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 The reason why it isn't enabled site-wide at this time is largely due to the forum software being out of date.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.
[img align=right width=400]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/repository/17701thank-you-key.jpg[/img] It's that time of the month again! No, not that time, the good time where we thank all those awesome members of our wonderful little site that have helped to grow our most prized possession, the Database!
I'll start off thanking some names I didn't recognize, though they have been around the site since 2013, so thanks amprice5474 and josulli3 for becoming active and making over 100 submissions. And then there's a couple regulars, CoinCollector, Furnessly, and Sauza12 who also each made over 100 submissions. But the real butt-kickers in August were Shadow Kisuragi with over 500 submissions, ae.tc with over 700 submissions and ApolloBoy with nearly 1000 submissions. Thanks to all of you and everyone else who made a submission in August.
But we can't forget about our awesome staff members who work tirelessly to make sure all those submissions are being reviewed and approved. Izret101 and Tynstar each had almost 300 approvals. ApolloBoy had almost 800 and Shadow Kisuragi had almost 1000 approvals. Thanks guys for keeping the gears of the RFGen running smoothly and getting those submissions taken care of.
Did you know our annual PAIN YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS contest ended already? Apparently, it ended almost two weeks ago. And I apologize its taken me so long to get this written up, but its just been hard to find the time to give this the full attention it deserves (more on that later). Enough of my rambling, lets get down to business and announce those winners! We'll start off with the winner of the donation drive. And that winner is YOU! Because everyone wins when someone donates, without those crucial donations, we literally can not exist. Even though we are non-profit, our server host is most definitely not. But I did offer a prize to the individual donated the most during our donation drive, and the winner of that prize is none other than Razor Knuckles, who donated an astounding amount, more than anyone since I've been in charge of the finances around here at least. I won't disclose here how much exactly he donated, I'll let him do that if he so wishes. And of course, there's the matter of who won the PAIN YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS contest. The winner of that contest is our very own Not-So-Secret Santa, Zagnorch! He not only won the submissions contest, he destroyed the contest, raking in more than twice as many points as the second place member, Flee. Who, in turn, got more than twice as many points as third place ae.tc. Good job guys, you kicked butt this year. And a big thanks to everyone who participated in the contest, you're all winners in my book.
As for the prizes, as it turns out, its a little harder to come by a pair of 1990 NWC carts than I thought, so I'll have to make a little substitution to the prizes for our two winners. Luckily, I never mentioned specifically which gold colored NES cart would be the prize, so no harm no foul, right? So Mr. Zagnorch and Mr. Knuckles, send me a PM with your address and your prizes will be on their way as soon as possible.
And finally, I have one more little announcement. After nearly 5 years, I will be stepping down as Site Director of RFGeneration. Now, it has nothing to do with an affair, scandal, or anything like that. My life has just become too busy for me to make this site a priority, and that's what it needs to be for a Director. So rather than just stick around making people wait on my response to things, I'm simply taking myself out of the equation so the remaining Directors can efficiently keep the site running. Now, I won't be leaving completely, I'll still be around on occasion, just on more of an unofficial capacity. In lieu of a retirement gift, you can make a donation to webmaster@rfgeneration.com
First off, I want to give a big "Thank You" to the 9 members who have taken the time to donate money to the site during our annual donation drive. So Thank You Tadpole13, Razor Knuckles, Raidou, Nupoile, Zagnorch, OatBob, and Wempster. Together you guys have raised over $600 to keep the site running. And unless someone tops your donation in the next couple days, you'll be receiving an ultra-rare gold colored NES game. If you're not one of these fine gentlemen, and want to help keep the site alive, you can send a PayPal donation to webmaster@rfgeneration.com or just click the little Donate icon at the bottom of this article. Either way, your contribution is only used for paying the hosting bill around here, which is around $100 each and every month. If you don't know how much to donate, donate whatever you can, whether its $5 or $5000, every little bit helps. But for reference, the average donation amount this year has been $77.21. I'm not saying you must donate that much, but if you want to conform to the standard, you probably should.
And of course, I must thank all of you out there that are PAINING YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS! In may, the most PAINED WITH SUBMISSIONS member was Zagnorch, with 2190 submissions. Next was ApolloBoy with over 1000 submissions, and each with over 500 submissions were Flee, MrMeek, Aeroc, and ae.tc. Thanks guys, you are obviously taking this competition seriously, and you should be. One of you is likely to walk away with another copy of that super-rare gold colored NES game. If your name isn't listed here, don't worry, you can still win this thing. But you better get your butt moving, Zagnorch really wants that game, and you wouldn't want him to get it would you?
But don't forget about those poor souls who tirelessly sift through all those submissions to find the ones that are worthy of approving into the database. Without them, we'd have a database full of incorrect information and stolen images. May's biggest Approver was Shadow Kisuragi with an astounding 3468 approvals and who knows how many rejections. Next up was Tynstar with just shy of 1000, and ApolloBoy with 733. Thanks guys, you have been doing an awesome job at keeping that queue down this year, I only saw it above 100 once this year.
Thanks to everyone else who has contributed in May and during our annual contest so far. It really is true that every little bit helps. Whether its a page edit to fix a typo or a donation of $500, we truly appreciate it all.
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...
Looks like 2014 is already 1/12th over. Despite off and on connection issues, our dedicated members have been hard at work makin' those submissions. In fact, you guys made over 2600 submissions in January. Which is very commendable considering the sporadic outages we've been experiencing. And if those outages have been keeping you away from making submissions and from the site in general, I've got some good news for you. There will be more info once it's all done, but rest assured everything will be lightning fast again by the end of the month.
So who made all those submissions in January? Well, it was mostly ApolloBoy with 757 submissions! ericeskapade had over 400, and HungryMoose and Shadow Kisuragi each had over 200. And of course, there were another 63 members who together made another 1000 submissions. So thanks to all of you who helped out this January, I know it wasn't easy with the downtime and sluggish load times.
As always, I'd like to thank our dedicated submission-approving team that has to deal with all of those submissions every month. Our top approvers in January were Tynstar and Shadow Kisuragi with over 700 and over 400 approvals respectively. Paully3433 also had over 100 approvals in January.
Thanks again everyone, and if you've been putting off those submissions because of our site issues, be assured it will be getting better, but as always, good things take some time, so expect things to get speedier by the end of February, and possibly sooner, depending on how smoothly things go. We're definitely trying to roll out these changes as quickly as we can.
