Stream Is Shutting Down Its Cloud Data Storage October 1st

Stream 3 is available for download and includes some significant improvements. Stream is a WordPress plugin that tracks changes to a site similar to an audit trail. When version two was released nearly a year ago, it morphed from a plugin to a service. Activity logs were stored in the cloud which lessened the amount of resources used on local webservers.

Version three will no longer store data in the cloud. Instead, it will store activity logs locally. The cloud service provided by Stream 2 is closing on October 1st. This gives users a little more than a month to migrate data from the cloud to their local webserver.

The Cloud is Expensive

Luke Carbis, lead developer of Stream, says the time frame was chosen based on a number of factors, “We chose a 6 week migration window as a balance between bleeding cash and doing the right thing by our users.

“It’s also helpful to remember that the vast majority of our users are on a Free plan, which only includes 12 weeks of storage. We are monitoring the accounts of each of our paid users and I’m personally making sure that every one of them has migrated,” Carbis told the Tavern.

The move away from the cloud is largely based on cost. The majority of Stream’s customers signed up to the free plan with a significant lack of interest in the Pro Subscription. Server costs were also higher than expected.

XWP to The Rescue

With a lack of income from Stream 2 and acquisition talks failing, Carbis was contracted to do outside work leaving Frankie Jarrett the only person working on the project. Stream’s investor decided to pull the plug on the project at the same time Jarrett decided to resign from the company.

“When I heard that Frankie had resigned I gave him a call. We reminisced on our achievements, and threw around some of our ideas on what could have been. That conversation renewed my inspiration. I jotted down some notes, and that’s when things started to turn around,” Carbis said.

Members from XWP stepped in to lend a helping hand and the project is now officially under the XWP umbrella. This allows Stream to remain free and open source. The partnership will also facilitate add-on, connectors, and adapters

What’s New in Stream 3

Stream 3 is rewritten from the ground up. Activity logs use half the space in the database compared to Stream 2. It supports multisite through the use of Network Admin and uses a dependency injection model to be more extendable and efficient.

Although Stream 3 includes a variety of improvements two notable features have been removed, Notifications and Reports. If you depend on these features, please review the following FAQ.

A New Direction

Carbis and XWP are taking Stream into a new direction. Stream’s proposed roadmap is available on GitHub and Carbis encourages users to not only review it, but to contribute to the project’s future, “I’d like to see Stream’s users contribute more to its direction. Contribution isn’t limited to ideas either. If you can design, develop, or translate, please consider contributing to the Stream project,” he said.

It will be interesting to see if Stream can regain the momentum it lost after transitioning to a cloud based system to store data. Now that Stream stores activity logs locally again, those in the EU should be able to use it without breaking privacy laws. Stream is available for free on the WordPress plugin directory.