So two things have finally happened that have been on the horizon for awhile. One is good news and one is mixed news.

The first is the mobile update, I was long aware that the site was pretty awful on mobile but I personally don't use mobile browsing for much of anything and when I started the site it wasn't a priority. At some point I felt that it was something I should address but I had never worked on mobile features before so it got put on the back burner. Recently I was feeling things needed some TLC and we had a potential helper that only uses mobile himself. This gave me the final push to address this long neglected aspect of the site. I started work on it thinking it might take a couple of days to make it passable. I was wrong :P

Where are we now?

We now have a mini menu sidebar available by default on smaller resolutions (you can also change your settings to view it on any resolution/device!). Previously all popups were using JQuery UI but they have been remade. Almost every page in fact has had some alteration, most of which will not be very noticeable on desktop. The mobile experience has vastly improved I feel and I spent many many hours testing it. I hope you will all enjoy it and if you have any issues with sizing / features PLEASE let me know via the feedback form. Too often I find bugs on the site that have existed for weeks but no one has informed me about. ALSO on android you can swipe the menu in and out using left and wipe swipes, on IOS not so much :P.!

Nothing good lasts forever but what we had was great while it lasted.

Time for the mixed news. When I started this site I didn't think anyone would use it, now we have steady 45k+ unique's and 10+million hits a month for the last 3 months. We have grown a lot and it is time for the site to take another step. We were originally hosted for free by a great friend of mine Mopman. I have known him for over 15 years and without the support of him this site would not exist. Some of you might actually know him from his company "; DROP TABLE "COMPANIES";-- LTD" He is part owner of Hosting Medic and has hosted us for free since this sites creation on August 30th 2017. He has spent many hours providing support for DDOS issues, various site requirements and handing my inexperience in linux webhosting yet to mention our various nights helping me handle scaling woes. He was able to support this site because as a side business him and his friend managed sites for small businesses. To facilitate this they had a pretty beefy private server that was often not at capacity. I figured my site wouldn't get off the ground and he had space so he let me use that server. We grew like a mould and soon we became the site with the most traffic on the box and we didn't even generate any income. It was overkill for their needs and they have taken the decision to move to a re seller platform. We no longer have a corner to inhabit and thus a change must be made.

I don't make money from this site and the few donations we receive are greatly appreciated, they however don't offset the current costs let alone the future (renewing the domain for one year used all of the donations we had this year so far). To me this site is a passion project. It is not perfect and it started with the vision of just an online list for one server and has grown into what it is today. I work on it because it has become part of me and my day to day life. I drift away from it and GTA RP at times but I always come back to it. Even when I am not working on new feature's there is daily work that needs to be done on it. People seem to assume that to get listed on the site you just need to have the right terms on your title.

That is only partially true, every single streamer you see on the site has been approved by me first before showing up. For certain servers I check VODs and live streams and make sure they are on the server they claim they are on. Thankfully these days servers have a lot more obvious distinguishing features but I sometimes scan through days of VODs and go 'welp didn't see anything that proves it, maybe next time'. And some streamers don't even have VODs so if I am not awake when they stream I can't know if they are genuine or a troll.

The future

That being said we will be moving to a new server which I am actually excited about. I will be ordering a dedicated server this weekend / next week and migrating the site over to that time permitting. The transfer will be a lot of work but Mopman will be there to guide me when I'm lost and the result will mean I have a lot more control over the environment we are hosted on. We will no longer have to worry about stepping on toes as a non paying user and time permitting it could allow me to take the site further than before. Mopman will still be our silent saviour (without him during the mass DDOS attacks we would have probably been offline for a week+) working in the background going unappreciated by all but me :P

To be honest I did consider 'well is this THE end?' but after almost exactly two years of working on this site daily and how far it has come I am not sure if I can ever fully abandon it. So things are changing, you probably won't notice the change much if we do it right but there may be some disruptions during the change over.

In conclusion

Hope you are all enjoying the site. The fact so many of you use it means a hell of a lot to me. I know I tend to neglect letting the general user base what is going on behind the scenes but I tend to view the site as a tool people use and not my own soapbox (at least, most of the time). Working on the site has improved me as a person and a developer so that alone is enough for me. Also please share the site with other people! We don't advertise and no sites or servers really plug us (except usarrp!) so I shall return the favour. Our only growth is word of mouth which is quite incredible. Thanks for those who do so and just anyone who has been using the site. If there is anyone out there still remembers when we were shades of grey then I tip my hat to them for sticking with us for so long.

Though making it through this blog post might require more commitment than that.

Ramble over. Enjoy.

Sean - ScottishRambler