Watchtail is officially dead as you know it. Due to extenuating circumstances, I don't have the source files for the site anymore.

It might not be gone forever, though. You see, I have an idea.

To me, Watchtail was all about getting furry artists together to chat and watch each other draw without having to worry about intrusive ads, restrictions on adult artwork, or CPU-hogging interfaces.

Of course, the nail in Watchtail's coffin was bandwidth. Streaming video to hundreds of users was simply too much for one guy to afford, and it grew faster than donations could supplement it. It self-destructed. And it'll never be able to sustain that ever again.

But what if it didn't have to be video? What if you could watch artists at work, anywhere at all, even on your phones, and not once have to worry about user caps or the bandwidth-heavy strain of live video?

So, I'd replace the video with still images that refresh every few seconds. Or, if you only glance at the picture once in a while while you chat, you can refresh it on demand with a single click or tap on your phone. I know that means no audio, sorry, but it does mean the whole site could be done with HTML5. No more watching from a flash player!

And for those who really want to see someone draw in realtime, or for those without webcams, screencap software, or flash (for broadcasting), there could be an paint chat-style alternative that simply transmits mouse movements.

All of this could happen, but I can no longer do it all by myself. I need your support, I need dedicated coders and moderators, as I don't have the time to devote my life to the site as I used to. Most of all, I'll need financial support. Only after the ball gets rolling with site staff will I launch a kickstarter, though, because I won't make the same mistakes as I did last time.

Are you in?

In the "well, that was dumb" department, I installed a new OS on the testbed server which can't handle FMS. Not because it's too old, but rather because it's too new - just part of the epic struggle of blending open-source and proprietary software, I guess. Good thing I have enough spare DVDs that I can keep making all these different boot disks!

Buried somewhere in that bad news is a little good news. A fun secret of FMS is that there's a trial/development version which is limited (max 10 connections, total) but free and full-featured. So I'll be able to 1. Demonstrate that I'm capable of getting the site running again and 2. Work out all the little bugs (and big ones) before all the funding gets in to purchase the real deal. Which, by the way, is barely over 1% towards the total goal of $1,200, and I haven't even technically started the fundraiser.

As for advertising, I'm not sure if google ads (or other third-party services) are going to pan out. Yadda yadda adult content. More likely, I'll just expand the advertising available directly through WT - I've already scratchbuilt the banner ad at the bottom, so it shouldn't take any extra effort to add more!

Long story short: Save up your quarters and nickels, and get the word out. Things are about to start picking up steam around here real fast.

So, as you might have guessed by virtue of the fact that I'm posting this journal, I'm looking for an alternative to PayPal. I'm well aware they're not too friendly about adult content, and while I haven't had a problem yet, I haven't had a problem...yet.

The obvious alternative would be AlertPay, but I'm going to have to do a little more research/talking with them to see what kind of account I'll need. Looking ahead, I'm estimating that I will be susceptible to some additional fees, which would work out to roughly $0.50 on each month's subscription. So I'll place the subscription price at $8.50...sound fair?
I'm also going to see about making it possible to set up an actual, monthly subscription - this could be problematic, as AlertPay's system requires you to go to THEM to unsubscribe. With that in mind, would you rather I just set up bulk purchases? That way, I could give a discount (say, a year's worth for $90, essentially a month free), and you wouldn't get roped into automatic payments. I'd set up a reminder e-mail to go out five days before the subscription ran out.
Also ads would be $12 per month.

Until I figure that out, be sure to keep donating! We're 0.3% of the way to the goal of $1,200 already (YAY WOOHOO uh. Welp.)

So, having read all of your comments so far, I think there is a consensus forming, particularly in regards to journal 2. Watch for bold text, these are things I definitely want your response to.

