I just returned from an unexpected trip lasting around a week - during which time I was generally offline, and constantly at work on non-ATI projects (which will serve as an explanation to why I haven't replied to any messages recently).

 

Just for fun, here's one of the projects I was working on: AirPowerAuction.com.

While constructing this auction site, I came head-on with an issue that has been circulating deep in my subconscious for years. Namely, that Safarri and PlexPedia are competitors.

 

I designed each to serve in completely different roles - but the more powerful each becomes, the more their respective roles are beginning to overlap.

 

Case in point: Even though the entire auction site I just set up is focused around commerce, I made the decision to build it as a PlexPedia group and not a Safarri store. Why, you ask? Predominantly because I haven't yet got around to adding PlexPedia's new custom user defined theme functionality to Safarri - a neglection due to the fact that I haven't yet decided on the best way that it ought to be done.

 

At the very least, I would like Safarri Stores and PlexPedia Groups to be able to share themes with each other - but it seems that it would be even better if Stores could be placed inside of Groups, which would facilitate storefronts serving as an integral part of an entity's (PlexPedia powered) web presence. Taking this concept to it's logical conclusion, why not incorporate the entire functionality of a Store into the Group system? The combination of these technologies could well be the most friendly and useful web platform ever.

 

Building upon this idea, imagine the possibilities of incorporating Safarri into PlexPedia! Anyone would be able to use a single streamlined, familiar, extremely powerful interface for practically everything they do on the internet.

 

The most interesting facet of this idea for me however, is that it would obsolete ATIServer. Yes, ATIServer is amazing - but with PlexPedia at the core of all my projects, many of the amazing things that ATIServer can do would be unnecessary - and many others could be much more streamlined. (For example: my current extremely powerful and somewhat complicated cascading internal templating system could be replaced by simple, nested, web editable PlexPedia themes;  Site "network" awareness and inheritance for things like multileveled user state persistence would be unnecessary; etc.)

 

Right now, I am considering writing a completely new web platform that would merge the codebases of ATIServer, PlexPedia, & Safarri. One of the very exciting aspects of this for me is that it could be specifically designed for "cloud" architectures (Amazon EC2 and S3 in particular), which would allow it to scale indefinitley without any worries (other than the reasonable assumption that my revenue model would scale along with load). Also worthy of note would be the fact that the codebase could be MUCH simpler, allowing me more time for moving it ahead - instead of working to keep it afloat while each new feature I add upsets it's equilibrium.

 

Looking forward to your thoughts,

 

-Aubrey