Site rebuild progress report #1

There's been SO much intense programming going on since our fundraiser ended. I've been pulling overtime every week and even working weekends to get us to our next evolution as fast as humanly possible. We hit a major milestone yesterday -- All of the existing features have now been re-created on a cleaner code-base, from the tools to the forums to accounts. Why did we spend time "reinventing the wheel?" Well, because there's now over 30,000 people using the site every single week, which has led to some noticeable slow-downs and even down time. Our current incarnation just wasn't designed with the entire world wanting access in mind! It was also important to create an environment of greater extensibility and maintainability - but without any extras we aren't making use of that might slow us down - to make adding wonderful, helpful new features and keeping the ones that are already around healthy for years to come a much more attainable goal. The new version is doing very well under stress testing, and loading much faster. Before you ask -- no, this new version isn't live yet. What you're seeing is still the old version. We still have quite a bit of work to do on all the new features before the site can relaunch! This means that from now on, all this intense work will be focused on creating the new features promised in our fundraiser such as optional “in-class” drawing tutorials, goal setting, progress tracking and achievements, more detailed pose selection when setting up your practice sessions, and more. :) This is VERY exciting! Stay tuned for more updates on our rebuild progress.