GazelleGames: News

[Len]

Site, IRC & Security Updates

Towards the start of September, GGn had a few days of downtime and the IRC over the past few weeks has been somewhat unstable with timeouts and disconnects. This was partly caused by recent changes to server configuration, including hardware upgrades. After some time of tweaking the site is up and running to it's full potential. Part of the changes have also been in an effort to increase the security of the site and its users. Some more changes will be rolled out in the coming weeks, but here is a short summary of the recent changes so far:

Site Downtime
We're pleased to say that there have been some upgrades to the server with the introduction of another SSD and numerous tweaks and fixes to the codebase. We should see a speedy site that may be easily recovered from backup should something break or go south. It is to be expected that some things break when making such hardware changes, and although load time issues and other bugs have already been addressed, other bugs may still become apparent as we move forward which will also be fixed in due time.

IRC Server
There have been some issues with the IRC server recently, including timeouts, disconnects and SSL handshake failures. A second IRC server was successfully installed today, so we hope these issues will stop and users can again properly connect and stay connected to mine those lines have structured and informative discussion in the main channel. There is no change to how users connect to IRC, the commands all stay the same, but the users will be split across the nodes reducing load.

Image Proxy
Images across the site will now be served through a proxy for all users, minimizing the risk of any user or server IP being accidentally leaked to any malicious image hosts. This is in an effort to further increase the security of the site and its users. Because of this change, some pages may experience slow loadtimes, especially pages that have numerous dead whatimg links - an old preferred image host that was taken down during the closure of what.cd. As the host no longer exists, the loading will eventually timeout. Images served by the current preffered image host of ptpimg will not go through the proxy, as they do not log IPs in order to be tracker-friendly.

Donations
This site and community would not be able to flourish if it weren't for the donations from a very generous userbase. As another means of strengthening site security, our methods of donations have been updated to exclude pre-paid credit cards. As of this announcement, only Bitcoin donations will be accepted. If you would like to make a donation, visit the Donate page for more information.

-GGn Staff