PG-HQ is on shared hosting. This means that our website is located on a server (in Texas, as it happens) that is also home to many other unrelated customers.

Early this morning (my time) one of those other customers did something stupid and brought down our server. If you visited during that time you probably received a white page with the notice 500 Internal Server Error.

Everything has been repaired and PG-HQ itself suffered no damage or dataloss, just a bit of downtime.

These are the perils of shared hosting. However, renting shared server space is between 1/15th and 1/20th the cost of renting a dedicated PG-HQ server, so for the time being that's what we need to do! :-)

Starting now, when you begin a new AAR PG-HQ will automatically set the AAR language to the same language you used for the last AAR you wrote.

This will result in the correct language being set automatically for each user 99.9% of the time, without taking the heavy-handed approach of nailing down a default AAR language that a minority of users will need to adjust every time.

So if you write in English, you'll always get English. And if you write in Polski you will always get Polski... ;-)

I've made a small but significant improvement to the following pages:

• Modify Existing Play
• New After Action Report
• Modify Existing AAR

Thank you to Alan for the improvement suggestion, and my apologies to those of you who have broken the scroll wheels on your mice the past few days...

We're nearing the 1,500 AAR mark...

While that is, in and of itself, incredible ... the sheer volume of AARs demanded a better way to read them.

I've just upgraded our After Action Reports page. It now has a heavy-duty filter tool with all sorts of interesting options.

In the near future I will be expanding the comment system we have for news posts to include AARs as well. That particular filter option (comments/no comments) obviously does nothing at present.

For the time being, I need to go back to the play system upgrade and clean up a few minor bugs.

Hope you find it useful! Feedback is always welcome in the comments!

While I was busy hammering out our play system upgrade, some of our most decorated veterans were busy knocking down campaigns left and right. Time to pin some medals!

On January 13th mike perryman added to his rapidly expanding list of decorations when he completed the War on the Equator tour.

mike perryman, in recognition and commemoration of your accomplishment, you are hereby awarded this ribbon:

Not to be outdone, and apparently still sane after conquering Eastern Front, beast013 wrapped up March on Leningrad on January 16th. This new ribbon is based on the Defense of Leningrad medal's colors.

beast013, in recognition and commemoration of your accomplishment, you are hereby awarded this ribbon:

Last but not least McKinley - our current king of collection completion percentage - finished off the one-map grind that is the Airborne - Introductory Edition tour, also on January 16th. Your ability to both buy and play games puts us all to shame, my friend.

McKinley, in recognition and commemoration of your accomplishment, you are hereby awarded this ribbon:

Upgrade complete!

Only one minor hiccup, but it looks like everything is running ok. We won't know for sure until everyone starts using the new play and AAR tools, but so far so good!

What should you do now?

If you have recorded plays in the past that were not solo plays you should modify them to become shared plays so that you can begin benefiting from our new multiplayer tracking. All existing plays have been set to "solo" since the majority are. Please begin updating your records if they are not solo!

If you have written AARs that were not in English you should modify them to change the language to the proper setting. All existing AARs have been set to "English" by default. Please update your non-English AARs to the proper language!

If you find a problem?

Let me know in the comments section for this news item.

PG-HQ backs up its database automatically every 24 hours. In the extremely unlikely event that this update destroys the site, it will be trivially easy for us to roll back the clock to immediately before the update was applied.

Help me!

Besides adding real multiplayer support, the primary goal of this update was streamlining the record and AAR submission process. I have tried to make the various forms as intuitive and easy to use as possible.

With that goal in mind, as you're using the new system if you see something that has room for improvement please let me know in the comments section!

That's all for now...

Time for your humble site admin to get some rest, and then celebrate Lunar New Year. Post-Spring Festival I'll be back with a more thorough explanation of our new structure and the site's future development path.

Here's hoping you like your upgrade!

Apart from the initial confirmation email, PG-HQ has a very loose policy on email - you can change your address whenever you please, and no further attempts are made to verify its existence.

That's going to change.

Starting March 1st, if PG-HQ tries to send you an email and delivery fails because the address is bogus, your account will be placed on double secret probation and you will not be allowed to log in again until you provide a working address.

The reason is simple: 2012 will see a variety of tools added to PG-HQ that depend on reliable communication with the members using them.

If you wish to maintain radio silence, you will have the ability to opt-out of all site emails.

This warning is going up ~6 weeks before the Email Cop goes online in order to give all of you plenty of time to verify that your account email is usable.

If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments!