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Welcome to the new RMNB!

By Ian Oland

 1 Comment

May 30, 2018 1:14 pm

Sitting behind the wheel of RMNB, it’s been great seeing how our community has grown over the last nine years. I don’t always understand why you’re here, but you’re definitely here, and it’s a blessing. You have made this site one of my — and many of our authors’ — main passions in life. But as our community has grown over the last decade, the backend of our site has not — for reasons that include price, time, and expertise.

When we first built RMNB in 2009, we created it to be, metaphorically speaking, a medium-sized fisherman’s boat, because that’s all we thought we’d ever be. That tiny ship can float with a certain amount of traffic. Nine years later, we are one of the most read hockey websites in the world. Our boat struggled to stay above water.

During this year’s postseason, our server saw so much traffic after Game Seven of the Eastern Conference Final that we could not publish new posts for hours. Lots of people could not read the articles or participate in the conversation.

Frankly, you deserve better. And we could not live that way anymore.

Believing our traffic would grow even more during the Stanley Cup Final, we decided we had to act aggressively or else the site would fail. (I would not recommend anyone ever doing this.) We had originally planned to migrate RMNB to a new, more stable home over the summer, but we bumped up that launch to Memorial Day weekend and prayed we could pull it off.

Our initial push happened on Sunday, but we ran into a few errors that affected our articles, so we had to revert. That reversion put a lot of you in DNS Hell. (I’m so sorry, more on this in a bit.) On Tuesday, we successfully went live at 2 PM. Twenty-four hours later, everything is syncing and working as we imagined. OMG IT’S SO FAST.

So with that sob story done, let me officially welcome you to New RMNB! It looks very, very, very similar to Old RMNB, but your experience should improve in ways both subtle and dramatic.

So why was this migration so painful?

The very short version is this: with 11,000+ posts, 30,000+ images and a bad hosting provider, extricating ourselves from the current server while maintaining an operational site was a painstaking ordeal. Our server’s age also prevented us from getting necessary updates, which became very problematic.

What new features can I expect as a reader?

I’m glad you asked!

  • Improved security: the new site is running the latest of all code, plugins and platforms, and more importantly, has a path to remain up-to-date and expanded upon.
  • Improved speed: we are now leveraging a content delivery network (learn more here) for images and static content. The new platform is also significantly faster than Old RMNB.
  • Improved resiliency/ability to handle traffic: I know we just made a shirt, but the days of database connection issues are over. The new RMNB is leveraging the same platform in use by USA Today, Facebook, CNN, Variety, TIME, Ted, People, Microsoft and the New York Post, just to name a few.
  • Improved site design/styles: While it was decided the time was not right for a full design overhaul, we did make a number of minor improvements to the styles and fixed issues that were broken on the previous site. Among primary changes, you’ll notice GIFs are now the full width of posts on the desktop version of the site.
  • Twitter handles: In an effort to promote additional interaction with readers, we’ve added Twitter handles to the posts next to the author’s name.
  • Social media metadata: Items posted to Twitter, Facebook and other locations will fully support leveraging our https:// URL and not be funky ever again.
  • Improved search: The search function remains the same, it just works better than before!
  • Full AMP support: Helping to further increase our readership and Google rankings, the site is now fully AMP (learn more here) compliant.

What if I’m not seeing the new site?

You’re in DNS Hell and likely not seeing this article, but maybe you can show this to your friend who’s struggling like…

DNS Hell, in the most simple terms, is when your computer or modems is trying to pull a cached version of our old site that does not exist anymore. The site, in turn, looks broken. Imagine DNS as like a human’s circulatory system. It takes awhile for blood to run through our entire body and so too, is the same, for website data and updates.

If you’re experiencing trouble, here is some advice.

If nothing else, be patient. DNS can take up to 24 to 48 hours to completely update.

Some older posts may look slightly funky

In fact, I challenge you to click around and find some of the errors and show us. It may be very funny! We will address many of the smaller issues over the offseason when there is no hockey and we are not constantly writing for you.

What if I have a question?

Please leave us feedback on Twitter @russianmachine or in the comments below. And we’ll try to answer as much as we can.

One last note

Thank you for sticking by us through thick and thin. It means a lot. And sometimes you have to have some short-term pain (like during Game One of the Stanley Cup Final) to have long-term gain. We tried our best. If you ever wonder how you can help keep RMNB healthy and growing, buy a t-shirt, tell your friends about us, or support us on Patreon (even a dollar a month goes a long way). The more resources available to us in the future, the more we can make this experience better for you. Because you deserve it.