Depending on how often you’ve frequented this site over the past gulp 26 years, you may notice some things have newly changed this week. The last major overhaul of theprp.com took place in 2014, and while that incarnation of the site led to serious growth, the age of the code and technology powering it were long past their shelf life.
Backend updates became challenging, features dependent on depreciated tech and code began to break repeatedly, and it became clear that perpetually applying band-aids wasn’t a viable solution. Thus, back around November of 2024, the decision was made to completely recode the site’s backend from the group up, utilizing modern standards and upgraded hardware.
A focus was put on streamlining all aspects of the site for speed and performance, while adhering to current web standards. The added benefit of all this work, which given the lengthy gestation process, ran into various snags with life getting in the way more than a few times, has given theprp.com a robust new foundation for any future expansion or graphic overhauls.
One of the biggest changes of this overhaul is the entirely rebuilt releases section, which now has granular, filterable data, complete with a searchable database. There’s been a lot more work done around various aspects of the site. Some features may be understated, while others are more readily apparent.
Thorough testing has been done to get this far, and post-launch bugs continue to be stamped out. Hopefully this proverbial engine overhaul is working smoothly for you.
But should you run into bugs, feel free to reach out, be it in the comments of this post, or contacting me, wookubus, via email (see the contact section below) to report any issues. Some lingering issues already being looked into include a bookmarking issue, RSS feed problems, a review vote count bug and a color pass on some of the hyperlinks to make them a bit more legible.
While much of the work went into revamping the backend of the site from the ground up, some of the frontend features have changed too. Here’s an overview of some things you may notice:
- A drastically overhauled releases section, which is now searchable and customizable.
- Much faster site performance.
- Content votes are now also integrated into actual stories, rather than being limited to the main news index. The comment code has also been meticulously overhauled for additional speed and performance.
- The reviews section has been touched up and overhauled.
- New iconography for videos/audio embeds have been added.
- Numerous accessibility options have been added.
- Zooming on mobile functions properly.
- Menu functions now appear on the right side of the screen on desktop.
- Videos can once again be viewed in fullscreen.
- Various subtle UI changes have been implemented throughout the site.
- Improved chronological search results.