New Doodlekit Layouts - Update
Heath Huffman
10/07/2011 05:25PM
My apologies that this communication is a little late because things have been so hectic for us the last few months. As many of you know from our last update, we were estimating 3 - 6 months left of development until the new release (including new layouts) was complete. We couldn’t commit to a hard date because of the uncertainly associated with some decisions we made earlier, most notably our decision to move to a new and improved location.
About two years ago my family and I decided a move to Seattle would benefit us both personally and professionally. Actually making the move was easier said than done. With the current worldwide economic and housing crisis, we knew it would probably take us longer than we’d like to sell our home. We spent a few months fixing it up, and then a year and a half trying to sell it. Once we finally sold it, all new development I was doing for Doodlekit went on hold as we prepared for our big move. We were expecting no more than a month’s delay before I could get back to coding again.
Well, that didn’t happen. It actually took us over 3 months thanks in large part to our terrible moving company. Without warning us that any such delay was even possible, a few days before they were supposed to leave, we were notified by our movers that they were having problems finding a driver to Seattle. Of course we had our house already sold and our airline tickets already booked, so we had no choice but to just go to Seattle – with or without our belongings.
Without going into too much detail, we finally got our life back together about 2 months later. Our stuff (including my entire office) sat in a trailer in storage for many weeks. Needless to say we were a little upset. My family and I had to live in an empty home using air mattresses and paper plates to get by. While I had one laptop to do support work (which crashed ironically, but that’s a different story), any new Doodlekit development was impossible until our belongings arrived and I could dig out my office. For more details feel free to read my North American Van Lines Review on my personal blog.
The good news is we’re back on track and working hard on the new release. I’ll be working diligently to push out the new layouts as soon as possible. I apologize for the delay and the setback, but feel our new location is a step in the right direction for us all. As far as the new release, things are looking to be pushed out the first part of next year in January or February. I'm still very excited about this rolling out and can't wait to show off all our hard work - you're going to love it!
Comments
Thank you H.H. for all of your hard work, that keeps DoodleKit running and updated.
Welcome to Washington state! Our family moved to Vancouver, WA from San Jose, CA four years ago and really enjoy living here in the Northwest.
I wanted to thank you for offering DoodleKit's services through Grassroots.org. Your easy to use website builder has helped our 501(c)(3) non-profit Autism Empowerment create our home on the web. We look forward to seeing the new release and new layouts.
Thanks to you and your staff for your support! We put a thank you on our donor / sponsor page but I wanted to thank you personally here as well!
Karen Krejcha
Executive Director
Autism Empowerment
I have really been looking forward to the new layouts and functionality. I was just curious if you had any more updates.
Thanks,
Joe
I'll probably do a post here soon to give an update. To answer your question, things are moving along pretty good - there are just a lot of extra things we have to do to get this implemented outside of the new layouts themselves.
Hey Heath:
Hope you've been able to settle in to your new digs as expected. Any word on the new updates? The last blog entry mentioned something about January or February. Are you still on schedule?
Hi Jonas,
Unfortunately we are not on schedule - we had quit a setback recently dealing with SPAM attacks and spammers. We had to redo our entire free plan and how it works. I think we finally resolved this for the most part by making all new free plan websites private unless validated with a credit card: http://doodlekit.com/blog/entry/2803143/free-plan-website-changes
The good news is that now we can get back to development. It will still be a few months but we are close - there are just lots of lose ends to tie up. 85% of the major development is done - we just have to wrap that up, do lots of testing, then create a bunch of new templates, then push it out.
Sorry for the delay - we truly are working as hard as we can to get this out. Our #1 priority though will always be our existing customers and the existing system - we have to keep everything running ;).
How are the new layouts and features coming. I keep looking for updates. I know you guys are working hard, but I am looking forward to updating my site with some of the features you promised.
Thanks,
Joe
Hey Joe,
You are correct - we are working hard at wrapping all this up. There are a lot more little things than we originally anticipated, as well as extra updates we rolled into this release to accommodate advances in technology (making our editor work on mobile phones & tablets/pads for example).
The good news is that all the hard work is done, the bad news is there is still lots of testing and bug fixing to do. I promise it will be worth it - the new release is so much more powerful than what we have now I can't even compare the differences. It's pretty much a whole re-write of Doodlekit.
All I can ask is that you be patient - it is coming :). I know we way underestimated how long this would take, but we are close now to wrapping it all up. You will be blown away by all the new tools and features..
Can you give us an update on when the new tools and layouts (1024 most importantly) may be coming? I have to completely renovate our site by the end of the year, and would really like to stay with doodlekit, but having the 1024 layout is mandatory... Thanks!
Hey Jim,
The new layouts will be out before the end of the year. We are actually just wrapping them up :). We still have some bug testing to do and then we have to develop the Template Manager Tool to organize the templates. Its coming... I will be posting a blog post soon once the design tool itself is complete.
my 9 year old has decided he wants to build a web site
one that allows photos, videos, blogs, captions, sporting events times and final scores...how user friendly is this and do you have a reccomended layout for him?
Doodlekit can do all of that if he wants to build it. I would let him play around with the free version and see if he likes it.
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