Overview

First thing's first: the roadmap is always subject to change! If you'd like to keep up to date with our decisions and calls for feedback, subscribe to our newsletter.

Ourchive began with the understanding that we wanted to create a different kind of archive, one that encouraged people to curate as much as create, and one that embraced modern tools allowing for smaller, distributed communities. We intend to carry that ethos into Ourchive 1.0, a fully featured, multimedia archive with a user-friendly installation process.

Visual representation of Ourchive's road to 1.0

MVP

This is where we start, in 2023. MVP is an archive that can be installed by anyone capable of bringing a Django site to production. It supports text, audio, and image-based works, user bookmarks, and curated bookmark collections. It has threaded comments and a modern search & tagging system.

While we expect to build on MVP, and while we hope some features will become so usable that early adopters can't believe how far we've come by 1.0, we know our decisions during MVP will shape Ourchive for years to come. To that end, we are focused on dependency management and configuration-first architecture. We believe that staying focused on modular features will allow us to build scaling tools into the platform without dooming aspirational admins to dependency hell.

By the same token, however, Ourchive is just a website, and we want to have fun with it. We build collections with some of the bells and whistles we intend to add to other features down the line. We want admins to be able to create communities, be that communities of readers or writers. That means a focus on collaboration and curation of experience is a must!

But, never fear, if you just want a website where 5 friends can post work and never talk to each other or their fans, Ourchive enables that too. Such is the magic of configuration. 😎

v0.5

MVP was built with a "minimal dependencies" ethos. That means that you shouldn't need to install 16 different kinds of software to get the archive running. For scaling, however, we need to build out connections to tools that let larger installations thrive. We'll be focusing on adding support for things like:

  • Better commenting
  • A better collection experience
  • Additional email providers
  • Multi-user works and collections

v0.6

With this version, we will be enhancing the work experience. This means:

  • Improved capabilities to configure tags how you want them, like setting up parent/child relationships and "buckets" of similar tags
  • Adding works to series and anthologies
  • Creating curated challenges for bookmark collections
  • Exchange support
  • Metrics for works and bookmarks (and anthologies and collections)

We'll be focused on defining how people create and share their work, beyond just yeeting text or audio or a rec into the ether.

v0.7

Wow, we've done two releases since MVP. As the august philosophers of Tumblr used to say, "*flicks lights on and off repeatedly* welcome to hell! welcome to hell! welcome to hell!"

More seriously: at this point in time we know we'll have realized we made several major mistakes, rushed a feature or simply didn't architect it very well. This release is all about stabilizing our solution. Basically, we're giving ourselves some time to squash bugs that require more work than a quick fix, and to refine our planned features leading up to 1.0.

This is also the point at which we'll pause and do another accessibility audit, to ensure we're keeping our promises as we've added new features.

v0.8

This release will be all about multimedia tooling. We want to give artists and "podheads" (our term for anyone doing audio-first creative media: bad? Let us know!) the ability to have their works processed during upload. This requires introduction of external dependencies, and a solid strategy to allow admins to install and use these dependencies.

We also want to add further enhancements to exchanges, challenges, and -thons.

v0.9

As we approach 1.0, we'll be buttoning up existing functionality and adding the final tweaks to existing features. This release will zero in on features like:

  • Cowriting - tools to share drafts and track modifications
  • Pen names - allowing one user to have multiple names associated with a single account
  • Word wars - bothering your pals is a core Ourchive priority. We want to give users the ability to create challenges based on work produced.
  • Messaging - a private message inbox. This feature is pretty far down the roadmap because we know we need solid trust & safety standards before we introduce this.

We'll also be scoping out federation for implementation beyond 1.0.

Ourchive 1.0

When we release 1.0 we're done and can move on with our lives. Whew, good job team.

...just kidding. But, 1.0 will be focused on the nuts & bolts of scaling to a broader audience.

  • Admins need to be able to install Ourchive through a UI, much like Wordpress or Nextcloud.
  • The entire website should be translatable at this point. We've been incorporating internationalization in each release, but this is where we ensure we haven't missed anything.
  • Admins also need dashboards and alerts, to allow them to know the solution is stable without logging into the server (or asking their managed hosting provider).
  • Users also need the kinds of tools that become really important when the metaphorical town square gets crowded. This means enhanced blocking and muting, as well as saved searches.
  • Ourchive's docs will be getting a facelift, with translatable themes and more comprehensive user guides.

Release Cadence

Each release on our roadmap represents roughly 2 months of work; our release cadence will follow a 2-month cadence. Additionally, we will provide minor maintenance releases every other month, and hotfix releases as necessary. We'll be following semantic versioning for our numbering scheme.

In real terms this means:

  • MVP releases Oct 2023
  • v0.4.5 releases Nov 2023
  • v0.5 releases Dec 2023
  • v0.5.5 releases Jan 2023
    • oh no, we broke something really important! Hotfix release v0.5.6 releases Jan 17
  • v0.6 releases Feb 2023

Risk Management

Obviously, life never goes according to plan. At the time of posting, we believe we have added enough "breathing room" to account for unexpected complications. Famous last words!

As timelines change, we'll update this page accordingly. If we reach less than 50% feature completion in a release, we'll be reevaluating the roadmap as a whole and notifying community members of the update and our reasoning for it.

How to Contribute

We always want more people involved with the project, so thank you! Check out our Get Involved page for more information.