Audiofanzine v4

A few ramblings from our god of technology…

For a while now, we have been telling you that the solution to all (?) your problems resides in two letters (ok, actually one letter and one digit)).  This is not for nothing.

Some code belonging to Audiofanzine v3 is alive and kicking, but after years of use, and following several programmers, each programmer having massacred the code in turn with his own techniques and conventions (I am also guilty).   After the additions, the modifications, the suppressions of certain code parts, (sorry Fred), the addition of a certain number of new functionalities in cleaner way (it depends on the developer mind frame at the moment, measured by the level of pizza and Coke in blood), the addition of language support (en.audiofanzine.com), and finally after some server crashes (I had two big ones), you will understand why sometimes the pages are white…

Add to that the evolution of the Web (Web 2.0) and especially the evolution computer programming languages and development techniques… and you will understand the underlying drive to make this migration.

From a night genius, developing Audiofanzine in his living room during his spare time, we have now graduated to a small team of 5 developers, obsessed for nearly one year in cooking this v4, that at times, we didn’t believe in anymore. The working methodology is not the same as well, as the programming techniques have changed, the tools used have changed, we too, have become more professional ourselves.

For the techies, here are certain key words that define V4:  PHP5, object oriented programming, Zend Framework, JavaScript (Dojo) frameworks, subversion, Eclipse…..
Hence, V4 will not be perfect.  I think that we will spend a few sleepless nights in the following weeks… The birth will not be without pain… but at least it will be done and one will be able (finally!) to start again on new horizons and to continue (or to restart?) to breathe life into and evolve this site which we all love.

Little blurb from our Editor-in-Chief….

If AudioFanzine was an ‘easy’ site to design and code when it was still unknown, the site’s success and longevity only complicated the implementation of V4.

Why?  Imagine what a site foreman would say if one asked him to entirely rebuild a railway station during rush hour, without disturbing the traffic or to inconveniencing the travelers… What I want to say is that to rebuild AudioFanzine from scratch, initially we are confronted with the problem of “what already exists”.  We need all the old site functionalities, including all of its contents, available and/or functioning while we launch the new version.  And all this in a completely transparent way for the 500.000 or so people who visit the site regularly. A beautiful mess all in all, because with the passing of years, AF became so complex and so rich, that one is always afraid to forget things. It is for this reason that there is a beta test phase, to make sure that all is there, that all goes well and that all AFers, whatever their profile, find their small place. You can well imagine that it is not in V4.0 that we will upset the ergonomics of the site…

Beyond these functional aspects, certain technological choices of the new version also ask for an adaptation of its contents: the basic data model is not completely the same, and it is necessary to take that into account.  But this is a subject that Nero could probably speak to you about better than me…

Small confessions from our fierce leader…

In January of 2005, while still wiping off the cob webs from the New Year, a small team of avid Audiofanziners gathered informally to reflect at length about the Audiofanzine of tomorrow.
The ideas, like seeds, were spontaneously planted.  The team was enthusiastic, with new propositions for new functions, or how to make the existing ones better and more professional.  There was never a lack of creativity and innovation coming from the team.

The V.4.0 at the time, as we had envisioned it back then, was to be a big revolution, not just on a web site level, but also on the level of the small company that gave birth to it.  It was a big step up, taking things to a new level.

Looking back at this passionate week of creative reflection, the (always small) team found itself inevitably confronted by daily life/work issues, and unfortunately this dream of V4.0 remained dormant by default, succumbing to the constraints of time and human resources.

So was the dream dead? Not completely. In each one of us the desire for developing this or that part of V4.0 itched and burned.  As envisioned, V4.0 was a project of such scale, that it made us dizzy at times.  Nobody, including me, knew how to approach this multi-faceted monster. Where do we begin?  The answers came gradually, during these four last years, progressively and steadily as the ideas, like the company itself, matured.

Ambitions aside, the problem we faced was that such a project required considerable resources. In January 2008, we launched English V3.0, for two reasons. First, because we wanted to be able to launch our site proposition globally, a website that is already loved by half a million French speakers.  Surely, the English speaking world might find it useful as well.  And second, was the rationalization that the costs of such development, a sunk loss impossible to recuperate, even in the long run, was being restricted only to the French-speaking market.  The investment could benefit several other markets.

It is thus, following the launch of the English version of Audiofanzine that we decided to invest more considerable resources. Today, the development team at Audiofanzine, boasts 5 full-time developers and a team of innovators - each department head takes an active role according to the subject matter.
Our members regularly tease us on this “mythical” V4.0, our customers do as well sometimes.
2009 will be the year of realization of this old dream.

V4.0 is first of all a complete redevelopment from scratch of the current version with a modern code, object orientation and commentary. V4.0 is modular and planned for future trends- a million small improvements and at the very least a killer application. I count on my team to speak to you about it progressively in this blog which is dedicated to the various versions of V4.0.

And count on us. 2009 will be the year of the big change to come, crisis or not. The step was hard to make, but it has been made and we are now on the brink of this launch and the change that it will bring. V4.0 will be followed by V4.1, V 4.2… and each version will allow many improvements and new functionalities, in all fields.

Even if in the front end, few things have changed in 2008, behind it is more than a year of dedicated collective work by the Audiofanizne development team.

And the final good news?  V4.0 is coming, we promise. Soon.  For Musikmesse 2009, in the beginning of April.