Introducing Harmonious Fridays
On my second day working with Steve at Ordered List, we began our first application. I started programming and Steve started designing and a few days later we had a great start.
Only problem is that start has barely been touched during July and August. Harmonious Fridays will be our solution to that problem. Allow me to explain.
What
So what are we building? If there was a realm that Steve and I would not be bashful declaring ourselves experts in, it would be website administration. We’ve built countless systems that empower non-technical users to update their content, without giving up the control that developers and designers require. Harmony will be it’s name and managing websites will be it’s game.
Why
Both of us have spent our formidable years as web developers creating applications to manage websites. In fact, we got so tired of building them at Notre Dame, we decided to create one to rule them all. It was aptly named Conductor (built with Rails) and it was, and still is for that matter, awesome. We’ve been looking around at the various solutions (Expression Engine, Wordpress, Mephisto, etc.) and have not found one that hits our sweet spot.
Our Dream
We have a dream. We would like to manage all of our sites in one place. We want to login once and seamlessly switched between those sites. We are tired of installing software and setting up servers for each site that we create. We want full control (markup, styles, flexibility). We want an interface that is so simple our mothers could use it. We want statistics integrated in a way that will help us make content decisions. What about you? Do you have some of these dreams?
The Plan
In an effort to bring our dreams into fruition, we have declared Fridays as Harmony workdays (thus Harmonious Fridays). Each Friday, Steve and I will head into the office (wherever the office is that day) and work solely on Harmony. That alone should help us gain momentum on the project, but that is not where it stops.
We are building this first because we want it, but second because we think others will want it too (thus the survey). That is why each Friday (or sometime over the weekend), we are going to post the results of the day’s work. The posts will vary in content (concepts, code, mockups, screencasts), but, ultimately, will give you a chance to help guide the project and keep us accountable. We are pretty excited to try this out and curious to see what kind of feedback we get along the way.
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Published August 22, 2008 by:
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So far there are 22 comments.
Could you make the thumbnail any bigger? :)
August 22nd, 2008
@Tim – I could, but I won’t, unless you are ok with a Gaussian blur of about 5.0. :) Muhahahaha.
August 22nd, 2008
I’m really excited to watch this system develop. Possibly the only thing I like about the CMS we use at my day job (a heavily modified version of ezPublish 2—really legacy stuff) is the ability to manage many sites from one system with one login.
August 22nd, 2008
I have to say that, in general, I have been disappointed with CMS. This post has me really excited though! I say that with the assumption that you guys are sensitive to style and proper structure. This is good news and I wish you the best of luck!
August 22nd, 2008
I have been a big fan of Steve’s work for a long time now, and so I don’t hesitate in saying, “you guys better release this eventually or I will get really cranky!”
:)
August 22nd, 2008
What ever happened to the Canary RSS reader?
August 22nd, 2008
Could you explain a bit more what you mean with “manage all of our sites in one place”? What about different domains? Sounds interesting, I’ll be keeping an eye on this.
August 22nd, 2008
Sounds interesting indeed =) I’ve tried out almost anything I could get my hands on, and I have to agree that none has really hit the sweet spot. ExpressionEngine is the closest one, where I can manage my community with posts, wiki and forum, but it still has ways to go… So keep us updated on Harmony ;o)
August 22nd, 2008
@David – Rest assured, we don’t want you to become cranky. :)
@Tim – Good memory! Canary died. I don’t know that either of us remember why but it did. Probably because we didn’t start Canary Fridays! :)
@Lozbo – Harmony is multi-site enabled. That means you point your domain at it and it knows what to do. With some cookie trickery, we can ensure that your login works fine across multiple domains, so switching from one site to another is a link click away. Hope that helps!
August 22nd, 2008
What was wrong with CanaryRSS? Why did you kill it?
August 23rd, 2008
Our internal CMS (written in django) has the ability to administer multiple sites, with seamless switching using a drop-down of all sites that user has permission to. In fact, we power ~40 sites from a single install (with one database), and literally just click the “New site” button at the start of a new project.
I suspect you plan to create a hosted-CMS service, but have you considered releasing it as open-source? If you really value feedback and the vision/wisdom of the community, it seems like it would make more sense to have everyone be able to contribute code and fix bugs.
I like the idea of setting some time aside for a side project though—well done!
August 23rd, 2008
Phew, for a moment I got the impression Harmony would be a hosted solution, which would have made it totally useless to me. :) But this clearly states different domains.
Best of luck, and one can only hope you’ll eventually add more “Harmonious” days in a week. ;)
August 23rd, 2008
Hi, It’ s really nice dream. I would manage couple of mi sites from one place. I’m waiting to see your work.
August 23rd, 2008
Sounds really cool guys, can’t wait to check out Harmony.
How are you finding it, breaking up the work time so much? I always have trouble with the “one day a week” route because it’s so hard to maintain continuity. I much prefer to dedicate 2 days together every couple of weeks, or a week a month. That way you can get and stay in the mindset for a little while.
August 23rd, 2008
@Kyle – I’m sure bits and pieces will be open source. Also, we’ll probably do plenty of posts on how we did things but there are no plans to fully open source it.
@Simon – It will be hosted and will also support as many domains as your heart desires. That is not to say there will never be a licensed version that people can host themselves, but initially we are thinking it will be hosted.
@J Lane – You make a good point. The thing is, Steve and I both enjoy bouncing around a bit on projects as inspiration hits us. That said, it is entirely possible that we’ll spend a couple days in a row and just blog about them on separate weeks. Yesterday was actually the first harmonious friday and it went well.
August 23rd, 2008
Looking forward to watching your progress and seeing the final results. I’ve always used Wordpress, but never been totally happy with it for managing a full website.
August 24th, 2008
I assume you’ve taken Reflect for a spin? The product sounds awfully similar to what you’re building. Usability and features are top notch in my books.
August 25th, 2008
@Geof – I’ve seen it and browsed around the product site quite a bit, but it is in private beta. It looks similar but we’ve got plans for things that we think will differentiate.
August 26th, 2008
I found link to your website at some blog and I’m really impressed how you thnik, what you do and how you do. Your dream will have come true.
August 28th, 2008
So…when are we getting an update on this? :) Has there been progress?
September 1st, 2008
@David – Why yes there has. I just wrote up the post and I’m running it by Steve for his input. Thanks for checking in!
September 1st, 2008
Right I should switch the order of Google Reader for this feed :P
“Our Dream”
Is pretty much what I’m looking for as well. We have 33 Joomla Templates now (across 25 sites), all separate, all individual, this is a pain to look after. Not to mention time consuming when it comes to changing something on one site that would work well on a bunch of sites…
Harmony sounds cool
September 5th, 2008