News

This Week in devot:ee #126 - July 10, 2014

July 10, 2014
by Ryan Masuga

Wherein we close down the devot:ee forums, and convert the weekly devot:ee articles to a monthly newsletter. devot:ee Monitor is discontinued, so please switch to Lamplighter.

"This Week in devot:ee" Becomes "This Month on devot:ee"

By my count, I've written roughly 230 "weekly devot:ee" articles between this site and EE Insider. That's approximately 4.5 years of regular, weekly posting. Every Thursday, for years, I've thought "I have to get the weekly article out" no matter where I was or what I had going on. Every week there were new add-ons to share, and every so often some other info or thoughts to share as well.

Recently there have been weeks where there have been no new add-ons posted. This week marks the first time there have ever been two consecutive weeks with no new add-ons submitted, and it's technically closer to three weeks since we've had a new add-on submitted. This got me thinking: maybe the weekly update format isn't needed any longer.

We recently launched a monthly newsletter (See: June 2014, July 2014) where we sum up the new add-ons and any other thoughts or news related to devot:ee. Because of this addition, I think it makes sense to put the "This Week in devot:ee" articles to rest and only do the monthly newsletter. We'll then tweet a link to the newsletter where it will be viewable online.

It's going to be odd not having to put together a list every week, as I've done for so many years, but this change makes sense. We encourage you to sign up for the monthly devot:ee newsletter.

We Closed the devot:ee Forums

In April of this year, we decided to create some forums here on devot:ee to fill a void. As I wrote in an April 29 news post:

ExpressionEngine and EllisLab have always talked about how important and critical their community is, but we feel that community's voice has been mostly relegated to 140 sound-bytes on Twitter in the recent past. So, we decided to put together a place where ExpressionEngine users can talk again, particularly about add-ons and the ecosystem that surrounds the ExpressionEngine CMS.

A couple interesting conversations came out of having the forums up, which we've archived. There were less than 3 posts made in all of June, and then the spam started rolling in.

I guess this wasn't a void that needed filling.

It sounded like a good idea at the time, but I could see that they were easily going to be a drain on my (our) time with little return on investment, so I decided to shut them down. We mentioned it on Twitter and essentially got no response or reaction, which only reinforced the decision.

devot:ee Monitor No Longer Supported. Please Switch to Lamplighter.

As I wrote back in March, the Lamplighter add-on will take the place of devot:ee Monitor. Unlike what the article says, Monitor will continue to work indefinitely. However, Monitor definitely will not be patched, fixed, updated, tweaked, or supported in any way. Monitor will not get any new features, and is no longer available for download.

If you want new features, and to ensure the greatest compatibility with your sites, simply replace Monitor with Lamplighter and you'll be back in business.

Note that Lamplighter is absolutely free to use, and works just like Monitor, but you can:

Take it to the Next Level With a Lamplighter.io Account

Optionally, you can set up an account at lamplighter.io, where you will be able to see all the add-on info (and more!) from all your sites in one centralized location.

You can download commercial add-on updates directly from your Lamplighter dashboard. There is no need to come back to devot:ee.

Simply sign up for Lamplighter, add your API key to the Lamplighter add-on settings, and your site will securely report back to your account at Lamplighter. You already have the add-on installed, so what are you waiting for?

Lamplighter will save you time, help you stay on top of updating your sites, and provide great insight into the life of your sites. Lamplighter empowers you to approach your clients proactively about updates and optimization.

For more info on Lamplighter’s features, head over to the Features page, and check out Lamplighter’s pricing.

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