Well, I'm glad to hear you have others on the team.  In all other posts you have made, Crispy, you always talk in the single person. "...I'll work on that this weekend..."

The reason I have not suggested a fix for the object reference issue is that I don't know how to fix it.  I am not the hard core programming type person.  I am much more the "manager" type person. So, it does not seem like a good place for a person like me exists to contribute.

If I were to contribute as a project manager type role I would say that setting up another site for testing would seem to be a distraction from the 4 team members.  Also, moderating this forum is a distraction as well as posting to this forum.

I would suggest to the team to either open the forum for un-moderated use (whats the concern? that it will become a freeforall? Then shut it off when it becomes a problem.) or grant moderation permission to someone (many) others. Get the programmers out of the "Support" loop. 

So, then the team can focus on one thing alone: coding. Let the users talk amongst themselves in this forum about the issues, bugs, fixes, wish lists.  If the team does one thing and one thing only, coding, the entire issue of features and bugs goes away since the bugs get fixed rapidly.

How about this for an experiment?  Open the forum for un-moderated use for a week.  During that week you and the team stay off the forum entirely. Ignore it, don't look at it. Spend all your free time with the family or hobbies and spend all the "work" time fixing bugs and releasing code.  At the end of a single week I would bet on 2 things:

- the forum has not gone to hell in a handbasket. Sure, the users are all yakking about "when?" and this bug or that bug. Isn't that business as usual? But overall they have helped each other out or there simply is no answer.

- A new version that is substantially better than the 4 month old one would then exist.

I find it hard to believe that a team of 4 programmers could not find and fix the source of this "object reference" issue in any more than about a week.

Couple of cents of my own to add to this thread if it's still going...

Personally I think it's very risky to put out any application without a beta release first. You can virtually guarantee that no matter how much testing is done by the developers, you will score a ton of unforseen problems upon releasing it to the public. The developers are simply too close to and too familar with the code. The author of a book is the very worst choice one could ever make when seeking a proofreader.

I'm also suggesting that the nasty emails don't actually come from people in here and they will arrive no matter what you do. If you were releasing Windows Vista after beta testing with 500,000 users you'd still get a ton of ****ty emails. That's just how it goes when dealing with the public. Chris, you're a rare developer in that you feel obliged to reply at length to almost any query you receive and I expect that will contribute to your wariness. However, it's just part and parcel of standing in the limelight, so don't let it bug you.

I feel that the users in this forum can be considered the right sort of enthusiasts who would be happy to beta test the tool in an uncontrolled manner. Just set up a seperate beta forum, sign up 50 people to it and send them the PA. Make sure the module  is clearly labeled from within the source so that it can be spotted by newcomers if it gets out in the wild.

People in here will be much less inclined to have a go at you if they had a chance to provide feedback beforehand. They can give the module the kind of noob thrashing it needs in order to find last minute problems. If no one gets to test it prior to release then you're pretty much just asking for trouble.

As for me, I've already done far too much beta testing for one year so I'll just wait and judge it upon release.

Hope it all goes well :)
Rob