+
+ Hello, dear friends! I'm Matchu (they/she), the coder-person of Dress
+ to Impress! Here's a little note about like… why the site is stuck
+ where it is rn, and what we're thinking of doing about that.
+
+
+ Dress to Impress started back in 2010, when I was in high school! I
+ ran it alone for most of that time, but recently Chips and Dice from
+ the /r/Neopets community have been helping keep on top of things, and
+ it's been a serious game changer for keeping all our customization
+ data accurate and reliable, thank you!!!
+
+
+ I on the other hand have… not been on top of things 😅😖 My
+ body has been uncooperative the past couple years (long covid seems
+ likely, it's hard to say?), and about 70–80% of the way through
+ development of the new site, my power just kinda… stopped. It's not a
+ great situation for someone like that to be the only person holding
+ the keys to the codebase, but, well, that's where we are.
+
+
+ DTI 2020 started with three big goals in mind: supporting the new
+ HTML5 customization system, working well on phones, and replacing some
+ of the needlessly-complex tech I built back when I was like literally
+ a teenager 😳 The first two got done, but it's hard to say we ever
+ "replaced" anything: now we just have uhh two sites. We
+ wanted to make everyone fall in love with DTI 2020 and be happy to let
+ it smoothly replace Classic DTI by the end of 2020… but work stopped,
+ so it never did.
+
+
+ Not to mention that, since then, the world's been changing around us.
+ As Neopets.com starts to maybe lose support from its parent company,
+ and some of its technical infrastructure starts to become unstable,
+ our top priority today is to make sure Neopets customization never
+ becomes lost media. We used to depend on Neopets.com for hosting a LOT
+ of the new HTML5 art, without keeping our own copy, but that's just
+ not an option anymore—and I've put in a last big emergency oomph of
+ effort to make sure we have everything we need, in case the site goes
+ offline before anyone expects it to.
+
+
+ And it's also all the more reason to move away from our complex
+ Classic DTI tech, and onto something that's easy to distribute and run
+ in the future, so the Neopets community isn't depending on our server
+ and its old messy tech staying online for 20+ years. But that just
+ never got done, and I wish it hadn't taken me two years to admit that
+ I physically don't have the power to do it 😖
+
+
+ So… that's the way of things. We built some support tech for Chips and
+ Dice over the years, and they've been doing a great job keeping
+ everything working, and I try to stay on top of the bugs they run
+ into… but that's just all the coding power DTI has right now.
+
+
+ If there's anyone out there who's had practice with React/Node apps,
+ and is ready to spelunk into a codebase that was never really built
+ for a team and try to finish up what's left, please send me a note at{" "}
+ matchu@openneo.net and I'd
+ love to talk about it! 💜 It probably won't be easy work, but I know
+ there's lots of folks who would be grateful.
+
+
+ In the meantime, mostly just… thanks to everyone for being so kind to
+ me over these, gosh, 12 years now. The Neopets community is where I
+ grew up, and I'll do my best to help keep it alive in the coming
+ decades, whatever form it may take! We deserve that.
+
+
+ Best wishes in all things, Neopians,
+
—
+
+ Matchu
+
+
+
+ P.S. I've dropped the little feedback form element at the bottom of
+ the page here too, so you can let me know if like… anything in here
+ sounds especially right or wrong. I want to make sure I'm doing right
+ by you, as best I can!
+
+
+