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 ✌️❤️