Website and Server Updates

Update: Yesterday I upgraded the server to Ubuntu 14.04 and our host announced hardware upgrades which I've gone through with so the website should be be a bit snappier now.

Over the last few months I’ve been slowly upgrading parts of the website and server.

You can’t tell just from looking at it but a couple weeks ago I launched a completely new version of the website built rebuilt on Laravel 4. We now have a new and improved admin panel to manage the website and donations.

This week I’ve enabled SSL on the main website, forums and bans. The main website and bans are now forcing SSL but it is optional on the forums for the time being because most of the images are being server externally over http and will cause mixed content warnings. There is a new version of phpBB in beta (I’ve got a test install here) and once it is released I should have a way to make the forums work fully over SSL.

A few months ago I switched the webserver from Apache to Nginx which has worked out pretty well so far and in a few weeks Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will be released I’ll be upgrading the server so we will get newer versions of both Nginx and PHP, which both come with some performance improvements.

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