Here are things that seem to be unanimous:
1. Google adWords are OK. I'll look into 'em right away!
2. Guys, I KNOW the merch won't sell. I was just wondering if there was any interest in these items at all. So I'll toss the idea in terms of Internet availability, but I'll keep it in mind for con loot or something.
3. Subscription accounts seem to be well-received, and I'm relieved at that. More on this momentarily.

Here's the plan on server stuff, before I get into that last bit about accounts.
1. I'll shoot for getting Adobe FMS on the server I own, and to get it back into the colo.
2. Kickstarter is a no-go, simply because this would probably fall under "starting a company," something they don't fund. So I'll have to run the donation drive myself, or find some other Kickstarter-esque thing for Internet entrepeneurs...ideas?
3. The drive goal will be $1200. That'll cover the software license and the first month of bandwidth, which I must pay the colo in advance. Anything you guys throw at PayPal until then will be counted towards the drive until I get it really going.
4. I'm going to get the trial version first and make sure I have the site functional while the drive is underway, so expect major parts of the site to get roped off for a while. Not that you were doing anything with it anyway.
5. I'm glad I'm going with the real deal, as the server-side coding is a lot easier to do, and it's better documented. That said, if funding fails or FMS mysteriously can't be made to work, I'll fall back on trying red5.

NOW, ABOUT THOSE SUBSCRIPTIONS.
First of all, I want a discussion in the comments regarding features that should be "unlocked" or made available to subscription members. I'll list various features below, some new, and some existing. Not all of them are guaranteed to be made available, and not all are going to be subscription-only. This is for you to decide.
-Unlimited viewers per room, or various levels of viewership (such as 20 for members, 50 for subscribers, and infinity for supersubscribers). My reasoning for the second choice is that I still don't want to overload the server when a jillion furries rush Zaush's page or something.
-Banners. This would change banners from being a pay-per-change to a pay-per-month thing. You decide if the old banners should be grandfathered in or not. Site links will still be freely available.
-Private rooms. That is, rooms that don't appear on the main page. A useful feature if you are one of those furs who has enough viewers to otherwise necessitate a viewer cap.
-Embed codes. The ability to stick a video-only version of your room on another site. The feature is in alpha. If this rolls out, I could try talking to Dragoneer about making it possible to embed in journals on FA and stuff.
What features would you make subscription-only? Also, what do you think an appropriate subscription cost would be?
(I'll also look into finding another payment method beyond PayPal. Suggestions welcome.)

I have two really important things to talk about, and I want to keep the discussions straight, so I broke this up into two separate journals. Read this first so you know where I'm coming from.

It's been my opinion that Watchtail was, perhaps, doomed to fail because I'm a terrible businessman. When I started the site, I relied entirely on unreliable donations, and it worked out pretty well...while it lasted. Then the demands far outstripped the supply, and it all went belly-up. In trying to save the site, I tried reducing overhead costs, rather than increasing the budget, and when I couldn't get that working fast enough, the site suffocated to death.

In the first journal, I discussed how to approach the server problem. Any suggestions you have in that regard should be made in the comments there. Here, I want to talk about the continued funding to cover the cost of bandwidth, a problem that must be solved regardless of the outcome of the first issue.

As you know, my goals in creating Watchtail were to make it a better experience than other streaming websites: No obtrusive ads, easy access, and decent quality video. The cost of bandwidth threatens to choke these three things. I've come up with a solution for video quality, at the expense of frame rate (a bit like join.me), and increased the video size to 480p from 360p, roughly speaking. It's the ads and ease of access I really want to talk about, since this is where I think funding for the site really needs to come from. (Donations will, of course, still be part of it, but not all of it).

What do you guys think of the following?
1. Adding other ads to various pages, like Google AdWords or ProjectWonderful, two ad services I think are unobtrusive and well-respected.
2. Subscription features - trying not to become Watchtail Gold or anything, just custom banners and possibly paying to remove a viewer cap (which would in general be higher than Watchtail had in the past). If you have suggestions for features you would add or change to be subscription features, leave them in the comments below.
3. Merch. T-shirts, buttons, whatever. I sort of see this as icing on the cake; I can't expect to fund the site indefinitely off of it, but would you guys buy these things if they existed? Honestly?
4. Any other suggestions, leave in the comments.

