Scott says ".Text Still Lives"

Finally, Scott answered to my previous series of posts, via mail as well as on his blog. I’m happy that Scott seems to understand my point. Sometimes I get stuck for the right words, and after getting first feedback to my posts, I noticed that it you may understand them the wrong way. But he didn’t.

Anyway, Scott started his answer as follows:

So a common question the last couple of days, ”Is .Text Dead” ?

Absolutely not. No way. Nie..Nao. Het.

Just to be clear:

• Community Server is the evolution of .Text (I consider CS 1.0 to be the missing .Text 1.0)
• There will be a free upgrade tool to upgrade a .Text install to CS 1.0
• You 100% can run Community Server Blogs, without galleries and forums. (as you can run forums without blogs, etc)
• We will ship the source code (to keep things simple, we have held on to the source until we ship 1.0)
• You will be able to contribute

I have expected the first two points. The third item is good news for all who want a blog only. What I really like are the two last statements.

Further down his post Scott gives a rough overview of new features:

Set up and configuration is now infinitely easier and more flexible.

• We have a web based installer
• A new virtualization model capable of not only running multiple sites on a single install but the ability to use shard or unique users
• UI for creating and managing blogs
• Secured/control access to blogs (globally and individually)

General Features

• Built in search
• Support for medium trust environments
• More flexible URL overrides
• Ratings
• Comments
  • Moderated
  • Authenticated only
  • Timed (i.e., new comments for 1, 2, etc days)
  • You can both hide all comments and/or turn them off
• A much simpler and documented skin layer
• Much simpler and less restrictive UrlRewriting
• Posts can be dated for the future (and will not be visible until then)
• Multiple authors per blog
• Role and Permission based access (i.e., users in role X have Post access while users in role Y have read-only access)
• Email subscriptions by post and blog
• Updated CSS Hierarchy

Well, it looks very promising. Yes, it does. Many mods published by people as Dave Burke, Don Demsak, Dan Bartels, and others will already part of CS::Blogs.

I don’t want to repeat every single word of Scott. Read it yourself. He explains the reasons for the long delay since the last release of .Text very well.

He closes his post with

We have one minor issue to clear up and we will be releasing a release candidate to Community Sever 1.0 have already started working on plans/features for 1.1/1.2/2.0 (current plan calls for two point releases before 2.0).

To summarize, we are still making progress and if you have the time/desire to contribute, we would welcome you to contribute to CS.

One thing missing is the release date. I have many items on my to-do list. I want to adopt several mods, and have lots of additional ideas I want to realize in .Text. Is it worth to start implementing them, or should I wait for the release of CS::Blog (incl the sources)?