Development roundup: January 2023

Hi everyone.

Firstly, welcome to all the new Patrons who joined over the last few weeks. And returning patrons, thanks for your continued support.  If you haven't already, connect your Patreon account to your site and Discord accounts to claim your benefits.

Happy new year of 2023! Let's jump right into the update!

Storage maintenance

In the "Behind the Site" video I released in early November, I made reference to issues regarding the storage server I'm maintaining in the European region. I recommend watching the video for some insights on that. The hardware itself was aging, and the disks are expensive to replace. The disk was clearly causing issues for the site. I was planning to take a holiday for most of December, so it was critical that the server was replaced before then.

The two weeks of frantic maintenance that followed, caused some major outages. For which I want to apologize. I am however happy to report that most of these issues are resolved. It caused some headaches, and took some time, but I managed to move most of the files to different servers before I left on holiday. There are still a few dangling files that haven't been synced properly, and I'm working to resolve that asap.

New Patron-only download servers

While I was on vacation, I found a really promising storage provider that I've since started moving towards. This provider is very fast, and also relatively inexpensive. The difference between the old and new systems is stunning, and it's offered in more geographical locations than previous systems. This allowed me to add two separate download locations for the US (west and east coast), as well as another one in Southeast Asia.

The result is that downloads for you Patrons should now be blazing fast, wherever in the world you live. Especially in Asia, you should enjoy much better speeds at this point. Please let me know if you noticed the difference. 

New download buttons

This increase in download servers would have also added additional buttons to the project page. Hopelessly cluttering the already cluttered download section. To clean this up a bit, I decided to consolidate these buttons into one, and then put the server selection in a modal/popup.

This cleans up the page quite a bit. So, it does serve its purpose. Unfortunately, it has a downside. It adds another step before you get to the download. To fix this, I plan to add a setting to people's profiles with the option to select a "default" download location. That way, you will get directed to the download server you pre-selected in your profile. Look for it in the coming weeks.

Closing remarks

With 2022 being in the books, I have better hope for 2023. There are still risks and economic dangers ahead. But I feel like they can be overcome. The main points of development, mentioned in the previous update, still stand. The integration with other sites, moderation tools and search... The usual. Over the Christmas break, I've been making progress on the Kubernetes configuration and the development cluster, and things are looking good. And I need to also work on cutting some bloat in the system too. Just like how I could do to lose some bloat myself.

But hey, it's 2023, and it's time to make shit epic again. I hope you'll stick around for the journey.

Furthermore, if you have feedback regarding the site, please feel free to drop a comment, send an email, or leave it in the Discord. Please don't contact me about bugs with specific uploads, but contact the uploader instead.

As always, many great models were uploaded to the sites over the past few months, and I would like to thank the contributors who shared their models with the world.

I want to thank the Patrons once more. Your pledge helps keep the site running, and I couldn't be more thankful.

Best of luck to you all.

Salaryman (Ganonmaster)