My current project is the handling of subscriptions. A few facets to it:
1. Aging accounts so non-lifer accounts will actually expire. SI has never had this mechanism. As such, there are hundreds of accounts right now that should've expired but haven't. As the logic on Dev evolves, I may apply it to Heritage and expire the accounts here so people can renew.
2. As part of the account aging process, sending out account-expiration warning PM's like we do on iHub.
3. Rewriting the current subscription routines to be ASP.NET routines.
4. Determine which features will be available to the 3 basic levels of membership, Free, Premium (including Lifers and Grampas) and Premium-Plus (Lifers and Grampas who pay a nominal annual fee for access to the whole featureset). As a rule of thumb, if it's available on this version and being carried over to the new version, it'll be available to existing Lifers and Grampas. If it's a feature the site doesn't have (configurable batch-reading size, private message search, readperson.aspx, etc) it'll be extra cost for lifers but included in recurring subscriptions.
So a lot of my work for the next few days will be behind the scenes and not really noticed when using Dev unless your account is one that should've expired but hasn't or you're a Lifer or Grampa trying to access a Premium-Plus feature.
Getting this work done will knock what what I think is the biggest remaining Pre-GoLive project on the list.
By the end of the week, I expect us to formally announce the date we will go live with the new version and a blurb will be put at the top of every page of this site so that everyone, lurkers and authors alike, will have ample warning to activate their Dev accounts or risk permanent loss of access to their account. Though thousands of people have activated their Dev accounts, a disconcertingly low percentage of currently-active posters have. If those posters don't do so soon, they risk being out in the cold when the switch is flipped.
Timing permitting, we're tentatively shooting for going live September 3rd, but that date isn't etched in stone yet. Timing is a key issue. I want to flip the switch late on a Friday night so I'll have the weekend to address performance/glitch issues, and time it so Dave will be available to address access issues. But I'll be out of town the 9th through 12th and 16th through 19th. So if it looks like we can't make a September 3 go-live date, it'll be September 24th or October 1st.
Concurrent with flipping the switch, we'll be offering a subscription deal. We haven't worked out the details of it yet, but basically it'll be the ability to buy a longer-term (3 years or more) subscription at a discount to the annual price. I may implement this even before we flip the switch and it'll only be offered for a limited time.
Back to programming. I've still got a lot of it to do. But we hope to know no later than Friday when we can flip the switch. The site is that close to being ready. |
