A Makeover for DevCentral.

UPDATE: This maintenance has been moved to Jan 24th starting at approximately 8AM Pacific time.

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DevCentral Community,

TL;DR - I am announcing some updates coming to the DevCentral community website in a few days - January 17th. 24th. This is a mid-sized reboot, some upgrades that we expect will make our online environment a bit nicer to use now and enable more epic-ness to come.
***This update WILL include a maintenance downtime of up to 6 hours starting around 8AM PT (-8 UTC).***

A huge shoutout.

I speak for everyone on our team when I say the DevCentral community rocks! We on the DevCentral team are inspired and motivated by your creativity and willingness to share. The depth of your capabilities and the mutual respect you have for individual learning never ceases to amaze. As you, collectively, work through increasingly complex problem-spaces we are always working to support your progress.

Our recent observations and your suggestions have been buzzing in our ears for several months and so the changes you'll see soon represent next steps for what we think will make your DevCentral community truly exceptional.

An updated UI is just the start.

Interface updates will be the most obvious, but these are evolutionary rather than revolutionary - a paint job and some new tech. The new tech includes a simpler set of stylesheets, more configurable page templates, some advanced features in the editors, and an overall reductive approach to some historical bloat.

One of my design tenets is best summarized as comfortably information dense. DevCentral is a functional website, mostly used during your workweek, and we are looking to strike a balance between engaging with the content quickly and easily (e.g., less scrolling and more filters) without getting eyestrain or needing to know where you are on the site. 

I'll get into a bit more detail next week and after we launch, I expect to produce some guided walkthroughs you can use to discover some gems. If you are coming to AppWorld in San Jose in February - be sure to stop by our booth and look me up - I can give you a personalized tour. Mention this article and I'll be forced to find some special swag for you too! 😎

Wait. Did you say "reductive"?

Yes.
In a world where everyone backs up everything a subtractive mindset seems nutty. I'm no expert (case-in-point, the length of this announcement) but I embrace the subtractive sentiment and as such I have been ruthless about driving this upgrade for a host of reasons and that *may* have come at the expense of some existing features. Some things won't be present at launch (like Badges and Event calendars) but on-balance I'm sure we will be better off. That said, if something you love disappears - let me know in a comment, in a DM, or on the Suggestions page.
I can't promise everything, but I do promise my level-best and that everything is done with intent: sharing valuable and useful technical information with you.

Temporary Outage

Most important, for now, is to plan for a short outage the morning of Jan 17th approximately 8AM Pacific Time (-8H UTC) for up to about 6 hours. 

Next: A reminder on Monday, Jan 15th
🚀