Unleashing the beast – JungleDragon is live!

Dear friends of nature,

For what seems like forever, I have been bothering you with my project JungleDragon. I have been developing it on top of a day job for a long time now, and I understand it must be hard to follow along when it is not publicly visible. Today, I am proud to announce that JungleDragon no longer is a hobby concept. It is now real, alive and kicking in the real world. JungleDragon.com is now live!

http://www.jungledragon.com

There will soon be additional posts following this one describing tons of details, but to keep this one brief, I will only discuss elements that are important immediately. Please read this to the end.

Changes

A lot of things have changed since the JungleDragon public alpha at the staging environment. Some have been described on this blog before, some have not. Later this week I will give you a detailed overview of things that have changed. For now, just keep in mind that some things work slightly differently or are simplified.

If you are a new JungleDragon user, or intending to become one, the FAQ explains pretty much everything.

Issues

The code deployed in production did not have the extensive public testing as before. Therefore, it is possible that you discover issues. When you do, please report them on our contact page.

Content migration

I have loaded a base set of about 200 photos. Take note though, if you were an alpha user, your user profile and content are not migrated. You need to register again on the live site. My apologies for this, but the structure of JungleDragon has changed too much to justify a complex migration. I will be sending out additional communication to all alpha users later this week.

How can you help make JungleDragon a success?

I am really going to need you to make JungleDragon a success. I hope I have enough goodwill left Later this week I will write a post showing how with a minimal use of your time, you can maximize your contribution. I will be awarding cash prizes!

You do not have to wait for that competition though, you can already start:

• Share the www.jungledragon.com URL with your family, friends, colleagues, social networks.
• Join JungleDragon. Even if you dont have anything to upload, joining allows you to comment, vote, favorite content, do social tag editing, create photo lists and more.
• Upload photos of wildlife. Remember to only upload photos you own or have permission for.

Moderation

Perhaps needless to say, but this is the real thing and it should not be used as a test environment. Please do not do things like uploading offtopic images, or test long strings in input fields. I will moderate those things away. Soon I will upgrade the alpha environment with the latest code should you want to test things.

Communication, marketing, next steps

I have a lot of follow-up steps to perform and a lot of people to inform and collaborate with. The next few weeks will be about communication, marketing, bug fixes, and stabilizing the environment. Please bear with me in these exciting yet busy times

Enjoy

This concludes the things I wanted to share for now. A lot will be forthcoming. As allways, please do keep that feedback coming and enjoy your first stab at JungleDragon. Keep the dragon alive!

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