linkiblog

Welcome to linkibol version 2.0

I know, I know… it has been a long time since my last post. I wish days were 72 hours so that I’d have more time to add value to the community.

For more than a year, I’ve been working on the new version of linkibol. It took so long, because it is really hard to find adequate time while being busy shaping the mobile future of a startup, and trying to create a JavaScript framework, while sharing my experience along.

It’s like juggling with three big glass orbs: You do not want to drop any of them, but you have limited time to concentrate on each one.

And add all the other smaller but yet time-consuming tasks into this hassle, and oh damn… it’s hard to preserve a “mind like water”.

… Did I mention that I was working in a startup ?

All of these led me master a vi-based geeky GTD system of my own — there’s nothing better than command line and plain text files when it comes to productivity — which deserves a separate blog post on its own .

Anyways, let’s go on with what’s new in linkibol:

Missing Features to be Implemented

Having seen the development time required to release the new version of linkibol is going to infinity, while the amount of time I can allocate is getting lesser and lesser, I radically decided to release linkibol, whatever it takes, with a minimum viable set of features.

Therefore some of the features that were available in the former version are nonexistent/disabled in this version:

• You cannot order links by popularity,
• You cannot cast votes on links,
• You cannot view or edit the links that you’ve formerly added,
• The only way to add a link is via using the linkibol favelet,
• Even some of the links on the footer (help, terms of use, privacy policy etc.) are missing…

Yeah, I know, it’s a total mess, and I will be adding these features one by one, in the upcoming weeks.

What’s new in linkibol Version 2.0

There are plenty of new things in this version:

• linkibol is now bilingual: It supports both English, and Turkish.
  There are minor localization issues, which I’m working on. I also plan to create a “translation API” to allow localization of linkibol in your favorite language of choice.
• The design of linkibol has changed: It is more organized, aligned, with less clutter. I’d be glad to hear your ideas on making the new design more usable.
• linkibol is now damn fast: Its backend code and database queries are thoroughly optimized. Its front-end code (i.e. JavaScript, CSS) is optimized as well.
  Besides, it utilizes CSS and JavaScript minification, caching, gzip compression, CSS sprites, and much more cool stuff to make it load faster. Yet I’m still working to make linkibol even faster .
• Most of the bugs are fixed (and some new bugs are introduced as I’m writing this post exception messages are filling the log files — which means there will be a really exciting bug pursuit in the upcoming days …

…

This new version will set the groundwork for further improvement. It was almost a total rewrite, but it was really worth it . It may take “some” time to add missing features, and for things to settle down.

In the meantime, if you find a bug. Or have a great idea to share, feel free to write a comment. I’d be glad to hear your invaluable inputs, comments, ideas, suggestions, and overall support

Cheers,
Volkan Özçelik,
Founder and Sole Developer, linkibol.com