I haven't been making status updates lately because the status hasn't updated. Literally zero people have donated since the site went down, not that I can blame them. The server is still in my living room, and still only half-working. I'm beginning to recognize this as a sign of insanity: Trying to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

So I decided to rethink the server situation. Previously, I'd been renting space on a shared server, with bandwidth caps and connection limits, and it was clearly priced for sites nowhere near as busy as Watchtail. At the time demand outstripped supply, I ignored their dedicated server systems, considering them too expensive for the budget at hand. The decision I made was to try to use an open-source alternative on a donated server, and to host it in a colo near my house. We can see how well that open-source alternative has worked out so far.

I've thought about biting the bullet and getting the real deal, but that's pretty hairy. To try and buy a full license of the Adobe software myself is $955. Add to that roughly $250-300 in bandwidth from the colo. If I were to budget $400 a month, roughly what you guys donated at peak, it'd take six months to pay off that license, ignoring interest or increases in bandwidth. (There's also a version that costs $4500, but has features well outside of what I need - that'd take almost three years to pay off!)

I even went so far as to give the dedicated servers from my old host a second look. I'd need at least the standard plan ($795/mo) to handle the usage Watchtail saw, and possibly more than that. I can't ask that of you. At those rates, I could have the FMS license paid off in two months!

So here's the deal. To re-launch the site, I'll either need to get red5 working perfectly, or I start a Kickstarter to fund the FMS license (and I'm counting on you guys to help fund that) up front. On top of that, I need to find a more reliable way to cover the cost of bandwidth. That's a separate discussion, so I'll break this up into two journals.

What do you guys think about the server situation?

Well, it's done; I updated the login system and database. Your old passwords will work just fine, although again I stress changing them.
The only thing that's visibly different for you is there'll be a 5-second screen that appears right after you log in. This should cut down on lost logins and other silliness. It's also smarter: it knows now, for instance, the difference between a wrong username and a wrong password, and it'll tell you so in the few seconds before shunting you back to the login page.

Also, fun story: I only almost broke the database once! Silly me and putting typos into a code to update all 9500-something entries in the database at the same time. That's why I backed everything up before I began, even though I didn't need it to fix the problem.

And now, if you don't mind, I need to take a break for a while. These drastic overhauls have left me rather exhausted.

OKAY QUICK
The site isn't back yet, by any means. You can't stream. You can't talk to people. However, that hasn't stopped me from putting in place the flash interface system. I highly encourage you to go check it out.

Also, important warning in advance: I'm probably going to do something to the login system which will force you to change your password, and that'll go into place probably by tomorrow. Said system won't prevent you from setting the same password you have now, but it's probably still a good idea. Also don't bother changing your password just yet.
Just in case something goes wrong, I'll have the database backed up from a minute before the changes take effect.

Also, to any white hats, please read: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3126550/

Okay, guys and gals. Don't know if you noticed, but Watchtail's structured a bit differently now.

Check out all the links - nowhere will you see a question mark, ampersand, or file extension. It's all been tidied up and simplified. Even the downtime message displays on the page you visit without redirecting you.

What does this mean for you? Well, it's a lot easier to link to your streams.
Now, just type:

http://www.watchtail.com/view/Watchfox

instead of the old

http://www.watchtail.com/view.php?v=Watchfox

which, by the way, now redirects to the new location. You don't have to change all your bookmarks and journal entries, but it's still a good idea.

Today, I decided to "fake" a couple of channels just so you guys could see how the new "Who's On" page looks. It ought to display only Watchfox's channel if you're not logged in. and  nedded's channel as well if you are. The viewer count is fixed, so don't expect any other channels to show up, or for it to reflect your visiting those channels.

