We’ve upgraded our hardware and software to meet your needs

Space City Weather is growing—our traffic exceeded 12.5 million page views in 2020—and this morning we took the steps needed to ensure the back-end of the site can keep up with demand.

Our previous server, nicknamed Garak, was two years old. So we moved to new, faster hardware that can accommodate our growing demands. Specifically, we’ve upgraded to a new dedicated server running Ubuntu 20.04, which lets us take advantage of the latest improvements to all the software that runs Space City Weather (including TLS 1.3 support, which is a big deal).

The new server is nicknamed Dukat. The nerds among you will get the reference, I am sure. If you want more details about the site’s technical back end, Lee Hutchinson wrote an excellent piece in August about how he keeps things running for us.

We also changed Word Press themes, which has led to a very modest site redesign. Our original theme, “Jennifer,” was nearly a decade old. The new theme is much more customizable and should allow for a better reading experience with a wider web width. Please bear with us while we shake a few gremlins out of the site redesign over the next few days. In the end, it should look better on both mobile and desktop.

Expect more announcements in the coming weeks in terms of improving our offerings to meet your needs. This was all made possible thanks to Reliant and the generous support of our readers.

27 thoughts on “We’ve upgraded our hardware and software to meet your needs”

  2. Yay. It looks good and cleaner. Some color would be great, but can’t have everything. Or maybe we can get some eventually haha.

  3. The DS9 fans among us appreciate all of Garak’s tailor-made efforts, and wish success with Dukat. Seriously, thank you Eric & Matt for being our go-to site for weather!

      • Frankly, I believe you lost an opportunity to double down on Garak. You could have named your next system ‘Elim’. Dukat is cunning and skillful, yes, but the hidden qualities of Elim Garak make his effectiveness appreciable over time. Nevertheless, as Dukat takes hold, Garak will acquiesce gleefully as his plans unfold in secret. Dukat will take the spotlight and indeed Terok Nor will be a shining beacon of ‘no hype’ for all the galaxy to revere.

        Job well done guys, thank you for reinvesting into SCW in meaningful ways such as this.

  5. We’ve also switched the site’s theme over to GeneratePress, which will let us tweak the site’s appearance without having to worry about things breaking. (Thanks very much to SCW reader David Dumonde for the suggestion a few months ago!)

  8. Thanks for all your work on the site! If you moved your backend to AWS cloud you would not have to upgrade your hardware ever again, you would save money and your site would be able to handle increased volume of traffic with no down time. You should look into it.

    • I’ve looked into it. AWS isn’t a good fit for SCW’s use case unless we spend a significant amount of time building and tweaking a scaling strategy, because the SCW traffic pattern is extremely peak-y. During a weather event, the site’s traffic can grow to 150x its normal daily load, and defining a working scaling policy (and then vetting & testing that policy) requires a significant amount of expertise.

      Besides, the cost just isn’t that bad. As explained in the post I wrote about SCW’s stack, we’re using Liquid Web’s least-expensive dedicated server option. It costs somewhat more on a per-month basis than running the site on a prepaid t1.medium EC2 instance w/the proper amount of EBS, but it also gets us 16GB of RAM (which I can use for mysql and varnish caching), plus headroom to host a parallel staging/dev/test environment.

      Honestly, at some point, we probably will switch to a cloud-based setup. But being a sysadmin means my primary motivation is laziness, and hosting the site on bare metal trades some extra money for time, and also for not having to worry about whether or not some rarely-used EC2 scaling policies are working right while also trying to evacuate my family from League City for a hurricane!

  12. Eric, Matt, & Lee – THANKS for all the time and effort you all put into this site. I take it for granted during “slow” weather periods but sure do appreciate it during those crazy times we do have!!!

    Keep up the good work gents!!!!

  13. Sorry to see “Jennifer” go. Just don’t get a “Karen” theme or I’ll have to speak with your manager.

  14. Awesomeness with the new upgrades ✅✅✅ FRIENDSWOOD and surrounding areas need all the information we without the hype👍🏻! Thank y’all for all you do❤️❤️

  16. Beads of sweat broke out on the forehead of this 77-year old, EXTREMELY “IT” challenged guy…however, I was pleased I could still scroll down…having said that I know you all are first-class and providing an outstanding product…keep it up…ooooh, BTW, I can still receive/send Morse Code…di di dit da di da

  18. Thank you. Since I work at Armand Bayou Nature Center, we really depend on good weather reporting.

  19. I was happy getting the scoop from Eric on newsprint, so my bar is pretty low. As long as I can read it and it is there when I need it – and it always has been – I’m in. Keep up the good work, gents. We all appreciate all that you do.

  21. I am happily wearing my No Hype hoodie in the semi-chilly Houston weather. Thanks for all you do! I ❤️ SCW.

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