MGoBlog 3.0: Let’s Go to Beta!
that is not the final banner, obviously
You’ve been asking about the updated website. When we couldn’t hit the preseason target the project was put on the slow burner during the season and shifted resources back to propping up the current site, but with that over we’re going to be picking up the ball and running.
The last few months behind the scenes we were getting the major bugs ironed out. The next step is we’d like to invite those of you most invested in this site—the power readers and commenters if you will—to test out a beta version and help us find all the little annoying things that need to be taken care of before launch. There’s a link in the HUEL message below if you’d like to be a part of that.
Here’s HUEL:
A Letter to Loyal MGoBlogers:
You’ve been very patient in your anticipation of a newly designed site and we’d like to thank you for that. You were teased with the new designs before the football season, and while we were hopeful to launch the site prior to the Week 1 kickoff, too much work remained and we wanted to make sure that the new site did not hamper your experience during those crucial few months.
Once we realized that a site launch would not be possible in August, we shifted our focus to stabilizing and improving the performance of the current site. Changes included:
Migrating to a bigger, stronger, faster, server - Dedicated server with more memory, bandwidth, and storage than the previous server and supported 24/7 by the Nexcess support staff.
Migrating podcasts to Podbean - By removing the podcasts from the site itself, we were able to prevent the site from crashing or slowing to a halt due to thousands of simultaneous downloads directly from the site.
Stopping Malicious Brute Force Attacks - Over the fall there were some instances of outside IPs making constant calls to the server. All suspicious IPs were blocked, and site performance and security were improved.
After we trimmed up the current site, we picked up the momentum on the new site build. We’ve been spending our time making it as beautiful as possible for your desperate eyes, and meticulously establishing an efficient method for upgrading this massive database from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8 (That’s 2 major versions for those of you keeping score at home). The best news yet is that we’re incredibly close to being ready for testing.
In the coming weeks, select users will be receiving invitations to a private beta test of the new site. If you’re interested in being considered for participation in this beta testing period, please fill out the form below:
Private Beta Tester Application*
*Note that not all users who complete the application will be sent invitations to the beta, but we want to know who’s most interested before sending out invites.
We expect the beta period to last about 2 weeks. We will spend the following weeks fixing any issues discovered or building any new features that arise as critical from beta testing. As work progresses, you can expect another update with more details surrounding the full launch of the new site.
Thank you again for your continued patience, or lack of patience. Either way, thank you for staying loyal.
Your friendly neighborhood developers,
Thanks again from us too for your patience.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:05 AM ^
but I was unable to access the application due to a permission error.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:11 AM ^
Congrats on finding the first bug
(happened to me too)
January 5th, 2018 at 10:06 AM ^
What he said.
Let's turn this into a permission error posbang.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:10 AM ^
I'll bang your POS.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:21 AM ^
...but I'm staying for the posbang
January 5th, 2018 at 10:06 AM ^
January 5th, 2018 at 10:08 AM ^
Ditto...
January 5th, 2018 at 10:10 AM ^
This form can only be viewed by users in the owner's organization.
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January 5th, 2018 at 10:19 AM ^
Needs permisson
January 5th, 2018 at 10:13 AM ^
Not sure if anyone else is having this problem, but I can't access the private beta tester application.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:17 AM ^
as a fellow IT type person, I feel for the HUEL folks. Testing a site like this can feel like to old Looney Tunes where you're in a yard full of rakes and you just keep stepping on the dang things. What Im saying is, I got the same message as everyone else
January 5th, 2018 at 10:17 AM ^
Your application is missing.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:20 AM ^
Some programmer is sitting back, comfortable he's done everything right, and starting to wonder why there are no beta signups.
I've done that.
January 5th, 2018 at 3:04 PM ^
hardest Ive laughed today
Ive totally sat around on a Frday thinking "Gee sure is quiet. Not many service tickets" only to find out our ISP did something that took one of our static IPs down and we werent getting emails to the Exchange server
Yeah that was a crappy Friday night
January 5th, 2018 at 10:22 AM ^
NEW AND IMPROVED!
