In the pipeline now is the new website.

It’s a whole heap of work which can be easy to belittle and delay while you tackle the “real” work – the fun stuff – that is the programming. I’m tempted to outsource for the design, CMS set-up, etc. But in all reality it’s not that difficult, just really time-consuming. Additionally I want to D.I.Y. to appreciate the complete experience of this bootstrappin’ startup venture.

I’ve decided to use WordPress, I think I’m getting the hang of it, and there’s a ton of design templates out there for it. Most of the basic pages are up: download links, about screen, contact, blog, etc. What’s left is me retreating back into my cave to tackle two big jobs:

1. Documentation.
   I think the most value would be tutorial examples rather than dry syntax reference. Example code always seems more helpful, and the language syntax is not that complicated anyway. The reference will of course still be there, but it will definitely be not very wordy and illustrated with examples.
2. Community.
   This will be a difficult challenge and a “project phase” in itself. I have given it some thought, but not in a great deal of detail and there’s still some questions to answer for myself. For instance, should the forum functionality be part of the community pages. And if so, can a wordpress forum plugin be customised easily to work with other things specific to Metadrone. How can I use the user accounts and link them with the Metadrone application. Does this mean web service access to the wordpress mysql database.

Right now, I’m setting up the documentation. I have to tweak a template for it and then commit myself with steely determination to complete the reference and tutorials. Every programmer will tell you of the boring, soul-numbing torture that is documentation. But it must be done. And done well.

I’ll complete the community aspect next.

And THEN, it’s marketing and branding to get splash screens designed and the like.

And then launch.

Hopefully.