July update - website and new background artist! (Patreon)

Syd here. We are so excited we can finally talk about the website! Let's list the main points and then go into details for those who want to read about that stuff.

- Safety and privacy are our main concerns. That's why I decided to take the hard decision of building the entire website myself. No other person has seen this website's code, configuration, or server. This includes the entire infrastructure behind it.

- Patreon information: We do not store any payment or password information, everything is processed through Patreon. So, even in the unlikely scenario we get hacked, our website doesn't even have access to this information. Safe! :D

- HD pages. Since now we can control the quality of the uploads, we decided to make the comic HD for everyone! (This doesn't affect Early Access, please keep reading)

- There will never be ads for active patrons on any tier. Ever.

- Early Access will be unlocked the same way spicy content and stories are unlocked. You will see the last page in the pages list and if you are not logged in to Patreon, there will be a button to log in. Depending on your tier you will see 2 or 1 page ahead of public release. (remember we are still working hard on creating a buffer to be able to unlock this reward)

- There will be design changes and new features being added this week. You will literally see the website being built as the days go by :D You can visit daily and see if you spot them.

NEW BACKGROUND ARTIST! NEW BACKGROUND ARTIST!

Yes! We hired a background artist (@aledles on Twitter) to work on the Road Trip Special. We wanted this special to feel... special. And thanks to Ale's work, the panels pop out and come to life. We love them and we would have never had the time to achieve this level of quality if it weren't for Ale and Kopi.

Let's talk about upcoming features and ideas!

- Bilingual comics. Our plan is to offer the Spanish version on the same schedule without having to go to a different website. We might also add a section with community translations made by fans

- Spicy downloads. I am working on this. There will be a button to download as PNG instead of WEBP. It's not easy to implement because of the way Patreon works. Until I resolve this, you can message me and i'll gladly email them to you.

- Sorting and filters. In a few months, there will be enough exclusive content that we will require a way to sort it. You will find this feature in the spicy and stories sections.

- Timeline. Since the short stories are canon and complement the comic, it might get confusing when to read each story. The idea is to create a timeline with the pages and stories combined so you have a better idea of how the story progresses. This will also include the ARG stuff. Yeah, UltraSportsExtreme.com is not the only ARG thing we have planned. Expect much more to come.

- Unfinished content and art dump. Sometimes some ideas don't make it into the comic. Sometimes spicy sketches don't live up to our standards. We plan on making a section where we just dump this content (and more). Purposely with no titles, dates or any sorting. To give the feeling of going through a discount bin in Walmart.

- Optimization. I built the entire infrastructure of the website with scalability in mind. We will be able to handle thousands of requests each second if we need to. Loading speeds will be much faster too!

- There are so many things I wish I could tell you because I am, for reals, so excited about them. But, I can't! I'm sorry D: I really wish I could tell you, trust me we have a lot more planned for this project.

Want to know more details on what the fuck I've been doing for the past 2 weeks?

(this might get technical)

To understand this, let's talk about what makes a website. There are several ways explain this, so I will stick to the one that applies to this case. I built the entire thing using Amazon's AWS for their reliability, scale and global network of servers. So, basically this would be our website:

- Server. I created a VPS (virtual private server) with enough specs to handle the Patreon (and some more) this will be upgraded right before the launch.

- Wordpress. Great, we have a server, now we need to install the software that IS the website. Wordpress is the leading CMS (Content Management System) used by over 800 million websites. Why did I decide to use this instead of creating the website from scratch? It's much faster and has an incredibly extensive library of "plugins". If I need new features or functionality on the site, I can implement them in just a few clicks instead of spending days writing code and checking for bugs. To give you an idea, Patreon makes a plugin for Wordpress and that's how we got it working on our site!

- DNS. If you know about this stuff you will know why I won't get into it haha. This is too technical and complicated. For the unexperienced, this is like asking someone for directions to your friend's house and them pointing you to them. But also, the rooms are not in one house only. They are located all over the neighborhood and you will need a very specific address to visit each room. Sometimes you will need a special password at the door to enter them.

- Global cache. Now, this I can explain and is super interesting! AWS offers to "replicate" our server on servers they have around the world. That way, if you live in Europe, when you go to the website, you would be directed to a server in Europe instead of the server in USA. This will lower the load time considerably! This is not yet active, it will be before we launch tho.

- SES. Now that we have a website working, how do we let our users know when there are new page updates or new spicy content? Emails! This service allows us to send a massive amount of messages each day to people who subscribe to them. I had to request and be very specific with the AWS people, but after some negotiations, we were granted a stupid amount of emails. Just to make it clear, I hate spam and I hate receiving unsolicited emails, that's why these notifications will be OFF by default and users will have to opt-in to receive them.

In case it wasn't obvious, years ago, I used to be a web dev. However, I had never used AWS before and I forgot how to do web dev stuff. This shit is crazy haha. I had to spend about 3 days reading documentation and an extra day "playing" with these services until I felt confident this is something I can do. This entire thing was built in about 2 weeks. From start to... well, now. It's not finished and it will take me another week to have something more presentable. So, I hope you get to see it as a chance to peek into the journey of creating a service that will be much much more than just a landing page for our comic.

I love you all <3