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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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,

Human Element

Thanks again from us too for your patience.