Here is a sneak preview of the new dgroups environment, alongside the dgroups we all know and love. The team and a small number of volunteers are experimenting with this early Alpha version. It is built from the existing ECS platform and, as we write, additional functions are being developed and added. Clearly, since it is based on an existing platform, there will be differences between the new and old environments but the target is to ensure that the functions – how we use the platform – will map from one to the other.
There is still some way to go in terms of development but as you can see a lot of progress has been made. The priority for development has been email functionality since, while ECS has a robust and elegant email platform, it operates differently to dgroups and it is crucial to the migration that the new platform supports the same email operations as the original dgroups.
We’re very grateful to the group that’s working with us on the site at the moment: finding your way around a new platform, while it is being built is sometimes as frustrating as interesting. Thanks too to the developers who are working hard to keep up with their comments and feedback. While major development is in progress we are going to limit access to a small number of people but soon we will be ready to invite more reviewers. If you are interested in being part of the next group please write to Mark Hammersley (mark.hammersley@gmail.com), telling us something about the dgroups that you are involved with.
Pete Cranston