Dear Metal Stormers,

As you may have noticed, the site has undergone a few adjustments in recent months. We're now letting you in on what's happening and what that means for the site and its community.

We have deactivated ads (except for one, which was a miscommunication on our part that we had to make up for), database issues have become so few and far between that most of us in the team have now forgotten they ever existed, several dry-aged and matured bugs of old have simply disappeared, and in a few select spots, new shiny UI features have come to light.

There is a reason for this, and today we're letting you in on it. Metal Storm has undergone a change of ownership. The project that was previously the brainchild of and hand-crafted by our founder, Ivan, is now firmly in the hands of a newly founded nonprofit entity and thereby owned and operated by a team of current staff.

What does that mean for the site?

Initially, not much. ScreamingSteelUS will remain our beloved EIC and the rest of the team will continue doing what they have for years now.

One change some of you will have realized by now is that corrupt has taken over the site's development. He is both hunting down old bugs and preparing for a move to a new server right now. We also have more technological revamp planned and are working on that as well.

While there will be changes to the site in the future, don't expect or fear a big overhaul overnight. We love Ivan's design and have no plan to surprise you with a whole new version of Metal Storm out of the blue. Instead, you will see a constant small-step evolution and we will collect your feedback along the way to make the site we have loved and devoted so much of our time to for almost 18 years now the best platform we can for all of us.

What is going to happen next?

Our current plan is to move the site to new infrastructure on the weekend of September 11th/12th. During that time, the site will be down for a couple of hours while corrupt does the magic. We are already testing the new setup and things are looking good, but seeing that we are a small team of volunteers, unforeseen things can always happen and we are looking at the weekend of September 18th/19th as a backup date. Naturally we'll keep you posted, should that be necessary.

Once the move is done, we'll be relying on you! Much of the site's code is quite old. While we're hard at work to guarantee smooth operation on modern infrastructure, there will most likely be issues at first. Expect to find bugs we have missed in our own testing, wrong hard-coded information here and there, slowdowns, database hiccups, you name it. We are reserving a whole weekend for the move to be able to make adjustments to the infrastructure and closely monitor its operation for a few days while all of you have a chance to poke around. There will be a thread for you to report your findings, ask questions, and pat us on the shoulder for what will hopefully be a job well-done

What you can expect right after the move, however, is HTTPS across the whole site, full UTF-8 support in both the site and the database (that means you can use any character set from any language without the site garbling your text), and general performance improvements both from the new infrastructure and ongoing database optimization in the background.

How are we planning to finance this?

Honestly, we haven't agreed on a plan yet. For the time being, our cost is covered out of our own pockets. Ads are always an option, but one that none of us are really keen on. However, there is precedent for community-funded projects out there and we will definitely try that and see whether that covers our expenses. Many of you have previously voiced a desire to help fund the team and we're hoping that that will be enough for the site to run completely without ads and maybe even finance a few projects we have yet to come up with.

That won't mean we'll create a Patreon or Gofundme account and start releasing exclusive content. Metal Storm will always be free and 100% accessible to anyone anywhere (as long as they adhere to our community guidelines). But we will create a way for you to help fund the project on a completely voluntary basis. Not right off the bat, but you can expect updates on that soon. Also, as you know, on April 1st, this policy can always change for a day

Am I required to do anything?

No. Metal Storm is and will continue to be a community project. We welcome your help in maintaining our database; suggesting features; keeping the community healthy, welcoming, and inclusive; reporting news; and telling us our opinion sucks below every odd review. But if you prefer to just linger and post the occasional shout, that is fine with us.

Server time will change from Estonian to German time, but we will adjust all your profiles automatically. If you have set your time zone offset correctly for your current location now, it should still be correct after the move.

If problems should arise, we may be a little slow to respond for a few days and that may or may not have an effect on the submission of news, articles, or reviews.

We're excited to finally share this big development with all of you and are really looking forward to what the future of Metal Storm holds.

Your Metal Storm staff, elites, and contributors.

Source:

metalstorm.net