What you're seeing right now is version 3.0 of SoGamed, and while you're probably shocked by the non-ascii layout and changes we've made, rest assured that you'll find most answers below.
First and foremost, this new clean design is aimed towards having all the content available at your fingertips. If you're more into UT than CS, just hop on over to the relevant subsection, where you'll find a "mini SoGamed", so to speak.
For those of you crying in despair at the thought of losing the old layout, rest assured that it'll be back within a few weeks, since content and layout has been heavily separated to allow different sets of skins.
Along with the new layout, you've probably also noticed that we're carrying ads on the site now. While we definitely won't try to be the next GameSpy (what with full-page ads, more ads than content etc.), we're obviously running ads from a financial standpoint.
The ads you'll see throughout SoGamed are clean, non-intrusive ads without too much flair in them, and while we normally won't run any sort of campaign reliant on "rich media" (think floating flash ads).
A lot has been said about the new hardware and servers behind SoGamed. We took the opportunity to take a small Q&A with Kris Saw, CTO of ESN, to shed a bit more light into this matter :
Question : What major changes has been made on the Web side?
Answer : We have moved from apache 1.3.x to a 2.x version of Apache, this gives us some small stability and scaling improvements. DB wise we have switched from MySQL 3.x to a MySQL-max 4.x distribution, and we have started to use replication features provided by MySQL to improve db scaling and availability. The other major change is the use of technology from the LVS project to cluster our Webservers, which allows us to make dynamically load balance users across as many servers as we need to.
Q : On what line and on what hardware configuration is SoGamed running now?
A : SoGamed is using a connection from Telia that right now gives us a 100Mbps drop to the Telia European backbone. We have hardware in place that can allow us to instantly boost this to up to 1000Mbps (1Gbit) should the need arise.
On the hardware side we are using a number of dual / quad processor IBM servers to run the web and DB system, right now there are two of each available to the SoGamed cluster. Thanks to LVS we can quickly add more servers should we need to (which are already in place). We also have other servers in use for load balancing and hot database failover. “SlowGamed” should definitely be a word of the past :).
Q : What about the Demo and File section?
A : Those are two sections we have not completed yet, but you can expect to see some very big improvements there. With the new servers we have handling SoGamed, we are able to take the old SoGamed servers and dedicate them to adding new and improved extra features. In the coming week or two we will re-task the old servers to provide a much better file and demo section. We will also be able to use this extra capacity to add some nice new features that should make everyone happy.
With those words in mind, we are looking forward to a fresh, lively and interactive SoGamed in the future! We hope you’ll stay with us and many more will join us, making SoGamed to the best possible place for the e-Sport gamer!
That's basically it for now, but stay tuned for a more in-depth article about what's going on.
Best regards, SoGamed Gaming Community
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