As you may have noticed we have a re-skinned and modernised forum. Tech nerd details to follow at the end of this post in case you're interested.
This is the product of quite a few months of (almost literally, I have bad posture) back breaking work from yours truly and the Fever crew. So I appreciate your feedback and suggestions, but please please do be gentle.
The new site should be faster, better, work on mobile and make it simpler for us to make changes. It is expensive for us to run, so if you wanted to be a wonderful Patreon Supporter not only will you get a sweet crown by your avatar, you'll also help us to keep it running.
Site is the same basic Rails app, upgraded to Rails 6.1 and Ruby 2.7.2 (looking forward to 3.0 coming out as would you believe it, we're actually CPU-bound)
We're using webpacker (Rails-flavoured-webpack) for the frontend, with Tailwindcss for the styling, and Alpine.js to add the animations @patrick478 is so keen on.
We're running on the Digital Ocean App Platform. It's new and a little underbaked in some areas but is a good (and significantly cheaper) alternative to PaaS like Heroku. We also looked at render.com but sadly they only support postgres at this point and I didn't feel like migrating (also we're the kind of site that should really do well with MySQL)
Database One of their MySQL Managed Databases. DB is 1GB ram / 1 vCPU / 10 GB Disk (SSD). We're keeping most of the dataset in RAM it looks like, which is good (all the data is ~1.5GB uncompressed). Here are some pretty graphs.
We're using the DO static site function to serve the assets via cloudflare and their router, which is nice. The App Server (I went for vertical rather than horizontal) is a single instance with 4GB RAM and 2vCPUs. We are running 16 Puma workers each with 6 threads, for total concurrency of 96 (compare that to ~21 unicorns on the old VPS).
We're deploying via Docker, which is quite nice for deterministic builds.
Graphs: image.png254.03 KB This might all get tuned up or down as I figure out how our traffic etc operates.
New site looks great, much more modern. As a tech lead at a software/web dev company I also appreciate the tech info; very interesting, despite being a very different stack to what I work with.
One small thing I noticed when using the forums on my phone is that I'm getting a lot of horizontal scrolling (including when I write this post), likely fix is a few max-width:100% in the css that is missing.
I vaguely remember asking you this a few years back, but have you ever considered making the site/forum, open source?
I would also like to add, I'm aware how much time you likely spent on this upgrade and how non tech people may take it for granted. So thanks. If anyone who is reading this doesn't have a dev background please understand a lot of work (that on most projects would be paid high contract rates) is involved in updates such as this. Buy the man a beer (or several) when you the chance!
I would also like to add, I'm aware how much time you likely spent on this upgrade and how non tech people may take it for granted. So thanks. If anyone who is reading this doesn't have a dev background please understand a lot of work (that on most projects would be paid high contract rates) is involved in updates such as this. Buy the man a beer (or several) when you the chance!
Ha, you don't need to buy me anything - a "thank you" will be more than enough! Quite a few of the fever folk do a ton of work on things "behind the scenes" so to speak so a little love goes a long way.
Re: horizontal scroll - yep, I'm on it. Needs some truncation love.
Re: open source - never considered it seriously to be honest. We'd need to do a bit of work to get it ready for that, there's the possibility that people would play silly buggers with it, and it basically makes another job for me in documenting and supporting it. If someone wanted to use it for another club I'd certainly speak to them about it but yeah.
Awesome work. As a recent software/web developer I think you have done a great job! Looks really slick! Did I see jumbotron on the home page?? I love me a jumbotron!!
They say that you can tell whether or not you like someone within 15 seconds of meeting them. This took 3 seconds and the asthetics are excellent. The appearance is top notch. So my initial impression is "Top Notch" guys.
Perhaps a "Back to Active Topics" Button at the bottom of each page and / or a "Forum Read" Button on the main page. I do like the "New Post " button but a thread name if a new post has been added.
You can easily tell a lot of work has gone into this. "Updated" was a good term to use. This looks more polished and professional (respects to the previous 2 versions thought, they did their job)
Just tried updating my profile. Issue. Picture not changing on forum posts but is now showing on Profile.
Just browsing on mobile and it looks like the pagination on threads could do with a bit of work - currently there’s only an option to go forward and back one page at a time? Being able to go straight to the latest post would be super handy.
Checking the desktop version. I would prefer a Simple [Reply] Button and the [Actions] Pop Up Menu for more Options. One click to Reply to a form comment instead of going into a menu and select. Screen Shot 2021-03-06 at 10.56.19.png17.68 KB I also the new [New Reply] Button is a confusing, shouldn't it be [New Post]?
For desktop web browsers there does seem to be plenty of empty space that could be better utilised to fit more text. Just means there might be more vertical scrolling than needed.
For Mobile web browsers theres some horizontal scrolling needed on the main forum page.
Ignoramus here, After signing in [this is on desk top] and later leaving the page, I come back and have to sign in again. Is that just me with something at my end? there is no 'keep me signed in' box or anything showing.
this is unreal, it's great and appreciate the work. much love. any plans for the previous yellow colour scheme to be an option?
I have absolutely no idea, but I have been told by a nerd friend this stuff takes a mega bite of work, so gracias. But also miss the yellow colour option, if it can be added.
On and did enjoy last night's Site Maintenance message to suggest 'go spend time with your families'. Got a chuckle out of that. Cheers
Yellow Colour: Yellow is a tough colour to work with, and I'm not a designer. Plus, having two colour schemes is basically twice the work (actually a little more than that). This scheme is intended to walk the line between "MOAR YELLOW" and "I can't look at a yellow screen at work".
Great work. Certainly not what I expected when I opened the page today. Gave me a bit of a surprise. But the 'this' function works so a thumbs up from me guys 👍
Will signatures make a return? I always thought they were quite fun and added a little flair.
They are on your user profile page. I always found them a bit cluttered but if there's overwhelming requests I'll bring them back to the post footer. I don't really want to do an option because that's just more work :P
This is perhaps a really tiny thing, but: on the old site, when I was reading a thread picked from the "Active Topics" list, there would be a "Return to Active Topics" link at the bottom. This seems to have gone. Not a biggie, but curious.
Alright, spent most of today on this so I’m now I’m going to go back to other stuff.
As my wife points out at a certain point it’ll be more time efficient for me to visit each of you and read you the forums as a bedtime story...
You'd have to read me The Gruffalo first it's my favourite. Yes please then a segment from the Overseas Players thread, changing into the club jersey of every player on Page 1 as you read. That would be grouse before mum tucks me in.
Haven’t read through all the comments, but not sure if anyone has mentioned not having a return to top or specific forum index at the bottom of the page when you’re on the mobile? Quite annoying having to scroll up
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