Hello all,

I owe an explanation to my (as project leader) very obvious absence over the last few months. This explanation may come across whinny, and that's definitely not my intent, I just want to give people the opportunity to understand my situation.

I've previously discussed how basically I was living a very simple life before, then got married and moved countries and now live a much more complicated family life. And I've previously explained how I've been investing time in home automation in the short term, to free up time in the longer term. But beyond that, I've had very bad luck with a number of things affecting my schedule, so many unpredictable needless distractions that have jumped out of nowhere and pulled me away from what I'm meant to be doing. And, there has been a lot of client work to do.

And, with Composr v11 everything left requires absolute focus, there are no quick-win tasks left.

And, the world is clearly very different from when we started this project. Composr is a project primarily to help the little guy, but any talented western programmer can expect to be a millionaire in a few years if they make good employment decisions - so how exactly do we compete with those salaries while still focusing on the little guy?

But now…

My wife and I had our first child 3 months ago. Now every patent knows that newborn babies are always a handful. However, our newborn baby feeds more, sleeps less, needs more diaper changes, needs more attention. Basically every metric that could determine how long it takes to care for a baby (and yes, I'm a nerd, I look at published averages), our beautiful and much loved baby has been classifiable as OMG. I've ended up in a situation where even with my wife being a full time stay-at-home-mom, I've only been able to get in about 4 hours work a day while being otherwised completely rushed off my feet.

Again, I'm not trying to sound whinny.

Things are starting to settle down a bit now.

I really hope I can get back onto finishing v11 soon. I've been contemplating the idea of taking a complete sabbatical from paid ocProducts work to get v11 finished, as it really needs my 100% fulltime attention. However, this is difficult, as we have active client relationships and I don't want to risk damaging them by just not doing anything for them for a few months. Business is good, and that secures the future of Composr - so long as I can actually maintain forward progress on the project though while also keeping that business, otherwise there's really not any point me just not working for some bigtech company myself and earning a ridiculous salary.

I've given a number of updates where I've explained why v11 is so delayed, and I feel like a broken record as it's still so delayed.

If you have posted something, even direct to me, and haven't received a reply, my hands have really been tied while being so overwhelmed. My blunt (and possibly unhelpful) advice is to not make me a dependency in anything. Even if I have been very responsive and helpful in the past, individually helping different users in their personal projects is probably never going to be able to have time for again. Plan accordingly.

If you look on the tracker you can see there are a number of tasks tagged as "AutonomousOrganisation" (Tag Details: AutonomousOrganisation - Composr CMS feature tracker). There's an evolving plan to deal with everything I've discussed above, and I'm very determined for it to happen. Not a fan of giving up like so many Open Source maintainers end up doing.

Best,
Chris

Thanks for the update, Chris!

Congratulations to you and your wife, and welcome to parenthood!

In the eight years I've been married it's been a struggle to find a happy place between work time, marriage time, and personal time. I've had to give up a lot of personal time to make sure the other 2 are working properly. With you, you've now have added family time to the mix which makes personal time even harder to find.

You need to start teaching that kid coding so she/he can help you out and have even more father-child quality time together!  

Chris Graham said

Things are starting to settle down a bit now.

That's just the quiet before the storm, Chris, enjoy it while you can!     

Personally I feel your family and paid client work take priority over v11. I am of course looking forward to v11 but it shouldn't come at any personal cost to yourself. It's not like v10 isn't available in the meantime. Congratulations

As always Chris, if I can assist in any way, please drop me a note!

All the best to you and the growing famjam!

SoccerDad said

As always Chris, if I can assist in any way, please drop me a note!

All the best to you and the growing famjam!

From “Yep...”, 31st Jul 2025

Thanks. At this point I just need to free the time to press through it myself, but once we're released there's definitely going to be a big opportunity to help with promotion, bug reporting, and future planning.

Hi Chris, yep having a newborn baby really requires focus and time, I hope you still have the time to rest a little bit. Work can wait, family matters the most and thank you for all your help with the other members.

Well, I had thought things were getting back to normal, but that was quite a false start.

Turns out my baby had something of a sleep disorder, which finally is now resolved at 4 1/2 months with some professional help. It had meant basically my wife had to look after the baby constantly during the day and not get anything else done, so that everything else fell to me.

Then I had my parents visiting from the UK for the first time for 2 1/2 weeks, delayed from 2020 (when they literally couldn't visit due to flight restrictions for UK->US flights).

And honestly also with inflation so high I decided to get a load of $-costing personal projects done I had meant for future years before my savings are devalued too much .

It was all I could do on top of that to keep on top of ongoing client work.

Getting back on top of what I missed now, then hopefully quickly rounding off outstanding client work and back to v11.

Chris,

Breath, take the things you can accomplish piece by piece, enjoy the family, and care for the wife. Juggling things takes a lot of management and time. I know this as I did it for 10 years with two kids and a wife. I found in the end family is most important and when things are calm the best work and attention can be given. Do not rush to tackle things out of guilt. It WILL burn you out I learned this well.

Get version 11 out when it's enjoyable to work and not when it's a pang of guilt to be the slave.

Take care, my friend.

Master Rat

Get version 11 out when it's enjoyable to work and not when it's a pang of guilt to be the slave.<br />
<br />


Yep. He's right. And besides, FB is losing members every day. It's possible that the days of the FB monopoly are coming to an end. People want more than the standard issue IG-type newsfeeds. And the pouring of money into this new 3d world is going to cause a FB recession, I believe. It's possible (don't laugh) that FB might #dieoff. I think it's already happening, though it will have fits and starts. But when it happens, Composr is the only affordable CMS that is ready-to-go when the hatchet falls on the FB takeover of social media.

Malatesa said

Get version 11 out when it's enjoyable to work and not when it's a pang of guilt to be the slave.<br />
<br />

From “Post #8629”, 4th Sep 2025

Yep. He's right. And besides, FB is losing members every day. It's possible that the days of the FB monopoly are coming to an end. People want more than the standard issue IG-type newsfeeds. And the pouring of money into this new 3d world is going to cause a FB recession, I believe. It's possible (don't laugh) that FB might #dieoff. I think it's already happening, though it will have fits and starts. But when it happens, Composr is the only affordable CMS that is ready-to-go when the hatchet falls on the FB takeover of social media.

From “Post #8646”, 23rd Sep 2025

Thanks for sharing information Chris....