Faster and stronger.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:22 AM ^
I have access to the form now.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:23 AM ^
It works now.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:23 AM ^
January 5th, 2018 at 10:25 AM ^
January 5th, 2018 at 10:27 AM ^
Naked banner WD or GTFO
January 5th, 2018 at 10:26 AM ^
It looks glorious...
January 5th, 2018 at 10:30 AM ^
I googled "HUEL". Came up with a vegan food replacement. In the FAQs it says "Huel prioritizes nutrition over flavour." OH BOY
January 5th, 2018 at 1:16 PM ^
whoops double post, so huel with double l.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:30 AM ^
January 5th, 2018 at 10:36 AM ^
Worked for me, sigh, no posbang.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:44 AM ^
Blocked by my company's firewall. Maybe I'm not supposed to be on the blog while at work?
HAHA!! Yeah, like that will stop me...
January 5th, 2018 at 10:47 AM ^
Look guys... don't be too hard on Human element.. they're only human, after all - born to make... mistakes.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:50 AM ^
So much real estate for the header and lede image.
January 5th, 2018 at 10:57 AM ^
http://beta.mgoblog.com is public as of this post.
Not sure this is the actual beta, but the header images line up. If it is, this is more early alpha. Oodles of UX / css whoopsies. I'm just glad to see some forward momentum into the 21st for my favorite habitual site.
January 5th, 2018 at 11:02 AM ^
- Norman: Got tons of it at Costco. You see, I've got an exclusive membership card. And with that card, I get access to the whole place. I can buy large quantities of anything at discount prices.
- Allison: Can't anyone get one of those cards?
- Norman: No, don't think so. But I can talk to someone, if you'd like.
January 5th, 2018 at 12:25 PM ^
Underrated movie.
January 5th, 2018 at 11:04 AM ^
Holy crap someone tell your devs about bundlers and minifiers
January 5th, 2018 at 3:47 PM ^
Thanks for the input andrew_! That beta URL you found is where we're testing the content migration like Seth mentioned, believe it or not moving 10+ years of data across two Drupal versions is tricky. Still, much of the cleanup that's needed has been done on our development site and is just awaiting deployment.
Unfortunately we had to put up a block on that site to keep the crowds out of our laundry room, but hopefully you get a chance to tear into the beta when it's ready for showtime!
~Friendly Neighborhood HUEL Ambassador
January 5th, 2018 at 3:47 PM ^
Thanks for the input andrew_! That beta URL you found is where we're testing the content migration like Seth mentioned, believe it or not moving 10+ years of data across two Drupal versions is tricky. Still, much of the cleanup that's needed has been done on our development site and is just awaiting deployment.
Unfortunately we had to put up a block on that site to keep the crowds out of our laundry room, but hopefully you get a chance to tear into the beta when it's ready for showtime!
~Friendly Neighborhood HUEL Ambassador
January 5th, 2018 at 4:28 PM ^
I am unreasonably and disproportionately amused that HUEL's first post was actually a double post.
Or is this a double-clever attempt to illustrate a deficency of the current setup? Impressive!
January 5th, 2018 at 11:16 AM ^
January 5th, 2018 at 10:59 AM ^
Offering to work out all the bugs using the Internet Explorer that I have to use at work. hooray for legacy applications!
January 5th, 2018 at 11:03 AM ^
I wonder: how will we know if we are selected, since there was no contact field.
January 5th, 2018 at 11:08 AM ^
When you first signed up you provided an email address - presumably that will be the contact method. My account ->Edit.
January 5th, 2018 at 11:20 AM ^
January 5th, 2018 at 11:22 AM ^
Uh oh. Does that mean if I didn't sign up for the beta with the same email that I used for MGoBlog that I'll get culled?
January 5th, 2018 at 6:50 PM ^
...that they have access to our permanent records. Gulp.
January 5th, 2018 at 11:08 AM ^
Google knows everything.
January 5th, 2018 at 11:16 AM ^
Unfortunately, this is correct. It knows, whether you want it to, or not...
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