Development blog?

[Expresso]

The last release of openttd has been a while ago. Visitors looking at the website might think openttd is dead.

So, why not add a development blog, where a member of the openttd developers describes what's happening, about once a month. This helps prevent people from thinking openttd is dead.

[Eddi]

and who's got time for that?

[kamnet]

OpenTTD typically only releases once a year, around April 1.

Developer blogs are really boring. I don't know of too many people who get excited over a post describing how a developer spent 30 seconds changing a few sections of code to fix a bug. Such blogs are really just busy work.

[Baldy's Boss]

Doesn't the front page of Openttd.org count as a development blog?
It used to announce a couple of point releases through the year when those happened (I think this is the first time there have been none).

[jfs]

I'd say there are two reasons for no point releases. First is that 1.8.0 has been quite stable, no real showstopper bugs found after release. Second is that all the changes in the project infrastructure have put focus elsewhere. We're close to having a proper footing again and should be able to resume regular nightly builds "soon".

[Redirect Left]

If you want a flow of things happening, check out the GitHub - https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD

[Expresso]

If you want a flow of things happening, check out the GitHub - https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD

I am already aware of that one. However, those visiting the website may look at the website and think openttd is dead. That's why I suggested it.

[kamnet]

The website does need much love. I've volunteered in the past to help do something with that, but from what I've heard there is an upcoming plan to revamp the website, along with other services, that will make the website more informative and easier to manage. So, I sit patiently to see what develops (no pun intended).

[andythenorth]

Yair, this reply is a bit meta, a post about progress about posting progress but eh

I agree, the front page can look dead, especially when we don't even always post about stable releases. So what's in hand?

1. There's no plan for a development blog.

As suggested earlier, github is by far the best way to see development

At time of writing, 193 Pull Requests closed since April 2018. Most of these are successful patches that have been merged to master (very few rejected)

See the list here https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/pull ... s%3Aclosed

2. The website is being re-built as (mostly) a simple static site, using the Jekyll site generator.

This:

• makes it easier to post to the site when we want to, and to give access to more people for posting (such as kamnet)
• makes the site faster to serve and less resource intensive than the current site
• is a test for a much bigger rebuild/streamlining of OpenTTD's extensive web infrastructure

Currently, development on website is found here (but will likely be moved to OpenTTD github organisation in future) https://github.com/TrueBrain/OpenTTD-website

3. There's no current plan to redesign the visual style of the website.

But we might move some content/links around and make it easier to find the development feed on github.

[Redirect Left]

The simplest thing to do would be to add to the nav bar or something "Last Updated: x days ago" just swiping data from github as to the last update and if you click on it you download the latest version of current github version perhpas? No further updates to site and just that as the not dead indicator.