Be sure to check the pages out, too, since I've replaced that placeholder image that was there with...well...a placeholder Flash file. But it's a very important one, since it's also a test of the new login system. If you're a white hat hacker, feel free to try and force the thing to display someone else's username...and be sure to tell me if it does.

For everyone else, mess around for a few minutes. Try a bunch of browsers. (For the record, the site renders okay in lynx, although I can't imagine why you'd try to use it for Watchtail in the first place.) Log in and out a bunch.
And tell me if you see any errors...

Great news, guys!
I wasn't just getting your hopes up for nothing yesterday. I took the opportunity of the blackout to push through a major revision to the structure of the website, and it's only steps forward from here!

Now, Watchtail is not truly back yet. The streaming server is not operational, and I'm still redesigning the Flash interface to make it more streamlined and more secure.
However, I have created a new system for logging in, revised a few of the weaker pages, and gave the code such a facelift I think its chin is above its eyebrows now.

There are a couple of things you can do right now while the site's coming back online:
1. Sign up, and test logging in. I need to make sure this works without a hitch.
2. If you've got an old, duplicate account or you're fed up with waiting and want to give up on it all, you can cancel/freeze those accounts. They'll be deleted manually once I see that they're frozen. If you created a duplicate account because you lost your password, just provide proof that you can log into your new account and give me the name of the old one. I'll freeze it for you or reset the password. (I should be able to tell reasonably well if you're telling the truth or not).
3. Watch the broadcast page daily as a "watch this space" feature. Since it's the only page not yet functional, it'll be where I'll put sneak previews.
4. Support the site, please - donations are needed to get this ball rolling again!

http://www.watchtail.com <--Really, click it, you won't be disappointed!

Come and see the future of Watchtail!

http://www.watchtail.com

Let's start things off first with the answer to how accessible the site will be.
First of all, anyone visiting the site, whether via logging in, or viewing as a guest, will be able to access all rooms (except the password-protected ones). However. unless you are logged in, you won't be able to chat. I'm contemplating whether the chatroom should even appear for guests; this due to the fact that one of the branches of the new interface development pipeline includes a video-only "embed" version.

The "who's on" page is also getting revamped. There's going to be slightly more information on each room - rating and restriction stuff, so you can choose what rooms you want to see. Guest viewers won't have the 18+ rooms listed there, even though they'll still be accessible via direct link. (If past experience is any indication, that means that most people checking out the site for the first time will think it's a ghost town...which is all right by me.)

The login system is a lot, lot better now - cookie free, and 90% less likely to fail the first time. One thing I'm adding is email verification. If you're already signed up, you can add one on the options page after you've logged in. This won't be used for anything other than "forgot password" things, so it's fairly optional - however, new users will be required to enter a valid email address when they sign up.

I'm going to clear the cobwebs on this website and roll out the new look in a few days...it won't really be any different from what's already there, but it's different under the hood. Maybe it'll make the pages load even faster than they already do!

I've been thinking about the problem of site security, specifically in regards to name spoofing and other shenanigans in the chatrooms. I've also been thinking about the problem with logins, namely that the current system is less than reliable.

I'm planning on changing that code around anyway, and an opportunity for simplification has presented itself. I could just do away with guests in the chatrooms, and require logins. Of course, this comes with a trade-off: Security versus an "open-door" policy.

If I were to make the site members-only (that is, every user must be logged in to view channels), here are the pros and cons:
PROS
1. Guaranteed names given by server, not by Flash, eliminating name spoofing
2. More accurate means of tracking site usage and enforcing bans
3. Simplified code for site overall, thus faster loads and fewer errors
4. Easier recognition of users and moderators, possibly through color-coding
5. Separation of moderator functions from common viewer scripts, decreasing likelihood of hacking
CONS
1. All visitors must register and log in to view channels
2. Loss of login information could prevent usage of site
3. Extra step required to simply view a room
4. Apparent exclusivity may turn away prospective users

Not to complicate the issue, but it wouldn't take much to provide some limited functionality to guests: For instance, only being able to see G-rated channels, or being able to see the video but not the chatroom.

