I just sadly posted this to Bibliofile, the reading log application I’ve had up for several years now:

Well, folks, it’s time for some sad news. Bibliofile is going away on April 4, 2009.

The reasons for this are various. I created Bibliofile because I wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. Rails, however, has advanced at a dramatic clip, and updating this app to work with the current version would take more time and effort than I can spare. Since my web hosting company is moving me to a new host that doesn’t support the old version of rails any longer, I’m afraid it’s time to shut the doors.

There are several good services out there that have already implemented many of the features that I wanted to add here, but could never find the time. Notably, Goodreads and weRead do all of what Bibliofile does, and add a bevy of other nice features as well.

What about your data? A good question! You can already grab it in XML form from the RSS feeds that bibliofile provides. (See the “Share” section.) If you’d like a comma-delimited version to import into Goodreads, let me know — I’ll be happy to arrange to export your data in that format for you.

This is a hard decision for me, but given how limited my time is, I feel that it’s the right one. Thanks for your enthusiasm and support over the past few years! Seeing other people use and enjoy Bibliofile has been, by far, the best part of this little adventure. Godspeed to you all, and keep reading!

Sean