A funny thing happened on the way to Textpanel

Those of you who are TextDrive customers, or have at least been keeping an eye on things will be probably be aware that I’ve been hired as Head of Development. It’s no where near as cool as Marten’s new promotion to Wizard (yes, he really is using that as his signature on emails), but it’s a nice title nonetheless.

You’ll also know that one of the biggest mountains TextDrive has in front of itself (and something we’ve been promising since day one) is our own control panel (TextPanel) to replace the ugly, highly unusable, but totally powerful Webmin.

So I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone when I confirm that yes, indeed, I’ve been working on TextPanel. It probably also won’t come as a surprise that TextPanel, and pretty much every other little surprise we’ve been working on, will be a Rails application.

Working with Rails on applications of this scale and complexity has further cemented my opinion that Rails is absolutely the best choice for web application development.

TextPanel is big. We’re pushing boundaries all over the place, we’re innovating and renovating (that’s Jason’s word, not mine) web hosting and hosting control panels on many many levels. It’s big.

What we needed was a place that we could try out some of these ideas on a smaller scale, with a narrower focus. A place to start with a clean slate, without worrying about the impact each decision will have on a few thousand customers, and a place to prove a few concepts.

At the same time, Jason was putting together a new range of specialised plans, which includes Strongspace (secure file storage, with a few twists). It became pretty clear to us that this was the perfect place to push these ideas out much faster and prove them in a live application.

So, Strongspace will be the first in a new range of focused plans, the first Rails application (of many) to be launched under the TextDrive banner, and a nice little hint to the sort of clarity and simplicity we’ve been pumping into TextPanel.

And I’m pretty excited. We’re a week or two away from launch, and everything is coming together nicely. Matt Thomas (one of TD’s VC200, of course) design a perfect logo/identity which I absolutely love. Marten (who was recently promoted from Rails Maven to Wizard at TextDrive) has really saved my ass on more than a few Rails/Ruby things, and the entire Rails community has been utterly helpful in times of need.

I’ll post some more details soon.

·:· Posted 23 June 2005, 05:43 by Justin French to TextPanel  |  

  1. woohoo

    — ichigo    23 June 2005, 06:44    #
  2. I can’t wait. Webmin can be a pain in the ass.

    Also, is SVNAutoversioning going to be enabled or is there a way for me to do it myself?

    — Matt Moriarity    23 June 2005, 11:14    #
  3. I’m stoked. Simple as that. Thanks a ton for all your service, support, and commitment to quality. It does not go unnoticed!

    — Randy J. Hunt    23 June 2005, 15:44    #
  4. Strongspace looks like a cool plan, I know a hundred people who run around with jumpdrives and would kill to have something secure for work easily accessible everywhere.

    But screenshots, we all want screenshots.

    — Kjell    23 June 2005, 18:14    #
  5. Well, I hope you’ll settle for a teaser?

    — Marten Veldthuis    23 June 2005, 18:22    #
  6. Okay – that’s just mean. One button? C’mon, take it off, take it alllll off! We want full, frontal project nudity here! Woot! Woot!

    (okay, I’m calming down now…)

    Can’t wait!

    — Nick Ryberg    23 June 2005, 18:59    #
  7. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

    I can’t handle it anymore.

    — Jeff Adams    23 June 2005, 19:32    #
  8. Marten, that was just plain mean!

    — ceejayoz    23 June 2005, 20:44    #
  9. Finally, I can stop sitting on my hands about Strongspace! Ever since Jason and Justin approached me with the Strongspace project, I was floored by how just-dang-cool even the description of the project was. I confess that I have seen absolutely nothing of the finished project—no insider knowledge here, sadly—but ever since completing the logo I’ve been aching to post about the very existence of Strongspace. I can’t wait!

    Oh, and huzzah for TextPanel, too!

    — Matt Thomas    24 June 2005, 03:49    #
  10. I thought that screenshot was hilarious!

    — dj    24 June 2005, 04:46    #
  11. Simply, elegantly, intentionally, awesome.

    TextPanel the world!

    — Cameron    24 June 2005, 04:48    #
  12. Don’t you guys get it, that wasn’t a teaser! That was the whole Strongspace interface!

    The only thing you can do is ‘send’ your files to Strongspace. Since the interface doesn’t have a ‘download’ or ‘retrieve’ button, nobody can get your files! The ultimate security! FIle and forget!

    This is why Strongspace will be the most secure file storage system ever. EV. ER.

    I am in awe.

    — Danny    24 June 2005, 13:33    #
  13. You figured it out, but not fully. Note that there’s no way of selecting which file to send. That’s extra security, because now people can’t torture you to find out if a certain file is stored over at Strongspace.

    — Marten Veldthuis    24 June 2005, 15:02    #
  14. I must say that the killer module in Webmin is Virtualmin. I can’t live without it. I hope your CP will handle virtual domains (with backup/restore). Something tells me you will. Let’s hope so!

    — Adrian Madrid    24 June 2005, 16:16    #
  15. Is Strongspace meant to be something along the lines of SwissDisk ?

    — MS    28 June 2005, 05:14    #