So, what do you think? Leave your answer in the comments below.
1. Guests should still get full access
2. All visitors should log in, for full security
3. Guests should have limited access (Rating restrictions, no chat access, or both, explain)

One other thing: Do you think /nick is a feature worth keeping?

Okay. Here's what I need before WatchTail can come back:
1. Moderators. Moderators will be interviewed prior to being accepted, and their roles will vary. Moderator tasks range from managing the email (for ads and general questions) to actively monitoring what's going on in various rooms, and clarifying rules if they are broken. They will not have the power to ban, but will be required to report (with chatlogs and/or screenshots) anything that goes wrong.
This may change once I feel more confident in site security and each moderator's ability to enforce the site rules fairly.

2. Funding. The site has $0 right now; it may take anywhere from $200-$400 per month to run the site (or more if traffic increases drastically). I'd like to have a minimum of $500 before I'm willing to flip the switch and try to get things running again. As a reminder, donations and ads are how the site's funded. If PayPal ever becomes an issue, then I'll try something else, possibly Serve. It's unlikely that I'll ever make pay-content for the site, such as paying extra for extra features, so [only WatchTail Gold members can read the rest of this sentence].

3. Coding. As far as HTML/CSS/Flash/PHP/SQL stuff goes, the site's ready. It would be nice, though, to have someone on hand who knows their way around Linux and servers who could help diagnose current and future problems with the streaming server. Being handy with Java is also a plus, and knowing red5 is really asking too much but wouldn't hurt to at least find out what is before jumping in.

If you're interested in helping out with any of these, drop a note. Anyone well-suited for #3 please put "CODING" in the subject of your message.

Er, no. Not quite.
Not without your help, anyway.

The site completely lacks funding, and it seriously lacks manpower. If Watchtail is ever to return, it will be as a site moderated by at least three people from around the globe (to provide 24 hour oversight of channels and protection against trolls) and funded entirely by its userbase.

There's actually quite little, technically, keeping the site from being functional. But I literally have no time to look at these problems, and I won't for several months-with the exception of two weeks, starting now.

Okay, so I know everyone's really anxious for the site to return. I am, too.
Right now there's a major snafu with the server booting red5 - it just doesn't seem to want to do anything. While I'm not exactly starting from scratch for the third time, I am considering a reinstall of the server environment, which means I'm gonna have to head over to the colocation again.

Also, I'm back in school, and took some time this week to make sure I didn't start the semester off on the wrong foot. I don't want to be pulling all-nighters on every assignment, you know?

Tomorrow's my birthday, and I should have some wonderful new content for you to play with by then.

Also, if you're feeling adventurous, or just very knowledgeable with code, I may need your help. Having another person on board could be the key to making this work!

I want to heavily injure everyone on the Internet Explorer development team. I guess that makes me a web designer.
IN OTHER NEWS

Per your request, I have added a login button. It looks pretty awful right now. Workin' on it. It should at the very least now allow Chrome users to log in...and anyone else who can't use the enter key. That was poor design on my behalf. Edit: Thanks be to the button element! It's more...better...er. Still ugly.

Oh! Hey, go check out the view page! See that big, honkin' rectangle taking up most if not all of your screen? That's the new default size for the room. And more than half of it will be the video pane.
Lite broadcaster is actually done, awaiting actual site launch.

In struggling to get room banners to work in any browser size, I took it upon myself to find the longest username in the database. You know, so I could check the overlap. There were three names that really made life difficult - by the way, The_Guy_With_The_Really_Long_Username has only the second-longest name. I will not reveal the longest name, for fear that you may try to break the record. You can't, by the way. I lowered the maximum length of new names. The_Guy and the most verbose user ever can still log in, but seriously geez.
I think I was talking about room banners.
Yes. I have decided to leave the room banners slightly broken in that if you have an incredibly long name and a miniscule browser, the banner will jump halfway down behind the video. A small price to pay for such a long name, I think; plus it wound up making the layout render faster. Most of you shouldn't notice this effect.

