Roadmap

This document describes the goals for future versions of Subtext as well as a plan for achieving them. The goals for this roadmap are the following:

  • Communicate to end users what features are planned for future releases
  • Elicit feedback from users about upcoming releases
  • Provides a prioritization of features

This document is a work in progress and is constantly changing. Feedback is welcome. If you want to see information about past releases, check out the release notes.

Administrative Road Map

  1. Documenting existing source code and features. (priority: high)
  2. Fill specific project roles (patch manager, forum manager, etc...) (priority: high)
  3. Set up an automated build process (NAnt) (priority: low)

Version 2.0 - “Poseidon”

Poseidon takes an inward look and fixes up the plumbing a bit, providing an extensibility (plug-in) model.

  1. Code refactorings - Focus on simplifying the existing providers (especially the ObjectProvider) so that other providers can easily be built.
  2. Plug-in Framework - This should include the ability to hook into Subtext system events as well as an API for creating and adding custom skin controls.
  3. Membership API Implementation - Allow multiple users per blog.
  4. Email to Weblog - Allow users to post to blog via email.

Version 2.1 - Code named “Red October”

  1. Skin Gallery
  2. Skin Upload tool
  3. Improved XHTML (and other standards) Support
  4. Localization and Internationalization
  5. Admin UI (look and feel) overhaul
  6. Improved Skin Architecture
  7. Simple Comment Filtering Rules Plugin Currently, haacked.com uses a simple trigger that filters out comments with a certain number of links. This exceedingly simple filter does remarkably well. To fight comment spam, we should start with a few simple (and configurable) rules for filtering comment spam. We can add more complex rules later.
  8. Texturize - Used to convert ASCII into typographically correct XHTML entities. For example, replacing "Quotes" with nicer “Quotes”.
  9. API Improvements - There are several places where we could improve the API by perhaps having a RESTful architecture. We don’t plan to use REST, SOAP, or POX as a golden hammer, merely use it where it makes sense.
  10. Implement ASP.NET AJAX - There are several places that an AJAX implementation could make Subtext more usable.
  11. Improved Friendly Url Support: Currently, Subtext allows the user to specify a friendly URL in the “Entry Name” field when creating a post in the admin section. We want to create a way for users to allow the system to automatically create these friendly URLs. Also want to have some means for friendly URL creation when posting via the MetaBlogAPI.

Features way down the road

  • Flickr Integration Not sure yet what this means exactly, but have some ideas in my head.
  • A Spell Checker: For all those bad spelers out there.
  • MySql Provider: because not everyone wants to pay for SQL Server hosting and some people want to honor their license agreement for MSDN Universal. ;)
  • Infocard Support
  • Mono support: This may be way down the road, but supporting Mono would be a nice way to introduce the Linux crowd to the beauty of ASP.NET and Subtext. Besides, we’ll finally get props from the Slashdot crowd for our 1337 sk1llz.
  • Intelligent comment filtering: Whether it be via Bayes filtering or some other means, but a more autonomous method of spam filtering is called for.
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