Four years in the making, the newest version of the software that runs this website will be installed this Saturday. This is a wide-ranging upgrade that affects site branding and a number of features, including a complete rebuild of the front page, the story editor, the story page, and comments, with some improvements to the image library as well.
Expect the site to be down for most of Saturday starting at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT as we update the code and migrate the data. We will be updating the status page as we go if you would like to follow along.
At the beginning of the summer, we launched an early version of DK5 to dailykosbeta.com. The announcement of the beta release had an extensive list of new features and the reasoning behind them. In summary, we sought to improve the performance of the software, accommodate the proliferation of different devices used to read the site, and make the site both more powerful for seasoned Daily Kos authors and easy to use for those new to the site.
As part of the beta process, we received a lot of great feedback from our beta testers, to whom we owe a great deal of thanks. They have helped us tremendously in identifying flaws in the software and opportunities for improvements to its design. Many a great beta tester suggestion was turned into software. Thank you!
Though we have sought to keep the software feeling familiar, we have made some big changes in some places, so there are bound to be some growing pains. If you find bugs, please report them to the helpdesk. You can also check helpdesk for information about the new software. DK5 was designed to be a foundation for future refinement, and even though the beta program is winding down, we would love to continue to hear your feedback so we can continue to adapt the software.
We hope you like this new version of Daily Kos. Enjoy!
8:21 AM PT (elfling): Our best guess for the downtime is something like 10am-5pm Pacific. The end time is a little bit fuzzy; we of course will try to make it as short as we can. Be aware that any diaries that are scheduled for time while we are down will be posted by the scheduler as soon as we come back up. If you don't want that to happen, you may want to unschedule diaries planned for that time. If you do want that to happen, then all is good!