As I’ve said before, one of the drawbacks of writing a blog and also writing the software the blog uses is that I can’t do both at the same …

As I’ve said before, one of the drawbacks of writing a blog and also writing the software the blog uses is that I can’t do both at the same time. It’s been nearly three months since my last blog post, and what free time I’ve had since then has been focused on the software.

In that last post, I said that I wasn’t going to release the new software until I accomplished two things.

The first was for myself. I wanted a check-in process that integrated cleanly with OpenStreetMap data. I’ve skipped check-ins at many interesting places in the past because the user experience in my old software was unnecessarily cumbersome.

The second was a request from visitors. They wanted to be able to react to blog entries, either with comments or likes, similar to what can be done with WordPress. The lack of a feedback loop made the blog feel less like a community and more like a newsletter.

I’m happy to say that yesterday I released an early version of the new software that accomplishes both. I’m calling it Revix, and it’s online now at https://revix.caminosinnombre.com.

For those of you sufficiently geeky to appreciate such things, the source code is also online at https://github.com/curt/revix.

To like or comment on entries, you’ll need a sign-in. If you’re ready to take it for a spin, go to the “Sign in” link from the menu. You can create an account with a password, or you can go password-free and sign in each time with a “magic” link sent to your e-mail inbox. Your choice, but the magic link is the default.

If you do create an account, consider going to the Settings page and adding your first name and an avatar. Otherwise, you’ll be “Someone” and have an identicon avatar.

Revix will not replace Klaxon right away. I will use the two in parallel — Revix for place-oriented check-ins and Klaxon for longer posts such as this — until Revix is feature complete. At that point, I will migrate Klaxon and my old WordPress blog (remember that?) to Revix and establish redirects.

I work on these projects in my spare time, so it’s probably still months away.