OpenBooks News
The Future of OpenBooks and network2
June 16, 2019
Today, we launched the first major update to OpenBooks, which refines the design direction we're moving in and introduces the Articles feature. Last month, Network2 announced its return to Neocities. As OpenBooks is one of the founders of Network2, we thought it was worth letting the public know a little bit of what we have in store.
From this point, OpenBooks is going to be Network2's brand for Neocities community services - such as search engines, portals, and directories. What does this mean for you? Honestly, not very much will change visibly.
We're also working behind the scenes to create Network2's website, as the current design is just a placeholder. Once that is done, we'll be ready to start accepting members and working on projects together.
That's all for this rather short update. Thank you for welcoming OpenBooks back into the Neocities commuity and for all of your feedback!
Welcome to OpenBooks 8 Series
May 12, 2019
It's been a long time. How have you been? After taking quite a break from Neocities, I've finally decided to relaunch OpenBooks as something more akin to what I always wanted it to be. I'm a little late, I've been teasing the fact I've wanted to do this throughout all of 2018, but here in May 2019 the project has finally been ready to reveal.
So what is OpenBooks 8 Series, anyway? My goal for the site is to create a sort of community hub for Neocities. OpenBooks will offer basic services that help tie the Neocities community closer together. For now, that means we have a search engine and a basic web directory, which mostly links to external sites and not yet Neocities. I have more features planned, but they're a little more ambitious and I didn't want to hold off on getting the new OpenBooks out there any later.
So, this is version 8 of OpenBooks. If you've lost count, here's a little guide before the complete history page is ready. OpenBooks launched under the name ChromeBooks in 2014. Version 2.0 launched in 2015 and with version 2.4 the name was officially changed to OpenBooks and was released under an open source license. (OpenBooks remains open source, but is now licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license). Versions 3 and 4 continued to be based off of the same codebase as 2.0, but all of that changed with version 5, in 2016. Version 5 stripped away the personal aspects of the site and focused primarily on the site's Neocities directory. I look back on the design of this version with appreciation, but also regret for how it removed the community aspects. Version 6 came and went, and was a personal site only. There were a few more personal page designs, but for the sake of continuity we're considering them part of OpenBooks 6. With 7.0, I tried to reconnect with the past and based the site off of 2.2, but this was rather short lived and the site has mostly just been a holding page since then. Now we've reached 8.0, officially named OpenBooks 8 Series. Here's hoping for a long and successful future on Neocities.
- ∆, OpenBooks Creator
