One of the things we knew when we started Inkzee is that our code was going to be refactored several times. For those not familiar with this term, it means to rewrite part or most of the code so it gets better, cleaner and easier to maintain.

Having no experience about scaling web applications we knew that we would be forced to rewrite parts of the code so the web app could scale and remain responsive under big loads. Until now we had done a couple of big code changes, but just to add new features or to change the way a submodule worked. We though that a big redesign of the code was paramount but not as soon as we expected it. As many first time entrepreneurs, we were very naïve about this and we suddenly found that the application needed a redesign so it could handle the load very early on. It’s funny because Inkzee doesn’t scales with the number of users, but with the number of feeds the system has. Of course there is a correlation, but we have users with 20 subscriptions and users with 800 subscriptions, so it’s not a matter of having 2 users what hurts performance, but a matter of having the system feeds duplicated in weeks.

That said, we started rewriting the web architecture so we could handle a bigger load and so the alpha would go back to a stable state. People have been asking us when is it going to be completed and we truly understand them. There is a growing list of people wanting to test the alpha and development on the alpha is very slow. The reason for this is that, because we are so small, we can only afford one developer that has to handle everything, from server administration to development or unit testing. We’ve been working really hard on the new architecture but it has come with a high price.

We’ve added internal unit testing so we avoid shipping new releases that break previous functionality and to ensure the maximum quality for our code. This has pushed the release date even further. Another big hurdle we encounter is that we found ourselves changing the semantic algorithm due to the way the new architecture works. This has been giving us big headaches as it’s a complex piece of code and testing it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Finally, we’ve fixed some big character encoding issues the old code had. For starters, characters aren’t codified in the same way across all platforms, depending on the operating system, editor encoding and a myriad of other possibilities, characters can be encoded differently. Our system needs to handle everything with the same encoding, that means we need to decode everything that enters the system before we can work with it. This is something that seems easy, but in fact, is one of the most uncomprehended problems for most developers. Needless to say that it took us 3 days to hunt down a very obscure bug in our backend that broke the parsing of some feeds.

So here we are, about to launch the new scalable architecture of the alpha after a couple of months. We really wanted to thank everyone for their patient and we also wanted everyone to know why it’s talking so long. Hopefully it will be operative in a week or so. Thanks again to everyone!

The Inkzee team

Currently we have the bare basics and we are working hard to bring new features every couple of days. All the feedback is greatly appreciated and we hope we can have an open version in a couple of months or so.

So, if you are interested in participating in the alpha program or you are one crazy early adopter please feel free to request an invite at http://www.inkzee.com and we’ll send you an invite as soon as possible. Right now we are sending invites in small batches but we’ll eventually send you your invite.

You can also read more periodic updates on our Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/abarrera.

Thank you all for your patient!!

Apart from that, we’ve managed to finally add the about us and contact sections on the main website. We’ve also enabled an invite request section on the main website so that interested users can request an invite to the private alpha program we are running.

We’ll start sending invites the moment we finish some interface details and all the tests are done. Hopefully that will be in a couple of days. Stay tuned!

Oh, and we’ve created a Twitter account where you can follow our day to day activity: http://twitter.com/inkzee

Overall, the users told me they liked the interface and the way the app works so I’m very happy. I still have to fix a couple more bugs that have been reported. One of them is pretty nasty and when fixed it will greatly enhance the user experience. As usual, developers interact with the application in a different way than users do. I’m very pleased with this first alpha test as I’m identifying critical issues that need to be fixed.

Thanks to all my testers! Keep the good work!

Today we migrated all the development databases to a live server and we installed and configured the system. We’ve been checking that the system is working as expected and that all functionalities are working as the should. Right now we want to leave the alpha running all night to see that nothing crashes and hopefully we’ll start sending invitations tomorrow.

We are very excited about this first version and we hope that in a couple of weeks we’ll be able to start the beta testing with more users. Stay tunned as we’ll post new updates soon.

Once again, thank you all for your patience!

Anyhow, we’ve added some keyboard shortcuts (I needed them!) and little features that make the whole user experience much better. So, we still have to finish the login page (so the design is similar to the main one) and we have to add a help page (and of course a feedback page!). Apart from that, now we’ll start migrating the prototype to a live web server so we can start a small alpha test with some users. The moment we stabilize the alpha we’ll proceed to a private beta and finally (hopefully) to an official public beta.

We’ll announce the start of the alpha test pretty soon so stay tunned! As usual, any comments and feedback are welcomed.

Meanwhile I’ll keep you posted here about everything that’s going on behind the scenes. Right now I’m finishing the design of the prototype’s interface. The design is really sucking a lot of time, but again, now it’s much more cleaner and functional. The moment I finish with it we’ll start migrating the prototype to the server and we’ll start an alpha testing program. I’ll report about the advances and changes to come. Sit tight as it will be soon.

By the way, some sections of the web aren’t finished so I just hooked up a little javascript message. I’ll finish them as soon as possible. As for this blog, you’ll see that the design is just a standard WordPress theme. I’ll try to change it during the next weeks, so please bare with us. Thanks for the patient!