Plan for Rick Overman
by Rick Overman · 04/14/2005 (3:36 pm) · 24 comments
Well the cat's out of the bag now...
Yes, our very own Google mini search appliance showed up today. Next to fresh beer in the fridge, I have never seen so many impatient faces at GarageGames. After recovering from all the camera flashes and ooooo's and ahhhhh's, I managed to escape and lock myself and the mini in our server room. The Google folks made it a breeze to set up and I am already building test indexs on our new webserver...
Geeze all my secrets in one day...
You heard it right, a new webserver. So now you know where I have been these last few weeks. It's time to retire our 4 year old Pentium3 600mhz server and replace it with something slightly newer. It's not because the existing server cannot handle the load but rather because it's due for a hardware failure and I don't like getting up at 2am unless my 5 month old baby makes me. The plan is to install the google mini and new webserver at our NOC after I finish the new GarageGames site container and restructuring...
That is my last secret - I promise...
Web standards and browser compatibility have come a long way since we settled on our current look and feel. Back in the day IE 5.0 was the browser of choice ...yikes! The new look is the first step in a series of changes that we will be rolling out in the months to come. Aside from a totally new look, the big changes are no more shortcuts and a dedicated "what's new" page. I gladly accept constructive feedback and graphical design suggestions, but if you start whining I just might ban your IP from using the google mini for a little while ...heh, heh, heh. >:)
Photos and more discussion
Yes, our very own Google mini search appliance showed up today. Next to fresh beer in the fridge, I have never seen so many impatient faces at GarageGames. After recovering from all the camera flashes and ooooo's and ahhhhh's, I managed to escape and lock myself and the mini in our server room. The Google folks made it a breeze to set up and I am already building test indexs on our new webserver...
Geeze all my secrets in one day...
You heard it right, a new webserver. So now you know where I have been these last few weeks. It's time to retire our 4 year old Pentium3 600mhz server and replace it with something slightly newer. It's not because the existing server cannot handle the load but rather because it's due for a hardware failure and I don't like getting up at 2am unless my 5 month old baby makes me. The plan is to install the google mini and new webserver at our NOC after I finish the new GarageGames site container and restructuring...
That is my last secret - I promise...
Web standards and browser compatibility have come a long way since we settled on our current look and feel. Back in the day IE 5.0 was the browser of choice ...yikes! The new look is the first step in a series of changes that we will be rolling out in the months to come. Aside from a totally new look, the big changes are no more shortcuts and a dedicated "what's new" page. I gladly accept constructive feedback and graphical design suggestions, but if you start whining I just might ban your IP from using the google mini for a little while ...heh, heh, heh. >:)
Photos and more discussion
#2
Oh well, times changing, time to change with it.
04/14/2005 (4:09 pm)
Not gonna whine, but I love the shortcuts. Since I do most of my surfing at work, and the fact that I am not allowed to email from work, it's been my favorite thing about the site.Oh well, times changing, time to change with it.
#3
04/14/2005 (4:17 pm)
Well, since I am cool and stuff, put me on the 'preferred' ip list :)
#4
-Ron
04/14/2005 (5:28 pm)
multi platform/browser support oh my! I know how much of a pain in the err umm backside that can be, going through our project at work to make it atleast ff, opera, netscape compliant on win/mac/lin and safari on mac.. it is a major pain in the arse!! especialy when all of your code is .aspx with C# codebehind-Ron
#5
04/14/2005 (5:35 pm)
SAWEET! I can't wait to see the new site ... sounds like it's going to be quite a job! 
#6
04/14/2005 (5:41 pm)
Rick, Do the site updates include PayPal support for us non credit card owners?
#7
04/14/2005 (5:43 pm)
yaaaay cant wait either, we're really gunna up the torque in Torque!
#8
04/14/2005 (7:44 pm)
At the risk of having my IP banned... NOOOOOEEESSSS. I like having the shortcuts. Really. Well, I hope it is replaced by something rather then just vanishing. Anyways, good work on everything, cant wait.
#9
04/14/2005 (7:44 pm)
Fix the horizontal scrolling bug that happens in firefox? :P 
#10
=)
Anything that can handle my extremely verbose searches gets
four thumbs up in my book!
04/14/2005 (8:13 pm)
Thank god, now my ten-word-long searches will produce results!=)
Anything that can handle my extremely verbose searches gets
four thumbs up in my book!
