I'm sure most of you have noticed there have been a lot of changes and uncertainty among the general CA populace over the last few months. I'd like to take this time to explain a little bit about what's been going on and what our future holds. First however, I would like to give some context for our situation.
Around last September, we switched from our previous hosting solution which was on a dedicated box to a shared host. The primary reason that we did this was for financial reasons. Quite frankly, our site does not generate the traffic (or anywhere near the revenue) to justify a dedicated host. With that in mind we moved over to a much cheaper and, we thought, economical host. Around this time is when I'm sure most of you began to notice the issues. Error messages when posting, failed song/map downloads on the game servers, and general sluggishness of the site eventually gave way to full on account suspensions as our site regularly throttled the limits put on our shared agreement. It was clear that the site by no means could continue to exist under these conditions. I'm sure many of you heard the death knell of CA being rung out. The site could barely keep up at times, and when it was up, it ran poorly.
The first time the website crashed, I was worried that CA was done. No more website by extension would diminish the importance of events and the servers to the point of non-existence. With this in mind, I contacted Nick worried that the community I'd been a part of and loved for more than two years would cease to exist. In this conversation I was informed of the problems with the web server, our financial issues with funding a better solution, and additionally the trouble we would have in actually fixing the problem. Eventually we came to an agreement.
If I could muster the resources over the next week to find a new server that met our means financially and from a practical standpoint (NOT crashing every two days) he would agree to keep the site around. What began was a lot of frantic work between many of the administration to get this all up and running at a reasonable price.
After what amounted to far more than a week and a great deal of patience on Nick's part, we've been able to secure a new host and I'm sure most of you will be pleased to know it is at a reasonable price as well. While the work is mostly complete, there is a still some more stuff to be transferred (we're about 90% there) so you may yet see some poor response times and I can't count out us getting suspended one more time. Rest assured however, we are in store for a much better experience.
The second issue I'd like to address is with changes in the current administration. I'd like to start by saying that Nick over the years has quite frankly poured his heart and soul into CA. When I first started becoming active in the community, Nick was the one person you could always identify with CA. Maybe it seems redundant saying that about the owner, but more than anyone else he was always there to help out with events, chat you up in Ventrilo, or even just hang out on the tf2 server. As I moved more into a developmental role, it became increasingly clear to me that more than anyone would ever know, Nick was the lifeblood of the community. The amount of work he put in behind the scenes on projects he maybe even didn't understand is staggering. He was always trying to make us better, and by extension, make the community a better place. I have a lot of respect for him for doing this for more years than I've been around, and sometimes around people that didn't care to reciprocate a fraction of the effort he put in.
After the years of long nights and early days he's put in, not to mention the financial burden he's paid mostly out of pocket for years now, Nick is moving on to other projects and leaving me in charge in his place. I'd like to stress that Nick is still the owner of Couch Athletics and still has a love for the community I'm sure he'll forever call his own, but for the time being will cease responsibilities as owner.
As the new head of CA I only ask that you give me the same support many of you gave Nick over the years as we move forward into new ventures.
The last topic I'd like to cover in brief is in regards to the game servers. Currently we have two TF2 servers, one, the stalwart Public server and the other, the Serious Business sometimes Event Server. In the coming month we hope to enact some major changes to these servers, keeping the general feel they embody (24 players, all talk) while bringing you some of the suggestions you had for us. I can't make any promises yet as quite frankly I'm not skilled enough to do the upgrades myself, but I hope that you'll enjoy the changes we have in store, and if not, let us know!
In closing, I hope this makes you all feel a bit more at ease for the time being, and are excited to see what we can do with the community. I'm sure in a few weeks I'll have more information for you all and I'll make another announcement then, but for the time being, I wish you all the best,
NED
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