REBOL Status Report 2010.2

It's time again for an update...

I've been incommunicado... almost to an extreme degree, as many of you know. But, sometimes, that's what it takes to get the job done -- So nice to have it accomplished. (If you're not aware, the project was an overhaul of the REBOL.com website, a large and intense undertaking.)

Yes, it had to be done... but, we're talking about more than a decade of documents in a wide variety of formats. I was surprised even to find several that had not been accessed nor format-updated since the 2000-2001 days. Perhaps you knew of those, but I'd long forgotten them. For example, who remembers this document on detecting an Internet connection with async-DNS or this one on encrypting strings and files. I also divided up a few of the longer docs, such as REBOL/View Graphic System Reference. That document was quite long, and splitting it up helps search engines like Google index it better.

Along the way, WIP Wiki 3.1 helped immensely. It was like a dream come true. This website project was a case showing the clear advantages of using a system written in REBOL. A huge time saver. Along the way, when I found the need for a new markup tag or other feature, it would take me less than two or three minutes to implement it, including updating the main web server. The Wiki now weighs in at just 15 KB LMFC. Quite compact, considering all that it can do. I'll be using this system a lot more in the future.

So, what remains to be done? Here's the list:

• Home page - we've had this on hold until all the internal pages were updated. The home page requires a lot more "marketing" thought, as well as graphics. It's best to handle it in a few steps. First, we'll get it into the new page format, but not with any new marketing polish. Then we'll go from there, according to what I outlined earlier.
• REBOL Manual - The R2 and R3 manuals are still in their old formats. A decision needs to be made: should the manuals be kept separate or should they be merged? I'm leaning toward a merge, taking the R3 manual (which was derived from the R2 manual) and notating the differences between R2 and R3 within the same pages. This would be the most efficient because R2 and R3 have a lot more in common than differences.
• Merging the Blog - It would be nice to merge this main blog into the website... mainly because WIP wiki markup is so much easier to type (than using HTML-style tags.)
• Other Marketing - Many of you have suggested marketing ideas, but until the website was ready to proceed, most of those ideas would have been difficult to implement. So, we're ready to take another look at suggestions and move forward.
• Other "stray" content - There are various other documents, mainly on REBOL.net that should be collected into the new REBOL.com website. Since it's easy to do now, we'll make it happen as they are discovered or suggested. I'm sure Googlebot will point out a few page issues or bad links as well.
• Interesting graphics - Various pages and sections could be improved with a few images. My time is limited in this regard, so if you've got ideas, contact me.

And finally, back to R3...

With the website project now under control, it's time to get back to R3 development as our main focus. So, you'll see that project resume now.

Prior report: REBOL Status 2010.1

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Updated 3-Mar-2024   -   Copyright Carl Sassenrath   -   WWW.REBOL.COM   -   Edit   -   Blogger Source Code