#11
04/14/2005 (10:17 pm)
Life with Google Mini is good... I put the kids to bed and ran right back to work to play the google mini some more tonight. Oh my god I am having fun! The initial setup is a breeze (less than 30 minutes), fine tuning can take a while because you really do not want to index EVERYTHING just the stuff that matters. It looks like after pruning it down we index about 45,000 pages -- "Holy heart failure Batman, that is a lot of pages that GG serves up!" As a bonus I have it searching private forums too -- non-TGE owners get a sneak peek at the page snipit, but don't get too excited because I turned off page caching ;) More later.... --Rick
#12
04/14/2005 (10:18 pm)
PS: PayPal and wire transfers are on my plate after these changes are deployed and settle down. 
#13
I guess I should say sorry that the T2D forums have generated 7865 forum posts in 6 weeks alone! I hope that doesn't mean T2D is taking 17.5% of those 45,000 pages. ;)
Good luck with the new tech, hope the xfer goes well. :)
- Melv.
04/15/2005 (1:34 am)
Rick,I guess I should say sorry that the T2D forums have generated 7865 forum posts in 6 weeks alone! I hope that doesn't mean T2D is taking 17.5% of those 45,000 pages. ;)
Good luck with the new tech, hope the xfer goes well. :)
- Melv.
#14
Having search is a great idea. Having some kind of digest of "buddies". I.e. have a way to setup people who you want to read thier .plans, have it digest those into a "whats new from .plan" or such. Kinda like a news page specific to tracking .plans you have "subscribed" to.
Ah its all good, glad you got a new toy as well :)
04/15/2005 (3:40 am)
Hmm, a way to reduce the background noise :) does google mini have that in by default? :)Having search is a great idea. Having some kind of digest of "buddies". I.e. have a way to setup people who you want to read thier .plans, have it digest those into a "whats new from .plan" or such. Kinda like a news page specific to tracking .plans you have "subscribed" to.
Ah its all good, glad you got a new toy as well :)
#15
Currently one can place a 'watch' on a thread, resource etc and later get notified on the site and in e-mail of a change. This is great. However, when you mark your threads as read, the notifications get cleared (in your home page). My question is, "Is there a way, or could you add a way, to find all threads, resources that have been marked as notify?"
I use this features for its intended purpose, but I also use it as a short-term 'favorites' list. I currently keep an active list of my 'favorite' threads/resoures so I can revisit them, but I'm wondering if there is a way to mark them and the find them via the GG search capabilities?"
Regardless, congrats on the acquisition of your new 'toy'. Sound like you're enjoying it. I am looking forward to the unveiling of your changes.
Hall Of Worlds, LLC
EdM|EGTGE
04/15/2005 (12:52 pm)
Rick,Currently one can place a 'watch' on a thread, resource etc and later get notified on the site and in e-mail of a change. This is great. However, when you mark your threads as read, the notifications get cleared (in your home page). My question is, "Is there a way, or could you add a way, to find all threads, resources that have been marked as notify?"
I use this features for its intended purpose, but I also use it as a short-term 'favorites' list. I currently keep an active list of my 'favorite' threads/resoures so I can revisit them, but I'm wondering if there is a way to mark them and the find them via the GG search capabilities?"
Regardless, congrats on the acquisition of your new 'toy'. Sound like you're enjoying it. I am looking forward to the unveiling of your changes.
EdM|EGTGE
#16
04/15/2005 (3:51 pm)
lol Melv... the T2D forums are crazy! in a very good way, I look forward to being able to search through them :)
#17
It would be nice to have a marked search though for going back to old threads
04/15/2005 (6:29 pm)
I agree with Ed in some regards to this. But I also like it the way it is because when I mark all as read I know that nothing new has been posted to that thread if it is not visible.It would be nice to have a marked search though for going back to old threads
#18
So what moral obligations do I have if I start indexing non-GG developement sites? Your thoughts welcome.
04/15/2005 (7:10 pm)
I think I have it dialed in, just in time for Friday beers. Indexing GG, IGC and DevMaster.net and I am still under 50% capacity. Have subsections defined for forums, blogs, resources and developers. Will let the GG crew bang on it this week while I finish the other site changes then we'll go live !!!! So what moral obligations do I have if I start indexing non-GG developement sites? Your thoughts welcome.
#19
04/16/2005 (7:17 am)
Moral obligations? Its what Google itself does. 
#20
Does the new website come with things such as forwarding on a resource to your teams' email or something like that. Could be really neat.
Toby.
04/16/2005 (2:11 pm)
Rick,Does the new website come with things such as forwarding on a resource to your teams' email or something like that. Could be really neat.
Toby.
Torque Owner Vashner