Although you may not know it, you’re now looking at a new version of the CUNY Academic Commons. Despite the fact that the site debuted almost a year ago, at the December 2009 CUNY IT Conference, we’ve tagged this version 1.0. It feels so fresh and sparkly!

But we know that that fresh and sparkly feeling will soon fade, as we discover bugs, both large and small, in the code. And that’s why we’ll soon upgrade the site to version 1.0.1, which will fix any problems we find in the 1.0 version of the site. Bug fixes of this version will be labeled 1.0.2, 1.0.3, and so on, until we’re ready to unveil some new features, which we’ll label the 1.1 version of the site.

All of this may seem like the kind of boring technical detail that right-minded people should avoid, but the truth is that there is some practical value here, even for the non-interested user of the Commons. This versioning system is going to allow us to set out a roadmap that will detail, in advance, new features that will be part of each release. That way, you’ll know what’s coming down the pipeline, and you will ultimately have a greater voice in how the site develops over time. And from a coding perspective, this new system will allow the Development team to work in a more concerted way towards more defined goals.

In the coming days, members of the CUNY Academic Commons Community Team will be writing about some of the new features that are part of our v.1.0 upgrade. The changes are centered on our wiki, but there are a few major changes in the group pages, too. I’ll update this list of posts as new ones are published:

• Scott Voth, Commons Version 1.0 Has Arrived! (describes specific features of the new version of the site)
• Brian Foote, Group for Group Admins Update (describes changes in group interface)
• Boone Gorges, The technical side of Commons v1.0 (describes changes in the workflow of the Development team)
• Scott Voth, Wiki Upgrade and RSS Feeds (describes specific features of the wiki upgrade)

As always, we appreciate your responses and we’d love to hear about your experience of the site. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch, through the comments section of this post, via our Feedback system (look for the gray “Feedback” box along the right-hand sidebar of our homepage), or by email. It’s especially important that you contact us when you run into a problem, as we can’t fix problems if we don’t know that they exist.

This new version of the Commons is the product of many hands. I’d like to thank our Development team, which has worked hard on this upgrade. I’m grateful to our Lead Developer, Boone Gorges ( @boonebgorges ); to Dev team member Chris Stein ( @cstein ); to our Lead Sys Admin, André Pitanga ( @apitanga ); and to Zach, Lucas, and Michael at Cast Iron Coding, who worked with us this summer on developing a new workflow and upgrade system. And I’m thankful to the Community Team — Brian Foote ( @brianfoote ), Sarah Morgano ( @Sarah_Morgano ), and Scott Voth( @scottvoth ) — for testing our code and for blogging about our new features. And mostly, I’m grateful to you, the community here on our site, for making it such a vibrant space.

Here’s hoping you’ll enjoy the new version of the site and the versions to come.

— Matt Gold, Project Director