blog.mhartl | Michael Hartl's tech blog

We’ve hit a couple of big milestones here at Insoshi, so we thought now would be a good time for an update on where we’ve been, where we’re going, and what we are.

The first milestone was the launch of our open-source project. We pulled out all the stops preparing for it: installing and configuring the servers; setting up the source repository, issue tracker, and documentation; and, most important, making the Insoshi platform good enough to host the Insoshi developer site. The result has been robust growth with continuous improvement and minimal downtime. The second milestone was the completion of the initial administrative interface, especially the ability of the admin to communicate with users and manage various aspects of the community. These features have been largely invisible, since Long and I are the only admins at the developer site, but anyone downloading the source code and deploying it will benefit directly from these efforts.

In addition to the admin features, we also had the usual fires to put out: squashing subtle bugs, managing stability issues (particularly with Ferret), and implementing the kind of missing features you can only identify by having a live site with real users. There are still a few loose ends, such as a nasty bug in the validates_uniqueness_of Rails validation, a couple of speed bottlenecks in the feed-generation and message-sending subroutines, and a move from Ferret to Sphinx for search. We’ll be addressing these issues as soon as possible.

In the short run, in addition to the loose ends mentioned above, we’ll be focusing on ancillary issues such as polishing up current features, staying active on the developer site, and maybe even contributing to this blog! (We’re also both moving soon, a short-lived but significant disruption.) Due to these various factors, in the coming weeks we’ll have limited time for implementing new features, and as always we’ll gladly and gratefully accept contributions from the Insoshi community.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Insoshi is more than a project or even a product: Insoshi is a startup backed by Y Combinator, a leading seed-stage venture capital firm (or, as Paul Graham puts it, “a small, furry steam catapult”). It’s likely that we’ll soon start looking to raise a round of funding, which would allow us to hire some more developers and take Insoshi to the next level. We hope you’ll be a part of it!