This is a last call for entries for the first feature banner. I suppose this will keep you interested and creative and thinking about Watchtail and giving me money during the downtime whoops did I type that I didn't mean to. Watch the site tomorrow for a real update!

There's a lot to tell you gaise.

First of all, I'm nearing completion on the new layout; just a few more pages to bring up to speed. That's my primary goal for the day.

Second, and more importantly, the server has a new home. No longer looking like the victim of a mad scientist's work (which it kind of is) laid out on a metal table in my living room, it's now whirring away comfortably in a climate controlled server room with floor sections that lift up and really dim lights and everything.

That is not to say, however, that Watchtail is soon to be back online. Far from it. It just means that now, instead of running up and down the stairs with a thumb drive like a lunatic (I am now a whiz at mounting/unmounting thumb drives in Ubuntu), I can connect remotely and actually TEST things. Things like why red5 didn't boot properly. Things like getting my room application out of the test environment and into the real world. I AM DOING SCIENCE SO HARD RIGHT NOW.

So what's that mean for you? Well, it means I'm going to put a dummy interface in the rooms until such time as they actually work. This'll give me a chance to work out bugs in the interface, and for you to give feedback on the video quality. I've figured out how to do that without connecting to the server, and I have a lot of control over the compressor now. I suspect audio will have its own issues later on, but that will just have to wait. I am not going to stress myself out about this.

If you weren't picked for the closed beta, don't worry. What's live on Watchtail right now is something akin to an open alpha. Go and do stuff, what little you can. Mess around with your account settings. (Careful, I added a "cancel account" link, which 404s right now but just watch where you click, ok?) That also means that if you see the layout break horribly, it's probably me making an absolute disaster of the CSS. If you see red boxes all over the page, that's a good sign that it's exactly what's going on. There should be little of that from this point on, though.

http://www.watchtail.com

Could I be...working on the website!? No! Say it ain't so!
And at a blistering pace, too. I'm hiking downtown with the server tomorrow so I'd better make sure everything on THAT side of things is working 100%.
Yet at the same time, I couldn't just leave you guys hanging. So for the last 24 hours I've applied the new formatting to actual, visible parts of the site and reactivated them as I bring them up to speed.

Look at it! Isn't it cool? I think so, EXCEPT FOR THAT OLD BANNER AT THE TOP. No, don't worry, I'm not changing the logo; I just think Mr. Ugly Off-Color Gradient has had his day in the sun. But I liike graadiennts... as evidenced by the new title backgrounds all over the site. There's even a few you can't see right now because they're on pages that are under construction!

So I'm thinking I'd like to give the background a shot, and at the same time finally let some of you artists get featured on Watchtail, if in a very subtle way. I'm looking for a cool, graphical shape to throw on top of my new, improved gradient. For this to work best, it should be at least 256x256 and very high contrast. I'm deliberately leaving this open-ended: be creative!

(Example here of what it could end up looking like.)

So obviously the beta testing didn't happen today.
That's okay, because I remembered something else important: Restructuring the whole site!
I've got a lot going on behind the scenes, and I have something special planned for the site tomorrow.

What could it be? Stay tuned!

Well, I put the old girl down this morning.

Not like that, anyway. But it is well and truly offline now, powered down and ready to gather dust, wherever it will be.

Before I did that, though, I gathered some statistics of the last year; would anyone be interested in seeing them? You know, monthly usage and number of users and stuff?

