BBJ – Supporter and Site Information

Note – Do not send anything to Venmo please

I no longer have Venmo

Hey guys,

So, after BB25 ended, I went through and just stopped payment for everyone because I didn’t have any real way to do that here. I kept everyone as a supporter because I was too lazy to track who paid monthly vs year.

Anyway, I have gone through and reset all the supporters for the upcoming BB26 season and you can access that here: Become a Supporter

I added a lifetime option if you’re a gambler and think the season will last more than 4 more years 🙂 Or if you just want to extra support the site.

I am going to be monitoring this to ensure that it works, so please comment below if you do become a supporter so I can ensure that it all automatically worked like it was supposed to.

This is all done with paid plugins ($$) but I’m not even sure they work properly because plugins are usually frustratingly annoying.

Now, with that, I want to announce that I am in the process of completely rebuilding the site – again. Yes, I did it before last season, but it was really just a facelift. If you’re familiar with WordPress, I just built a new theme from the ground up but it was still done in old legacy code.

However, I have been working on a very modern approach that gives me absolutely complete control over everything for better or worse.

Comments:

Right now, the comment system is another paid plugin which is great, except when it’s not. It was never built to handle high loads of traffic which is why I need to disable it usually every live show. However, it has a ton of cool features like the thumbs up and all that jazz you know and love.

While all of that is great, it has added an enormous amount of work on my plate because I want to ensure I bring over the best of that comment system (including the history of votes) while keeping the comments fast and light. I mean the system you use now was developed by a team and has been fine-tuned for years. I am trying to rebuild a big chunk of it over weekends (my full-time job is a web developer so after staring at code for 10 hours a day, I am a bit burnt)

Why is that system bad?

It’s not. It’s a great plugin and if anyone has a WordPress site, I recommend it: https://wpdiscuz.com/

However, being a generic plugin, they need to build it for all shapes and sizes and to handle all different crazy things, so the code is inevitably bloated which is why it struggles when we have hundreds of people online slamming refresh for endurance challenge updates.

I have the luxury of stripping out all the stuff I really don’t need which is why it’s possible for me to just do it over weekends and also have it super optimized for the next generation.

What other problems?

Well, I’m basically coding the new site in an entirely different language than what the traditional WordPress site is coded in. So all the little things I’ve built like the player directory, stats, etc all need to be re-coded from the ground up. For those who understand code, I’m converting everything from PHP to Javascript.

Beta Testing?

Yes! I’d say I’m about 1-2 weekends away from having the site ready for beta testing. It’ll be available only to supporters as I have no clue how expensive the hosting for it will be so I’m going to try to keep the load on it pretty light and scale up. Plus, there won’t be any ads at all until it’s ready for launch which means it’s the perfect place for supporters to view all the same content as here!

Summary:

I am super excited about the new build. It is so incredibly fast and honestly feels like using an phone app with quick page changes, etc. I have also upped the reward system so I want to see you guys freak out when not everyone is a ‘famed member’. Some are going to be incredibly hard to get and I may even made special badges for doing things in addition to just getting likes on comments. With this build, the world is my oyster and I can really do anything I want.

Alright, that wraps it up. Season is just in a few days so I expect this place to get spammed with new houseguests, etc leading up to the premiere! Again, let me know if you re-joined as a supporter so I can check to see if your role changed like it should have.