So I've Been Thinking About Shutting Down SlideSix...
Posted By : todd sharp Posted At : April 13, 2011 2:11 PM Posted In: AIR, Flex, ColdFusion, SlideSix
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I've come to a crossroads with SlideSix. The service has never fully taken off as a legitimate competitor to SlideShare (among numerous other similar services) and the reasons for that are numerous and outside the scope of this posting. The issue that I'm facing is the fact that my server is running out of disk space (less then half a gig free out of 30gb). It's been getting close for a while and every few months I take some temporary steps to clear some space, but I can't continue postponing the inevitable. A lot of you have reached out to me via Twitter or other channels expressing your support and for that I am truly grateful.
I've been strongly considering shutting the service down all together, but I feel a strong commitment to my most loyal users. Thinking about those users has led me to realize just who those users are: the ColdFusion and Adobe developer/designer community. I'd like to keep providing a service to those users and at the same time I'd like to reward them for their loyalty so here is what I'm thinking of doing.
- Finish the complete rewrite of the service that I began last year (which utilizes CF 9 ORM).
- Relaunch the service as being geared towards developers and designers and the development/design community at large
- Utilize s3 for storage
- Abandon the premise of recording video along with each slide
- Focus on live streaming of presentations (thoughts/opinions are welcome on the value of this feature -- IE: should it even exist or should it be abandoned as well?)
- Scheduling live streams
- Group associations
- Possible conference support?
- End-Of-Life SlideSix
- 60 day period where users can sign up for new service and import previous presentations if desired
- Fully Open Source the entire codebase
- ColdFusion code
- Flex code
- AIR code
- Site layout/design/rebranding (my design skills are surpassed by my 3yr old and a box of crayolas)
- Donated s3 account for hosting images
- Donated hosting for version control repository for the new OS codebase (possibly use RIAForge)
- Participation!
- Contribute to the code if you are willing/able
- Use the new service!
- Perfect for extending the reach of User Group presentations Conferences
- Spread the word about it!
- Any other help/kindness you're willing to provide!!
My company and I could donate(or give acces to) an s3 account and svn/git hosting via our already existing unfuddle account.
I think this is a great strategy to continue SlideSix. While I'm not available at the moment, I wish you the best and hope that I can help in the (short) future.
Also, what local entrepreneurship programs have you looked into?
Brandon
If you want help with the ORM rewrite I could definitely help out there.
1. Use github for hosting. Open-source projects get hosted for free, and it comes with a wiki and issue tracking. Non-project members can still fork the project, and submit modifications back to the original project for consideration.
2. Consider putting slidesix on a new server, in addition to opening it up. http://www.thrustvps.com/ $50/mo gets you 4GB ram, 130GB disk and 4TB transfer. I'm using them for my personal sites (one for web, one for DB), and it's working great.
I would be more than happy to help out with the rewrite of the site. I have been looking to start contributing to OSS, and I think that this would be a great opportunity. Please feel free to reach out to me if and when you need help.
I would be interested in working with you to develop SlideSix's business model. But at the very least, I would like to offer whatever server resources you may need to keep SlideSix online.
Feel free to email me directly.
Personally I would hate to see the service shut down. I find it really useful to catch up on lots of good presentations which I would otherwise miss. Being here in the UK the time difference means I would rarely use it live so for me recording are more important than live streams.
I'm again overwhelmed by your generosity and support. I've started a Google Group (yeah, I know, like we all need another group...) for folks who are truly interested in being contributors. The group is located at:
http://groups.google.com/group/slidesix-open-sourc...
Please feel free to join if you are interested in contributing - even if you're only able to provide feedback/advice on decisions going forward. I'd really like to move forward on this project and I'm really excited that the ColdFusion community may have another true 'community' open source project. Stay tuned to my blog as well as the Google group as I'll be announcing more details as things become clearer.
@David Mineer:
s3 access would be *very* much appreciated. Would you mind shooting me an email so we could work on setting that up? todd@cfsilence.com.
@Rachel:
That is very awesome of you! I've had a few other folks offer help on the design/layout so what I'll do is get the code up to a repo ASAP and we'll go from there. Any time or advice you have is more then appreciated!
@Brandon:
I appreciate the support. I'm planning a few interviews in the near future that will hopefully answer some questions.
@Dan:
Thanks bro. I'll be in touch.
@Joe:
Stay tuned. All help is much appreciated.
@Shan:
I've got a github account and that is likely what I'll be doing. I've got zero experience with it, but this will be a real good way to learn about it! Is Git pretty similar to SVN? How do you handle checkout/checkin? Is there an Eclipse plugin available? In regards to hosting - I'm happy with my current host (media3) and I think getting the assets on s3 will solve a *ton* of my headaches, but thanks for the suggestion!
@Gavin:
I may take you up on the offers - let me see how things shake out in the coming days.
@Tim:
As I mentioned earlier in this comment I'm pretty happy with my current setup at media3, but it's always a possibility to relaunch on a new machine. I'll keep your offer in mind and maybe we'll talk in the near future.
@Kevin:
Thank you for the feedback.
Git is similar to SVN in that it's version control. However, it's "distributed" source control, meaning you have your own local repositories & branches that you can create & commit. Then, you can push & pull those commits to the central server (github).
My personal opinion about S3 is that it's great because storage is unlimited, but it could turn into a huge cost because storage is unlimited. That being said, I definitely see why having S3 in the open-source version is a requirement. I would recommend a couple things:
1. Keep an option for local storage. It should be a setting for easy switching.
2. Don't use the built-in S3 support in 9.0.1. It works perfectly, but you are then limiting yourself. If you use a 3rd party library to do it instead, you can switch the URL to Google storage. Then you support three storage systems (local, S3 & Google). Of course, it's possible that in a future version of CF the url will be a cfadmin or tag setting.
Other recommendations for the open source project... Hoth for error trapping (there's a cfmeetup on it a Apr 21), and Taffee for an open API.
All that being said, I don't have any extra time to contribute. The price of running a startup :)
Would love to help on any CF, Flex, or AIR that you need.
Cheers,
Craig
I setup SlideSix (source code from https://github.com/cfsilence/SlideSix) and I can't setup it to run on localhost.
Can you help me!
Regards
(http://www.birthdaybless.com/)
(http://furniture-delhi.blogspot.com/)