Tech Updates - #1

So I'm going to start writing updates on what has changed in the backend, for anyone that's interested.

Website:

• Completely rewrote 'Teamspeak Integration' to use the foreign key feature that InnoDB offers. This allows for a complete hierarchy which makes for less code and faster processing (example, delete a users entry from the main teamspeak table, it deletes them from the log and their statistics. A single query instead of three #ballin)
  
• Started the conversion process to make the website more appealing with hi-res screens (ie. retina display and OLED screens). This includes switching some of the icons to use FontAwesome, redesigning the division icons into SVGs (InkScape was incredibly helpful doing this, and it's free!), as well as doubling the avatar size (you can upload much larger avatars, including gifs! Please re-upload your avatar to see this go into effect). Some of the things that required this include:
  

- Large from 192px to 384px, Medium from 96px to 192px, Small from 48px to 96px.

- Apply a hard-fix to the avatar modifier, to support these changes (currently a glitch but it's XFs side and will make a bug report)

- Future step will be to double steam community avatars to support hi-res displays.

• Added support for the tab button in the editor! Makes everyone's live much easier when copying and pasting text, or just trying to format your stupid messages nicely.
  
• Layout fix for the articles page. Should look a lot better and more consistent.
  
• Complete layout overhaul for /xg/ including guests custom names to stay with their posts as well as the inclusion of GET numbers. The numbers are generated from the name and then encoded again to prevent decryption. You will be 100% anonymous to other users.
  
• Polls are now pie charts. Makes reading them much easier and looks far better.
  
• Added around 20 new trophies to encourage further forum activity! Check them out here.
  
• The website theme has been re-purposed and will be modified accordingly for major holidays from now on.
  
• Many addons updated to their latest versions.
  
• Rewrote the British algorithm to reflect @@Forest more appropriately.
  

Main Server Machines:

VPS:1:

• Updated the kernel to the newest version provided by RHEL.
  
• Updated GoLang server to 1.1.2.
  
• Updated Nginx to 1.5.6.
  
• Updated PHP, including the process manager, to 5.5.4.
  
• Switched session storage to Memcached to speed up various tasks that can be performed on the website.
  
• Increased the amount of child processes in PHP-FPM to handle the increase of website visitations.
  
• Increased RAMDISK #2 to 1GB to support what comes after this.
  
• Added caching for the reverse image proxy (CamoGO) that makes images displayable through HTTPS. This means that it will store a hard copy of the image on the server for x amount of minutes to prevent a page from taking way to long to load. It needs a bit of tweaking and I'm still unsure whether or not to make them permanently stored.
  
• Modified pagespeed and tweaked the settings for better performance.
  
• Increased Memcached to 1GB of available space.
  
• Switched APCu to Zend OPCache that's included with PHP 5.5. Better performance galore!
  
• Fixed the fstab file so mounting on boot actually works with the SSD, as well as modifying rc.local to allow for persistent file systems on the RAMDISKs. So if the VPS crashes, I won't have to be around to rebuild the file systems nor mount the SSD manually. (note that the VPS has never crashed once, I just restart cause Windows corrupted my mind and makes me thing I have to :'( )
  
• Completely rebuilt the MySQL database and wiped all databases, and rebuilt them from backups. We are seeing much better performance! (the last time I did this was in 2010, and I've learned tons since then so it was desperately needed.)
  
• Switched the remaining tables in each database to InnoDB since MySQL 5.6 supports full-text searching in InnoDB!
  
• Increased MySQL's buffer_pool_size for InnoDB to 2GB for better performance, as well as tweaked the query cache for the same reason.
  
• Rewrote various init.d scripts since they were badly made (I was a noob back then!) probably still am lol
   
  
• Modified the MySQL backup script to be more aggressive, with backups being made every 3 hours and being kept for a week before being deleted.
  
• Modified MySQL to utilize the SSD to the fullest, with new features offered in MySQL 5.6. Better performance from this.
  
• Completely rewrote all the IPTables rules to remove stuff that was added like 3 years ago and probably shouldn't be there.
  
• Modified Nginx config to better handle DOS attacks.
  
• Allocated 32GB of ram to handle the British algorithm. We might need some outside help on this one, it's getting expensive.
  

The other machines are either managed by NFOServers or by @@Stickz and all I have done with them was modify the firewall rules.

Game Servers:

CSS:

• Deleted a bunch of servers to allow for more resources being directed to TF2 and CS:GO.
  
• Removed CallAdmin from everything, it was broken. Thanks @@DarkWolf6052 for figuring this out! Saved my ass!
  
• Modified Hub to a new version. Progress is getting done!
  

TF2:

• Updated the Jailbreak mod with the new API for last requests. Will actually code the last requests when people stop freekilling so much where we never get to them!
  
• Updated the Deathrun mod to fix minor issues.
  
• Any feature requests, please post in the respective thread in the TF2 discussions area, or make a thread if it doesn't exist!
  

Any other divisions I have zero idea about, and if the respective division leaders would like me to include anything, please let me know!

Well that's it for now, please post about any issues you may be experiencing!