Okay, so about 11 hours to go until the server blackout. Chuggin' along with the alpha test, optimized the video feed in terms of bandwidth like I've never done before, all while improving the quality (I was doing jumping jacks in my webcam as a test, and didn't make the video completely scrambled eggs! Screencaps are nearly pixel-perfect!) All of the controls are functional, at least the ones that are in place. There is a slight bug in that server IMs pop up the IM alert feature regardless of whether or not you're scrolled...I may leave it, it sounds more like a feature now.

Only one thing is truly not functional at this juncture, and that is /nick. In a worst-case scenario, I'll temporarily disable it, but I'm trying to rapidly prototype my way into having a beta test by midnight tonight.

No guarantees on how long the downtime will last yet, I have no timeline for that. I'm guessing at a week.

By the way, I'll need some beta testers to do some remote tests for me during the downtime. If you can be on call tomorrow, let me know!

Yay and boo!

Finishing up some things here, and unfortunately I wasn't able to get the beta ready before time ran out on the old server. I anticipate a blackout of the main site starting in a day or two. Most likely midnight EST Sunday going into Monday. It could last for an annoyingly long time, but I hope not.

There won't be much in the way of features in the new broadcaster, at least at first. Volume control is out, as well as room passwords; use private streaming in the meantime. The userlist is kinda kludgey and is accessible from the (i) icon which is now in the corner of the chat. In time I may change this to be more visible. Also, no moderator functions for now; they'll be available soon enough.

Buckle up, we're gonna be in for quite a ride.

Development on the new server is going about as well as any one-man team who had to keep his house from collapsing can. Which is to say not well at all. I've had to start the code from scratch three times on top of that.

None of this work, of course, is visible to you because it's all been confined to alpha testing. The actual website's been chugging along on the old host for more "just one more month now" months than I care to count.

I'm out of cash. You're out of cash. I'm out of time. Things look bad. There are a few options, listed in order from worst to best.

1. Watchtail goes offline until I get the new system working. Possibly forever. Wanna avoid this.
2. I get a thousand bucks to yank the site out of debt and keep it running until it is fixed. There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, and I truly believe this is a waste of your money.
3. I miraculously get the whole thing working in a day, recoup my losses, and you can enjoy all of the past three month's hard work. While ideal, this is so unlikely that it's not really an option at all.
4. I strip down the site to minimum functionality, shoot for a beta release, and get the new server online before ANOTHER month goes past.
5. I do step 4, and also crowd-source some of the coding work.
______________________________________________________

About option 4. Here's what I mean when I say minimum functionality:
-The interface will be quite simplistic. No fancy gradients, scrollbars get back-burnered a bit, and no animated rollouts. Just pop-up windows, which are a lot easier to pull off with a minimum of code.
-Chat features will be drastically reduced. /me and auto-links will still exist (since that code works and there's no point scrapping it) but no mod functions or name changes. Guests will simply be prompted for a name when they first enter a room. A bit draconic, if you ask me, but the names were the #1 reason and the #1 hangup on revising the code. Getting rid of name changes also means a much, much simpler backend. Not to worry, though; I don't want that gone for good.
-I'll probably pare down the list of available room settings. Rating and public/private will likely avoid the chopping block. I'm attempting to grandfather in registered-only and room passwords, but these will probably be disabled until later on in the beta development. Lite broadcaster will be gone until I make a new one.
Remember, I'm starting from scratch here. About the only code that will survive is the chat parsing, and that's from the new code you can find in this gallery, not the one on the site. That one's in AS2 and I'm not even sure I can work in that language anymore.

About crowd-sourcing the work. I'm not hiring a developer, and I'm not making Watchtail open-source although it's a tempting thought. What I probably will do is ask for your assistance on features that aren't central to the site, asking for code snippets on scrollbars in as3 and indexed arrays in Java. That sort of thing. If interested, contact me at admin@watchtail.com.

Big changes are coming, and I don't want anyone caught unaware. If I can't pull off the best option in time, we fall through the list until I get to my worst-case scenario. Your donations can keep that from happening. Thank you for reading, and please spread the word about this.