Howdy all.
Not too long ago I ran into an issue with our email account, hosted with GoDaddy, that made me prioritize finding a better solution that didn't put me at the mercy of a company like them again. We've had [email protected] for over 10 years, included with the domain name initially. I guess they ended that and neglected to let us know, so 10 years of email history was lost. I've always wanted our own mail server to handle staff email and more but it's never been a responsibility I wanted to take on. We already get a fair amount of bot traffic and attacks with the game. Trying to manage the security of email on top of that is just beyond what I am capable of and really, beyond want I want to learn in this venture. Security as a whole is an area where I just don't have time to stay on top of the latest updates to every piece of vulnerable software on my server.
So thanks to the funds stashed away from Patreon users, I decided to shop around for a fully managed server option that could take these responsibilities off my hands and also give me access to a mail server. I have settled on a new host and will be moving things over this month and then getting to work on updating all things mail related so we can finally get the most out of the different forms of communication SI offers. Having our own mail server opens up the use of the in-game mail system, better options for the private messaging system of the forums, and more email address options so that all staff can have their own official @shatteredisles email address.
This wasn't a priority for the relaunch so it is unfortunately going to delay the opening beyond April. As much as I hate to delay, this is an area I've always wanted to improve on and it fits into the overall theme of this relaunch, which is to give more control to the players. The added benefit of having the backend security issues taken care of and having more of our assets under the same roof further makes this a needed upgrade.
I will have another update once the server move is completed. The website downtime will be minimal but it will take a bit longer to get the different game environments back online and ready to resume work. I'm really excited to take this next step and open up more staff resources for creating magic rather than managing the mundane.