In case you haven’t noticed, the neighborhood looks a lot different.  While UD Pride members took a few weeks off in the middle of summer to decompress and recharge the batteries, a maddening, scrambling end to a five-year project took place behind the scenes that was anything but a restful vacation.  It’s worth discussing because there’s a lot to go over and much of it affects your short- and long-term interaction on the Web site.

REBUILDING ROME WAS EASIER THAN THIS.

It looks like a simple facelift, but UD Pride underwent a complete transformation from soup to nuts.  Nothing from the old footprint remains other than the content itself.  The project required a commitment that felt like trenching the Panama Canal.

The overriding necessity rested on legacy hardware and software that were no longer serviceable, upgradable, or even supported by their original developers.  Database tables, programming language versions, pages, forums, publishing tools, content management interfaces, and back-end administration footprints were decidedly “end-of-life” and teetering on collapse.  Only good fortune kept things running as long as they did; I spent the last couple of years holding things together with spit and glue.  The clock was ticking however and there were hard deadlines by server and host that would all but guarantee the Web site would officially stop working. I kept buying time but ultimately reached the end of everyone’s good grace.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

You’d be incorrect to presume procrastination resulted in failure to address the concerns.  I began this massive mobilization in late 2018 with loose mockups of what a new UD Pride might look like.  Those developments continued through 2020 on other servers, but I never felt the new architecture was mature enough to support the tools I wanted.  The tech backbone of the future was still half-baked and had to wait a couple more years for third-party developers to catch up.  By 2022 however, a felt good about a legitimate path forward that guaranteed past functionality users were accustomed to while also incorporating new features we were missing.

The past two years have been a construction zone of off-hours laboring between 9pm-3am when day jobs and personal responsibilities quieted. I share this not to play the world’s largest violin but to explain why the project took so long to complete.  There was no direct path from A to B because nothing carried over.  This added infinitely more work and more work meant more time and expense.

MEANS TO AN END.

The good news is the massive effort should future-proof our home for at least another decade.  There’s some work yet to complete; we’ll have to fly the airplane as we finish its construction.  Hiccups, foul-ups, errors, responsiveness, missing or forgotten credentials, accesses….expect a little of everything during the teething process that will take weeks or months to flush out.  There’s only so much that can be pre-flighted in a test environment to check for air-worthiness.  We’ve upgraded the server twice during the overhaul, but I anticipate 1-2 more upgrades before the end of 2024.   I ask for your patience and understanding as we navigate the bumps in the road.

So what changed?

A few highlights:

• UD Pride is rocking an updated primary and secondary logo. Cleaner and more modern, the primary logo takes precedent in most places including the masthead. The secondary mark — the Hero Mark — is a fighter pilot that’s “courageous and forward-looking” as Madison Avenue marketeers might say. You’ll see the Hero Mark from time to time as a fresh compliment to our new branding.

UDPride

• The primary color palette comprises six updated and appropriately-named custom swatches:

• You can learn more about the brand marks, design footprint, essentials, and rules by downloading the updated UD Pride brand kit:

Download

 

• Successfully preserved all forum topics and posts.  This great success was a small miracle and the most critical piece of the equation. Nothing else really mattered if the data was lost, incomplete, or incompatible.

• Successfully migrated all articles. I spent months restoring several hundred offline articles from multiple backups and manually imported/formatted them from screenshots, HTML, TXT, and Word files — one by one. These articles date back to the late-1990s. The updated archive constitutes the largest online publishing set in 28 years. If we’re missing articles, it’s because they’re lost forever.

• Searchable and sortable article archives by date, author, or category. Everything has been properly indexed for the first time.

• All users were migrated. Legacy uses must reset passwords to log in. Users derelict in maintaining up-to-date email addresses in their profiles may not receive the Lost Password emails. Use the Contact Us form for additional assistance if the self-automated tools do not carry you to the finish line.

• You can change your profile information, avatar, profile banner, and password at any time by going to MANAGE SITE PROFILE> under your logged-in name.  The web site also supports Gravatars so I would suggest setting one of those up. These changes should apply everywhere on the Web site:

• New enforcement of strong password complexity requirements for all credentials to better secure your personal data. Be sure all new passwords meet the minimums.

• Manually ported over the subscription credentials for active Pride+ members. Your account status should be the same as we left things on the old Web site.  You can view/enter the Pride+ forum(s) in the Discussions Forums area as well as read Premium articles.

• Complete redesign of the premium membership account profile area.  Premium members can change, update, or cancel subscriptions on their own, as well as view subscription terms and payment transactions. Go to MEMBERSHIP STATUS> under your logged-in name to view your terms.

• Private messaging can be accessed from under your logged-in name. Past messages were not migrated.

• Convenient toggle drop-down menu at the top of the Web site featuring Recent Topics and Posts.

• Enhanced features on the Forums including social media URL embeds, topic prefixes, attachments, user mentioning with the “@” sign and the user’s name, thumbs up/down, social sharing of topics and posts, enhanced Emojis, polls, and many other fresh and exciting bells/whistles.

• Graceful embedding of third-party links (should see older posts rendering this functionality).

• Auto-cross posting is now enabled on new articles both published on the home page and linked within a specific forum. Your replies will appear in both places whether you comment under the article itself or inside the forum topic where the article link was auto-generated.

