Here is the first peek of what we’re working on (click for a full-size screenshot):

mockup of the default theme for hydraproject

I’d like to give a special shoutout to a designer buddy for his work on this!

Google Group Discussion List

If you want to stay up to date with the latest Hydra Project news or just talk shop, checkout the Hydra Project discussion list hosted at Google Groups.

Code Status

Someone joked on the digg thread that if the project is 90% done, but if the last 10% takes twice as long, then it’s really just 50% done, timewise.

While there is an element of truth to that, the project is much closer to being ready than that. We’re also talking about fairly minimum time amounts here.

From start to finish, the HydraProject code has only taken about 5-6 solid days of hacking.

Remaining TODOs for v.90 Beta

* Transfer Stats Sync functionality (API written, sync code not)
* Continued testing of the Sync API
* Testing of whether multiple tracker URLs embedded in each .torrent works
* Integration of the new design (see above)
* Testing of what happens when one tracker goes offline (do the .torrents continue sharing on the alternate URLs?)

Latest Progress

Here are the latest checkin notes:

* New installs now get some default categories
* Category.create_music creates some default music categories (can be expanded)
* User IDs are (optionally) associated with torrents when they are first uploaded — this is to track abuse. After 3 days, the user_id field is wiped from the torrent (and there should be no permanent record of this). The wiping is triggered by visiting the main apps homepage, so as long as people visit that URL periodically, the wiping occurs.
* Uploads now get categories associated with them (choosing a category is required) - hat tip, Prototype Validation
* Duplicate info_hash checking — a .torrent with an info_hash that has already been upped, cannot be reuploaded
* The config value ‘layout’ now tells the app which rails layout to use (app/views/layouts). default is ‘application’
* Main logged in page displays Top 10 stats: most active, most seeded, & most snatched
* Admin controller gets Manage Categories functionality
* fun with XML escaping/unescaping in the Sync API

If you’d like to help beta test, drop me a line at: shantibraford {at} gmail