Website Upgrades and Migration Successful

Hello everyone! We haven't had many updates in recent years here at RPGN, mostly just due to life getting busy and priorities changing. This project is still a passion of mine, and recently I have found some rekindled motivation to get things moving again. Over the past several weeks I have been busy preparing to shift everything to a new server. There has been a lot involved with this shift, as our site has been operating on some fairly outdated software. This is a fresh start, bringing us back up to date with the latest backend software and lots of optimization. This move has required a full review and re-write of all of the website's scripts, which I'm happy to say is now complete.

One major change that we've made is how the radio works with our HTML5 web player. Our old system operated more like a synchronized playlist, where everyone hears the songs in the same order, but not quite at the same time. Every time you visited the radio page, you started at the beginning of the currently playing song, which causes everyone to be at a different point in the radio show. Our update shifts the load from this method to our Icecast server. Instead of fetching individual song files as the radio plays, you'll be connected to a constant stream and everyone will be aligned to hear the music in sync.

- Upgrades! Our website received a much needed upgrade on the backend, with a fresh operating system and updated hardware.
- Total review/rewrite of the website's PHP and JavaScript files to improve performance and security.
- Some much needed modernization and database optimization, the original site code was written many years ago. This is the first step towards introducing new features on the website and our Discord server too.
- Finally enabled SSL certificates for both the site and Icecast server. No more browser alerts about the site being insecure due to the lack of https.

If you choose to listen using an external music player, consider updating your saved playlist URL by re-downloading one of the playlist files on the radio page.

With this critical update step now complete, focus shifts to developing improvements and new features. Have any ideas for things you'd like to see? We're always welcoming user feedback over on Discord!

Posted in Site News by Mogster on September 02nd 2025 at 9:30am