Sunsetting Steempress / Exxp

in #steempresslast year

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Hello everyone,

For those closely following us, you may have noticed that Steempress has been somewhat dormant in recent years. This stagnation stems from both @howo and @fredrikaa being engaged in other ventures, leaving little room to work on the plugin. We have therefore decided to sunset the plugin as of the 15th of December.

It's hard to believe that it is nearly 6 years since the two of us got together back when both were living in Paris with the goal of building something using this blockchain. Since then, our plugin helped onboard more than 5000 bloggers who published more than 500 000 posts over the years.

Since that start, however, we've moved on to now live on different continents and living very different lives. Despite the limited time available for the plugin, we've kept it running as we knew that for some of you it has been a useful tool. And for a while, we though that if it meant providing some small benefit to Hive, then we wanted to keep it up. But we've now concluded that without the necessary time to give the plugin the attention it needs to function at a decent level, and where it's instead slowly deteriorating without active support, it is more of a disservice to Hive and not what our users deserve. Therefore, we think it is better for everyone to close down the service.

To give our active users a heads up well in advance, we've set the December 15th as the end date for the plugin. Our servers will go offline, and the WordPress plugin will stop to functioning.

What now ?

As mentioned, we have poured a lot of time and energy both into te development of a plugin and in forming the vision of "WordPress to Hive" integration and strategy of onboarding outsiders to the Hive blockchain. Although we are no longer looking to work on the plugin ourselves directly, we are considering options where we could still make it available to the community if there is sufficient interest.

Shutting down the Witness

Additionally, we will be shutting down the witness and withdrawing the steempress account from top 20 governance. It has been a real pleasure to provide our voices during all these years from the Steem days to where the blockchain is now. Like many others, we are proud of what we did and helped achieve back in early 2020 when giving birth to Hive, and appreciate the support that so many of you have given to us throughout the years.

As a duo, we believe that we have been able to provide both technical competence and blockchain expertice, as well as to make contibutions on discussions related to topics tokenomics and strategic directions for the blockchain. Since long before entering the top 20, we have insisted on carrying out our own tests of proposed hard forks (and sometimes crashing testnets providing valuable insights to the Steemit team), as well as forming our own stances on key issues facing the blockchain and ensured that we were part of vital discussions going on at crucial parts of the blockchain's history.

Thank you

When we embarked on this adventure six years ago - having first met through the blockchain and then connected on steemitchat - we had no idea that our hackathons and attempts to build a dApp would result in us working as a team for half a decade helping to run and develop what is now a community run blockchain with one of the most unique histories in the blockchain space.

Thank you for letting us be such a part of this amazing story!

@howo, @fredrikaa



From hacking together a dApp over a weekend hackathon with some French baguettes and cheese to pitching and presenting Steempress at various conferences and joining up with community members across the world, it's been an awesome journey!


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I am very sad about this. It was a fantastic bridge between WP and the blockchain. I have very different readers there and here, and more followers and more engagement on Hive.

I do hope you find someone to take over the plugin.

Thank you for what you have done and do for the blockchain @howo and @fredrikaa. And yes, I shall relocate my witness vote.

All the best!

Thank you so much for all your positivity over the years, it means a lot :)

You guys have done so much, is sad to see you go, hopefully someone new can take over exxp

Sad to see it go.. Will you be open sourcing any code for steempress or is everyone just kicked off with 17 days notice ?

We are sad to see it go too ! But it's the better way moving forward. None of our users deserve to use a tool that slowly deteriorates over time.

As we mentioned in the post: "we are considering options where we could still make it available to the community if there is sufficient interest" which could take the form of open sourcing it or pass on the torch to another team.

Dang. So sorry to see this leave the ecosystem. Exxp / Steempress helped me onboard sooooo many members of my community. The idea to get wordpress blogs on Hive was brilliant.

Best of luck gentlemen. And thanks so much for everything!

Thanks a lot ! It has been a journey for sure.

<3

Thanks for everything you're doing man! I haven't seen you guys active since I joined Hive, now I see how valuable what you're doing is and I'm grateful. Best of luck!

Although I haven't been in #Hive for so many years, I imagine that their work from the beginning has been strong and extremely exhausting, but seeing that dream come true must give personal satisfaction to both @howo and @fredrikaa. I hope they don't abandon us completely and can continue supporting us. to users who do not have that much time in the #Hive Blockchain and also to future Hivers throughout the world. Although it may seem like a decision made by you, you can always take a few minutes and continue completing your dreams.

Time is not waiting for any of us.

Sad to see it go :(

What a job!! Persistence is everything, with will, and clearly you have all of it!

Btw, amazing picture the first one!

I don't have much time on Hive, but I had read a few months ago about Exxp.

I hope you continue to be very successful in your life and whatever you are going to devote your time to.

It has been great the work you have put into the Blockchain here.

It's a shame you have to leave. I wish you all success and blessings.

You have done a wonderful job and you deserve to take the way you have to. I wish you many successes in your new journey!

!PIZZA

PIZZA!

$PIZZA slices delivered:
@tedus(1/5) tipped @steempress

All good things must come to an end. THANK YOU for the hard work you have done. Yours were the front-in that made me think I could blog here, although I did not come by the WordPress path. If someday if I publish my novel-length manuscripts on Hive first, it will be because Steempress made me think I could!

The loss of the WordPress plugin, just before the incoming bull run, is truly a great loss for Hive -- although I have no idea how to do what you have done, how do we encourage the appropriate developers to come along and care for this important link between Hive and the outside world? No one can fault you for needing to live your lives, but this torch, at this time, should be picked up!

Thank you guys so much for your service to our blockchain.

Oh wow! Didn't realise the history! End of a time...

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Check out our last posts:

Be ready for the December edition of the Hive Power Up Month!
Hive Power Up Day - December 1st 2023

Quick question, was the EXXP plugin ever open sources at all?

If not would that be something you'd consider doing to allow the community to help maintain it?

Wow ! I can feel the embarkment beauty of a sunset

Sad to read this, really sad. Both of you bring a lot of value to Hive and are also decent lads!

Thank you for the good service provided!

Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below


Hey @alexvan, here is a little bit of BEER from @isnochys for you. Enjoy it!

If you like BEER and want to support us please consider voting @louis.witness on HIVE and on HIVE Engine.

I wish you both the very best for your future endeavors and on your journeys. I can imagine how much time and effort must have gone into creating this integration. I hope your paths be clear and your future endeavors blessed.

I don’t know how to create plugins, code or create apps, but I wish I did. I would love to learn and this was such a fantastic integration you created. As another person asked, is the project code going to be “shared” or open sourced so to speak, should someone else wish to carry it on?

Many thanks again, and I’m sorry for the late response on my part.