Posted on May 4th 2022 at 04:42:39 PM by (bickman2k) Posted under Site news
Hello again!
Over the past few days, we have made a lot of progress on the site functionality so I wanted to give an update!
Submissions/Approvals These are now working as expected! We found some settings that were keeping this from working that have been temporarily changed to allow things to function properly. This has also allowed the "All Collections" list to update as expected as well.
Forum error messages This has been fixed as well with the changes we made. Again, this is another band-aid fix to the root issue, but it will let things get back to normal while we continue to make the changes.
https I have heard the question a few times, so I figured I would update here with the status of this. The server is currently already https enabled. The reason why it isn't enabled site-wide at this time is largely due to the forum software being out of date. I have plans to set up a sandbox page at home, run the required forum upgrades, then begin developing a new theme. The new software supports https, so this combined with the other efforts of updating/auditing the code for hardcoded paths should allow us to finally enable https site-wide.
A huge thanks to everyone for reaching out to report issues over email, site PM, or Discord. Having a lot of data points helped to determine what was going on better. Another big thanks to the staff members who were helping me to test the various functions as we made changes to verify functionality.
And, naturally, thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding as we worked through this. I know it took longer than I hoped, certainly, but we're certainly on the road to making a lot of progress in updating the site for the future.
Posted on Apr 13th 2022 at 08:51:52 PM by (bickman2k) Posted under Site news
Hey everyone! We recently went through a server migration for several reasons (OS no longer supported, security updates, space, etc), but, as you may have noticed, we have had some issues since the migration. I am trying to correct all of the issues as quickly as possible, but it certainly hasn't been easy.
Thanks to everyone in Discord who helped report the current issues. If you would like to reach out, please join the Discord where we have a site issues channel for people to report the issues. I also plan on posting those issues on a Trello board here so I can more easily track them. You can find the board here: https://trello.com/b/Jxj3...rf-generation-site-issues
Finally, I can't say enough how much I appreciate the patience from all of you while we make the required changes to get the site up and running fully again.
Hey everyone, just wanted to give a heads up that there will be some down time soon. The OS that the server is on is going end of life soon, so we need to upgrade. Unfortunately, in this case, that means that we have to take it down and deploy a new server because of the version that we're moving to.
What does this mean? Well, I don't anticipate this taking an incredibly long time, but the site will be down while this is happening. We'll have the URL redirect to a Wordpress blog that we have set up for situations where there is an extended down time. You can watch for updates there in case something majorly breaks, but you can also hop in the Discord or follow the site on Twitter as well to get additional updates or if you want to hang with the community while this is being worked on.
Sorry in advance for the inconvenience, but hang with us while we get this done and we'll be back soon. So, while you may end up changing inputs temporarily, be sure to change it back to channel 3 when we return.
Today, RF Generation turns 16 years old. If you would like to read a little about the site's beginnings, please check out the page here: http://www.rfgeneration.com/PHP/about.php
Speaking personally, I have been in my position as the Technical Director for nearly ten years. I have seen a lot of things around here. Some weren't super great, but I think that we have made a great community even better as time has passed. I'm incredibly pleased to be working with the staff that we have here and, although I don't post a bunch, I'm glad that the conversations continue moving as well on the forum side.
We have gone from sporadic front page posts to new content every other day, 3 podcasts (and another one...), and we are growing our community in many new ways. There are things we have done that I never would have guessed we would do if you would have asked me ten years ago.
16 years, more than 135,000 games in the database, closing in on 10,000 hardware entries. We've made a lot of progress and continue to do so. I know it feels like I've done a bunch of these "Thank you" posts recently, but I truly mean it. I've been very lucky to be able to be in this position and only continue to do it because I care about what we have created as a community.
As I write this, I'm sitting in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport on a 3 hour layover. I've been up since 4:45am after going to bed some time around 2am.
So, we just migrated everything over, but we're moving back!
This new server is just too fast. It reminds us on staff about broadband and new technology. Pages loading when you click them? Pshaw. We need to go back to the golden age of the Internet.
Until we make this switch, I'll be artificially throttling the speed on the server so everyone can get used to it again.
Also, after working with theGrue, we're going to dump the Android app and develop only for Palm.
RF Generation coming here soon!
We feel that this will take the site back to its roots in classic gaming, when you didn't need "day one patches", "DLC on disc", and "stability updates". Things broke when they did and that's the way we liked it!
The big server move is going to happen beginning tonight. At 6pm Central time, when I get home, I'm going to begin the change so this site is redirected to our new emergency blog. This will let us finish transferring some items as well as pull a fresh DB backup so we can move it all, optimize everything, and bring the site back up on the new server.
Feel free to get your IRC client ready for the down time.
Server: irc.quakenet.org Room: #rfgeneration
Feel free to stop by and chat with myself and others while this is in the works.
Maybe I'll even start a Google Video Hangout tonight...
So, we have some word from the web host. After my investigation, I found that one of our drives had some bad sectors. After unmounting it, the site seems to be running much better. Good news is that it was our backup drive, so none of the site data should be damaged. They will be replacing the drive, but in order to do so, they will need to power down our server to swap out the drive.
We have this planned for Wednesday during the day. Most of you will probably be at work or school, so there shouldn't be many that this will affect. We will be making solid backups ahead of time, just in case.
So, to sum it up, site is having planned downtime to resolve a hardware issue that should help our performance once it is resolved. It'll be down Wednesday during the day and hopefully back up by that night. I don't have a time as of right now, but we'll redirect somewhere.
Go ahead, kick it over to channel 4 for a little bit on Wednesday, but be sure to bring it back over to channel 3 soon!
We have been running over our logs and settings and are in contact with our host as well to try to sort out exactly what is going on.
Please be patient. Your calls are very important to us. Have you considered buying an extended warranty? *shakes head* Sorry, went in to call center mode for a second.
We know just how important this site is to you guys. Personally, it means the world to me to have this site up and running well for everyone to experience. We hope to have everything running better very soon.
Don't forget to keep it on channel 3! (Even if there is a little static every now and then.)
Hey guys! I'm late on this one, but we have another set of thanks to give out for August!
In August, we had 2550 submissions! 2324 of those being games and the other 226 were hardware. That's back up from our summer lull of July! This month also pushed us over 30,000 submissions on the year! Thanks to everyone who submitted!
The top submitters for August were: ApolloBoy with 1043 submissions! Nearly half! Then there was Shadow Kisuragi with 328, thegreatska with 236, Sirgin with 154, and ericeskapade with 127 to round out the other members with over 100 submissions.
The top approvers for August were: Shadow Kisuragi with 390, Tynstar with 215, Paully3433 with 198, and ApolloBoy with 118!
Great job everyone! Let's keep up the awesome work!
As much as the world has changed, our still somewhat niche spot as gamers has adapted to the times as well as the games. We have created our online museum of our past. We share our experiences about the present. And we will evolve together as the gaming community continues to change. I hope to write about some of my experiences with gaming, as well as on some topics that were not directly relevant to me, but to the community or you personally.
