things are coming up pretty peachy.

As we as Particle Blogger which we are sketching ideas for 1.2 down for, there are several other projects. One of which we are in the process of basically scraping and starting again to make it much better and integrating into user's existing sites. I shall keep you posted, after all, what better way to show off our blogging system ;).

Recently...
What's the plan, Jimmy?
New release is coming
Particle Blogger 1.2.1
Another development update
Forums pruned
Summer sun
New version checker and downloads back online
Particle Links 1.3
We are now running version 1.2.0
Next version? It's coming soon

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