The (exciting) future of Prosebox in Site Updates (Josh)

Hey everyone,

A lot has been happening behind the scenes this last month or so, all of it SO, SO exciting, but before I get to that, I’d like to share a bit about what led up to this announcement and where my head’s been at lately.

Please note: you will start worrying halfway through the next paragraph, but everything is okay — I promise.

Alright, here we go. This latest round of back and forth with you all over my lack of communication and the overall state of the site caused me to pause and reflect inward. It’s long past time for me to acknowledge and address the elephant in the room: I’m no longer motivated to work on Prosebox. Now, let me be very clear: my passion, my love, and my respect for this community are as strong as they’ve ever been. But my motivation to do this work by myself? It ran away from home, and I can’t imagine that’s a surprise to any of you.

So, where do we go from here? Well, this leads directly into today’s announcement and some VERY EXCITING news about the future of Prosebox.

My self-reflection led to me finally taking concrete steps towards something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. It took us a bit to hash out details, but a week ago things clicked into place and we’re officially in business. I’ve brought on a partner. A partner, it turns out, who is an excellent software engineer and strategist. And a dear friend.

Everyone: I’d like to formally introduce you to Buffy.

Buffy and I have been working together on various projects for many years now, and we also happen to be very close friends. How close? Well, when I travel without Mochi (SCANDAL), he joins Buffy’s pack.

What are his internet credentials? Well, maaany many moons ago he ran one of the largest Roller Coaster Tycoon fan sites, and he tells me he’s also a long-recovered emo Livejournal survey addict. I think he’ll fit in around here quite nicely.

He does of course also have professional credentials, but eh. A love for surveys feels much more important to helping lead the community. And I’d like think that if he can be trusted with Mochi, he can be trusted with Prosebox.

So, what exactly does all this mean?

It means that, for the first time in several years, things are moving quickly in the world of Prosebox development. How quickly? Well, in just the last two weeks Buffy has successfully managed to rewrite almost all of the ancient (as in twenty five versions and ten years out of date) underlying codebase to use the latest and greatest that’s available.

Here are some work in progress screenshots he sent me this morning:

Clearly there are still a few bugs to work out (“14.635 hours ago” lol), but I hope you’ll notice that despite a nearly total rewrite of what’s under the hood, everything looks exactly as it always has (though that may or may not be a new background).

That’s where I come in.

You see, I’m not going anywhere. While I may not have passion or patience for hiring developers, tracking progress, chasing bugs, etc etc I still very much have a passion for communicating with all of you AND for the Prosebox roadmap we all developed together years ago. New features and changes will roll out as they always have: with community input. My role, as always, will be to advocate for all of you and to guide things as they move forward.

I can’t tell you all how excited I am about all of this. I hope you can sense that in my words.

Buffy and I have been going through the old roadmap, and we’ve planned out a VERY ambitious 2024 and 2025 in terms of new features and quality of life improvements that you all have been asking for for years. Now, no promises on timeline yet! It’s still very early! But having seen the progress on the rewrite just over the last few weeks? Y’all, I’m really excited about the potential here.

I’ll post very soon in detail about all of the above including the tentative roadmap, and I definitely want to get everyone’s input again to ensure we’re heading down the right path.

I didn’t want to bring you all in the loop on this until it was set in stone and real progress had been made, but here we are. It’s happening. Omg.

More very, very soon.

<3,
-J

PS Happy Lunar New Year from this one:

Last updated February 14, 2024