Next week we hope to make the first release of a project we've been working on called 'Identity', which is all about how we manage sign in to the site, and how your activity as a user is reflected on Guardian.co.uk. We'll be starting with some changes to the sign in and registration pages.
The old system, known as RegPSS, was built when users were registering and signing up to Guardian Unlimited, and has served us well for seven or so years. However, we need to replace it. The technology it uses is increasingly restricting us from implementing new features. It is also about the last place in our infrastructure where we used Tcl, and lack of familiarity with that language has been hampering our technical development.
At Guardian News & Media we use an agile software development process, which means we release small pieces of working software on a regular basis. For 'Identity', we are starting with basic sign in, signing up to Extra, and with registering to leave a comment for the first time. To get to this point we've done lots of work behind the scenes, like installing new servers, planning a new database, writing code, and getting the system running in our test, QA and production environments. These tasks don't necessarily translate to new functionality that you can immediately see.
For some time to come we'll be running the two systems side-by-side, and so you might occasionally find that to access a particular service you'll need to fill in some additional details in the old style pages. Over the next few months we'll gradually be expanding the capabilities of the new system, until it handles all of the functionality provided by RegPSS, and a lot more.
When we switch the system on, we'll publish a short help guide for the new pages, and we'll be grateful for any feedback of bugs and problems that you may encounter. You can either leave a comment below, or email userhelp@guardian.co.uk
