Feels good to write one of these!
2019 March Notes
All efforts since the New Year have been devoted towards adding support for the Infantry Attacks and Modern War sister series. When the Library was designed we had no inkling that there would ever be a need for more than one series. Once we committed to making space for that content, we had to decide how to organize it. Three possible approaches came to the fore:
1. Pile 'Em In
Just add the games, nations, units, and scenarios to the existing Library. This was the easiest approach as it would require almost no modification to PG-HQ's codebase. But the downsides were many - new players might be confused as to why MW games were listed amongst PG games, there would be no way to rate and rank items within their respective series, and so on. This approach was quickly discarded.
2. IA-HQ, MW-HQ
Why not create entire stand-alone sites? They would have their own web addresses, color schemes, and self-contained content. This approach required the most codebase modification and would risk splintering the player base and content. Ultimately not the best approach in our eyes.
3. Split the Library, Keep the Rest United
Finally, this is what we've been working on. We're almost finished splitting the Library into three "Halls". Each series gets its own hall that keeps things neatly organized, we get unique ratings, and so on, but everything is housed on PG-HQ.com to keep the players together.
Here is a peak at how the menu will change:
While this change seems relatively simple on its face, it has required touching almost every aspect of the site's code. Now that we're nearing completion and I feel confident it will be wrapped up in the next few weeks, I'm posting here to make the upgrade official.
Other Tweaks
I optimized the
Lib - Cat - Scenarios page. From my home I clocked it at 23 seconds to load before the optimization and less than 2 seconds after. That should be a little more fun.
Looking Ahead- I have 21 tour of duty medals to hand out
- I've got dice to mail to Patreon supporters, and both mugs and dice to put up for general sale here to support the site
- Once the IA and MW support is online the next big project is moving to a VPS for improved performance
- Once the VPS migration is complete, it will be time to add image support
