Waygook Upgrades: Phase 1 - 3 changes

[Arsalan]

Waygook is undergoing 3 major site changes.  The current upgrades include a change of infrastructure, updates to the codebase, and changes to the way the servers are organized.  These improvements should alleviate the subscription problems, help us scale the site easily as it grows, and overall cut down on the costs.

We have tested part of the changes this past weekend (Friday, Oct 13th), though we have encountered some issues that need to be ironed out before a full rollout to the new infrastructure.  We will continue with testing, however the migration and changes will not likely occur until the end of the month.  We we want to be sure the site is responsive for our users, and if it happens to be too slow in the initial rollout, we'd also like to be able to scale and test it out live.  The new architecture will also allow us to scale it back as needed during off-seasons when teachers are away.

Lastly, for our phase 1 upgrades, the technology stack is being changed.  We should be able to use microservices down the line, either in conjunction or for the entire stack.

All in all, for those of you who are not familiar with the technical lingo, it just means the best service we can provide, faster response times, and a better looking site.

[Arsalan]

We're working on a new UI (user interface), some of which will be applied to phase1_2.

[Arsalan]

Phase 3 placeholder

[Arsalan]

We've finalized the last tests and validations for the upgrades, and we are planning on upgrading the site this upcoming weekend—Nov 4th.  There will be some intermittent downtime as we will need to bring the site offline so that we have all the latest data. This should not last very long, and it is schedule for the weekend so that it does not affect many of the teachers that require it during peak times.

This is the initial upgrade and migration for phase1, future upgrades should not cause downtime.

If the site is a little slow at first, we will be adding servers to mitigate traffic spikes.  There will be a little trial and error involved with this at first, so please be a little patient as we sort it out for everyone.

We will announce the timelines for Phase2 when we have determined that speeds and access times are reliable after the upgrade.

[Arsalan]

We've finalized the upgrades, and they are ready for deployment.  This will occur during the weekend of Nov 3rd, 2017.  There will be intermittent downtime due to IP changes, however as the site goes into maintenance mode, users will not be able to post until the migration is over.  We are not expecting it to take very long, but please do consider that there will be small issues with it during Friday/Saturday.  Everything should be available on Sunday in time for lesson plan preparations.

Overal:

- Software has been upgraded
- Paypal issue should be resolved (addressed in a patch)
- Infrastructure has been moved
- Servers are load balanced on High-CPU instances
- Database memory has been doubled, and storage quadrupled.
- Fileserver has been upgraded
- Development server has been deployed for use with phase2/phase3 (coming next)
- ElasticEmail service purchased

Benefits:

- Faster performance
- Lower costs
- Flexibility with future software development and patches
- Scalability without downtime
- Reliable E-mail delivery  (Did you lose your password? no problem!)

[Shreya_pandey]

these are some really remarkable and amazing updates. kudos to your team for pulling it off.
I had a couple of queries regarding this.
So, will it include more security patches for the users as well?
And customised picture additions etc? Cover picture or so?

The CAPTCHA questions are really cool..They're different. Please don't change that if at all.
Thank you.

[Arsalan]

these are some really remarkable and amazing updates. kudos to your team for pulling it off.
I had a couple of queries regarding this.
So, will it include more security patches for the users as well?
And customised picture additions etc? Cover picture or so?

The CAPTCHA questions are really cool..They're different. Please don't change that if at all.
Thank you.

Hello Shreya,

I didn't want to reply to this until I had a clear answer for you.  Thank you for your comments, the mod team does a lot of work behind the scene, part of the upgrades focuses on features for maintenance/moderation as well.

There are some features I haven't discussed, as they are privacy related.  Their purpose will essentially be to allow a user to post anonymously, without being traced.  The agreement with this feature is that if it is abused (threats, violence, sexual harassment, defamation, etc.) it can be traced back by the moderators for security purposes.  This essentially should allow for reviews or questions to be asked without worry of judgement/persecution.

The user interface is the biggest change you will notice, it's not at all like the current Waygook.

These changes may end up initially getting applied to the current framework (For instance, the UI for feedback).  However, phase 3 is biggest upgrade and an entirely new code-base.

[eujunseo]

New UI will be great to see.

[Arsalan]

@eujunseo

The plan is to do more.  We could upgrade the UI if that's what users want to see, but I know there are a lot of feature requests that should be implemented.  Some of these I can't really do without working on a lot of the code.

I am at the hospital, but I will be getting out in a little less than a couple of weeks.  The plan is to get this underway, with a time-frame of 6 to 8 months.  It's a lot of work, but I have made it priority.  The delay that occured after the phase 1 and 2 upgrades where due to travel, and the recent problems I've encountered.  It happens, but not to worry, I'll be working on it soon.

Just so that some of you are aware, we did try a few things that we ended up scrapping as it didn't provide the functionality we really wanted.  This included using existing software, and a bridge, or migrating the data.  The best route to take is to write it ourselves so it meets your needs as desired.   Maintaining code from another software that you've modifed is alright, but then when it comes to upgrades, it gets messy or troublesome.  Some customizations don't work as you want, but rather are workarounds.  We figured we'd keep our own code base and make some of it available as opensource.