Aside from Paste2.org I have a full time development job, for UK2 Group; which takes precedence because, simply; it pays the bills. What that job tends to do is make me want to not write code at the end of the day because I’ve been doing it all day.

That slows me down but it’s not currently the main issue with paste2.org.

The issue I’m having right now is a design nightmare. I’m not a designer, a long way off it, I like to work on complex backend problems and design work doesn’t suit me in any way. I did the current design for paste2.org originally, back in 2006. The problem is it’s not really holding it’s own now, and it needs replacing.

I did a new design for the new code but quite a lot of people who saw it complained that the design was too bright when they’re working with consoles mainly – the white/grey design that everybody but paste2 uses – it seems isn’t up to scratch for people who spend most of their time in a white on black console.

I didn’t know this at the time I first put paste2 together, don’t think for a second it was a genius design decision – it just seems like it may have been a happy accident.

So anyway, I’m trying to put together a design that works and is dark but isn’t a catastrophe like the current one is, ideally I’d like a dark and light design so people can have a choice, like the new highlighter offers a choice of colours too.

The good news is that actually the code is actually fairly close to done, then I’ll need to write a migration script. Once I have this new code done and running on the site I’ll be happier about adding new features, like the collaborative editing I’ve been talking about for so long now!

One of the obvious changes between the old code and new will be the URLs, which will change from a sequential number system to an 8 (+ if ever needed) case-sensitive alphanumeric system that is randomly generated. This means a bigger key space (shorter URLs because there will be 6,000,000,000 possible pastes instead of 99,999,999 possible pastes in 8 chars) and it will stop people from trawling for pastes so much.

The other change with URLs will be the removal of the /p/ from paste URLs. All pastes will be accessed by http://paste2.org/<tag> rather than http://paste2.org/p/<number>. Old pastes will redirect (301) to the new URLs, so there will be no need for users to change anything.

The next update here I’m planning related to paste2 will be a public beta test.

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