new beta: canary server

[karzilla]

Greetings, beta testers! mark has recently added a new "canary" feature to Dreamwidth which will let those who opt in use bleeding-edge site changes before they get pushed out to everyone.

The way it works is this: when you go to https://www.dreamwidth.org/beta and click the "Site-Wide Canary" button, a cookie will be set in your browser which will direct your traffic to the canary server. It's using the same data as the main site, just (sometimes) a slightly newer version of the site code.

• Things are more likely to be broken on the canary! If something goes horribly wrong, you can clear your cookies to go back to using the main site.

• If you lose the canary cookie for any reason, you'll have to opt out and back in on the beta page to go back to using the canary.


Canary users will see a broad ribbon in the lower right corner of their browser window reminding them that they are on the canary. It looks something like this:

Don't feel obligated to rush out and turn this on - it's mostly going to be useful for site developers - but if you do try it, let us know what you think!

Comments

[gwendraith]

Please can you tell me how to opt out of beta?

[kareila]

For any beta that you’ve opted into, you can go back to https://www.dreamwidth.org/beta and click the button for that feature to turn it back off.

[gwendraith]

Thank you. I had a slight problem with my layout and wondered if the beta was the cause. It isn't so I opted back in.
Holly