I recently read a series of articles about the idea of using “function switches” or “gatekeepers” to keep functions hidden from users until development is complete. Facebook and Flickr also talk about how they use this to test new features with a subset of users before untying them at all.
A bit of googling did not reveal any existing PHP packages / tools that could be added to a web application to handle this type of thing. It seems straight forward enough to fold our own, but there is no reason to reinvent this wheel if we don't need it. Are there any existing PHP tools for this?
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Clarification: part of this that I am looking to see if it exists is an admin panel that controls which users can see the new features. In the Flickr example, they can include it based on the host. In the example on Facebook, they add functionality, such as restricting capabilities to 5% of users, only TechCrunch users, or only East Coast users.
The admin panel seems decisive when you have 200 features included, 10 features that are not yet fully implemented, and 3 more that you demonstrate to some users.
Jonathan campbell
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