• Additional Off-Topic forums have been created to better organize the relevant conversations:

• Web site glossary with hot-linked words within pages and posts that are relevant to our causes.

• A completely new mobile version of the Web site that’s much easier to use on smaller devices.

• ScoreStream live scoreboard in the discussion forums during the season for highlighted sports.

• Sitewide Ad Manager system (in progress).

• Future partnerships and affiliates (in progress).

• Monthly Email newsletter forthcoming.

TIME IS MONEY. MONEY IS ALSO MONEY.

I never logged the man-hours over the last five years because it felt pointless to count a number that seemingly had no end – 800-1000 hours might be a fair estimate.  I did however keep copious notes on running costs and expenses.

Over $6,000 was invested in:

  • Upgrading the hosting hardware services and bandwidth allowances
  • Endless software licenses — renewed annually — that handle web site design templates, databasing, publishing, forum tools, forms, RSS feeds, social media, file managers, back-end administration tools, plug-ins, newsletter publishing tools, and backups
  • Support contracts for all of the licenses and plugins — renewed annually
  • Hired third-party developers to assist in database conversions, migrations, setup, and troubleshooting
  • Network security upgrade tools and licenses
  • Building a completely new Pride+ membership model with greater functionality
  • Various annual domain, DNS, cloud, and other registrations and licenses that carry over

In the old days I’d just write checks to cover the deficits and thank the small handful of premium members that offset the financial money pit with their grace and generosity, but the model is no longer sustainable as expenses rise exponentially.  Compounding the struggle has been a complete downturn in online advertising revenue through third parties like Google Adsense. Receipts have shrunk 90% in the last five years for the same CPCs and traffic delivery. The aforementioned investments do not cover annualized future costs either — those are now far higher too and will continue to rise. Labor?  My labor has never been compensated for, in whole or in part.

CHANGING OBLIGATIONS: YOURS

As committed followers of UD Pride, it’s now your turn.   The ownership and obligation to preserve this new beginning rests in your collective laps to accept a shared burden and carry your own personal weight for the first time in nearly three decades.  Too many users have coasted on the hard work and good-will of a tiny “coalition of the willing” despite spending years visiting, hours a day browsing, posting hundreds or thousands of times, and enjoying the byproduct of others.  Some might not like hearing that, but facts are stubborn things and I’ve got the receipts.

That’s all changing.  Moving forward, everyone must be a shareholder with skin in the game.

I self-funded the project up front knowing it’s easier to ask for help after delivering the bacon rather than promise blue sky and demand patrons trust you with lofty ambitions that may or may not come to fruition.  It was a big gamble but I bet on all of you.

While the Web site will remain largely free to read – articles or forums – the privilege to post and interact with other Flyer fans will now require a paid membership.  It’s nothing more than a mathematics equation – I must recover investments and the viability of the web site must secure its future through the small but powerful tool of compound collectivism.  When everyone does a little, no one is asked to do too much.  This is your domain; I am just the man standing behind the curtain. It will succeed or fail based upon your action or inaction.

For those ready to step up and join the future:

Step 1 is completing your Personal Profile information here:

FOR LEGACY USERS:
1. Go to this link: https://www.udpride.com/account/?action=home
2. Enter your complete personal information (first/last name, address info etc), into the form and click SAVE PROFILE.

You need to enter and save your personal info as a legacy user before signing up. For new registrations on the web site, it will ask you all of this stuff at the beginning. The old web site did not have these additional fields so when porting over your user data these fields were blank.

Step 2 is subscribing to a membership level by clicking this button:

JOIN NOW!

 

…or by clicking the JOIN NOW link at the top of the Web site.  Depending on your membership level, you’ll enjoy premium Pride+ forums along with additional profile perks and premium articles.  There’s a price and commitment term for everyone – the cost of one dinner for a family of four covers your Flyer fun for an entire year. And when the fun starts, you won’t want to be missing out by sitting on the sidelines.

Current premium members from the old web site were ported over and do not need to join. You can renew your existing terms when they are nearing expiration.

For those unable (or unwilling) and ready to walk out the door, sincere thanks for your past patronage and God speed.  I want shareholders to be here for the right reasons. If UD Pride matters to you, you’ve already made the decision to stick around.  If the ask is too big or off-putting, spare the nastygram because I won’t bother reading it.  These changes were not made in haste. As an independent Web site with no mothership to carry our water, everything falls on our shoulders.  It grants us the freedom to do as we please, but also requires a higher level of self-stewardship.  In 2024 and beyond, this is the the only glidepath that works.

Users will have until September 30th, 2024 to consider their options before posting and commenting privileges are restricted to paid subscribers only.

THE BIG FINISH AT THE END

This has been the largest, most expensive, and most comprehensive project in 28 years of UD Pride.  It was my biggest risk, but the late nights and weekends designing pages and code, configuring software and plugins, drawing graphics, migrating databases, formatting tables, re-writing CSS, installing licenses, working with third parties, and creating security and backup protocols were done on the fleeting thought that maybe – just maybe – I’d be pleasantly surprised at the response.  As a Flyer grad from the Dept. of Pessimism, I’m expecting the worst but hoping for the best.

The ball is in your court because I’ve taken this as far as I can with my own time, talents, and money.  Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll sort out the bugs and finish the airplane together.