An update, launch date, plans and setting it straight

Ah yes, fresh air as they say. As you've noticed development has been slow the past week. That's been on purpose. But not at the same time.

I took a little step back to think more about launching and what's important for Scribbles, especially on the feature set —  I had many feature requests (some of which have been implemented).

A few things are clear:

• I need some sort of roadmap on the site so you'll know the requests I had, as I am getting multiple of the same requests. My only issue with a roadmap is that I can't ever promise that it will make it at a specific time.
• I need a vision page. What Scribbles is and what it's not (see below where I set some things straight).
• A lot of you said my pricing is too cheap 🤣 So I am thinking about this again.
• ... I need to ship this.

Launch date

I still need to officially announce this, but I am planning 1st of April, 2024 to officially launch it. I might do something earlier, but I need some room.

In the interim

Next week I will implement the "one-time" lifetime payment option, which will be available to everyone until the above date. There will be 3 choices and you can pick the one that suits your budget and if you would like to support the project. I am adding 3 choices because I had some emails saying that $99 is too cheap 🤷‍♂️ (thank you BTW ❤️)

With that, the most important thing for me to do is add export options. I wanted to write a more in-depth post about this... however I am planning a normal HTML (& .bar) export of your data — I will also allow you to make automatic back ups every month (after launch) — so you don't have to worry and it just does its own thing. This is only step one. However it's important you have this data. Afterwards I'll add Markdown exports.

With Export sorted, then I can think about adding the monthly plans. Here I will open up to anyone that has emailed me and you'll get a discounted price (if you want). It'll be a yearly only without the option of a monthly.

Then we should be close to April. Here I will add the normal pricing for everyone else.

A complete product

I said this a few times, I see Scribbles, when it launches, a complete product. So when you do go for the lifetime subscription know that it might not change much, beyond the roadmap. I want to stay true to keeping things simple. I'll share a roadmap/vision at some stage next week.

Know that I'll support Scribbles until the end of the internet (or me). Whatever comes first.

Of course I will add some new stuff as time goes, but know it's going to be slow and deliberate. It's on purpose. My other product shoutouts is one of these, with slow incremental changes as time goes.

I am not here to win any competitions.

Confusion & setting it straight

Sometimes I get the odd email asking something along the lines of:

• Can I replace Micro.blog with Scribbles?
• Will you add ActivityPub/Webmentions and whatever other Fediverse stuff there is?

Both of these are easy to answer: No.

You will never be able to have the power and features of Micro.blog here — sorry, no. I will add support for posting directly to Micro.blog (and weblog.lol) though (will be on the roadmap for a non determined date).

With ActivityPub and Webmentions (and whatever else) — sorry. I don't want to open up my server to handle this stuff, nor is there a good modern (!!!) approach to this — everything feels undocumented, experimental and damn right ancient. So, no.

I want to keep my codebase simple and robust.

Sorry, no icing on the cake here — I made my mind up about this before inception.

"But you didn't say anything about Markdown!" — 😅 Not for launch — maybe late this year.

I think it's important for me to make sure everyone understands what they're buying in to, so I hope this gives you an idea.

Anyway, enough of me.

Enjoy the day and weekend ✌️❤️