Massive Site Update this Wednesday

Hey everyone!

We have been working diligently over the past year on a complete rebuild of the GKM Website on a new platform, along with a massive visual update, and paving the way for many new features in the future! We will be launching this new platform this Wednesday, May 10th, and we wanted to give you an overview of this update so you know what to expect!

Core Rebuild

As most of you may have heard over the years, when we initially rebuilt the GKM Website back in 2011, we chose a platform called Concrete5 for the rebuild. This was a massive upgrade from a security standpoint, as well as content organization, and ease of use. It was an essential choice given the urgency with which we had to transfer everything from the site pre-2011, as during the process we literally had bots posting spam content on random pages, and even deleting entire pages of content shortly after we had got it transferred over. Concrete5 was very easy to set up and was able to manage the sheer amount of content on GKM very well from a simplistic standpoint.

Eventually, as our vision for the GKM Website grew, and we began to build more and more custom solutions, Concrete5 began getting in our way. From a basic user standpoint, it made simple stuff easy, but from a developer standpoint, it became a consistent headache as we had to constantly perform workaround after workaround to get the system to work for our increasingly custom applications.

Eventually, over a decade later, in 2022, we decided that the headaches weren't worth the hassle anymore, and we sought out a new platform that would be developer-friendly, and allow us to continue to create custom solutions for GKM without getting in our way. We ended up finding one that did just that, and we made the decision to switch.

We rebuilt every facet of GKM on this new platform and transferred every bit of content over once again, and even though it took a long time, the results are well worth it! The new platform is faster, more secure, more stable, and very developer-friendly for our needs. But, since we were rebuilding everything from scratch, completely custom on this new platform, we figured it was time for a visual update to the site as well!

Visual Update

Web standards are always changing when it comes to latest website designs, user experience, etc., and over time as we continue to manage the GKM Website, we work toward ways to elevate important content, while also pulling randomized content from the site that you may never otherwise see due to the sheer number of pages on GKM.

With this update, we have revamped nearly every portion of the GKM Website in some way, with some sections that will be visually updated some time after launch. We have made sure to not remove anything that already existed; only adding new features or reorganizing existing ones as necessary. We will go over these visual changes in detail in a later blog post when we launch the new platform, but for now just rest assured that although visual updates can be overwhelming or offputting at first, we believe that they will ultimately improve the user experience and make it easier for all of you to navigate the website, and discover new content along the way.

As always, we will be monitoring these changes for any confusion or bugs, and make additional changes as necessary based on user feedback. If there's a particular section you want to leave feedback on, or if you find any bugs with the visual update, please send us a ticket at the GKM Helpdesk and we will help as needed.

Plans for the Future

This new platform allows us to push forward with many new ideas for the GKM Website without consistent headaches along the way. Every aspect of GKM has been completely custom built from the ground up, which allows us to easily troubleshoot problems that arise, and easily expand on or rework sections as needed. Keep an eye out for the blog post detailing all of our visual changes within the next couple days!

With any significant update, there is always the possibility of small odds and ends that are missed, and bugs that find their way in, so we will be monitoring everything closely after launch. The website URL will remain the same (godskingdom.org), and every URL on the site should remain exactly as it is now, so all of your bookmarks should remain intact. Please let us know if you find any content missing after we launch on Wednesday, or bugs as you begin using the new site, and we will address it as quickly as we can.

Blessings,
- GKM Development Team