Throughout the last one month I have been working on the goals of simplification, professionalism, and clarity for Miners Online. This has resulted in a complete redesign of the website and a major overhaul of the backend infrastructure.
In this article I will be summarising the changes and improvements that have been made, and what they mean for the future of Miners Online.
Website Redesign
Miners Online had a well-architectured website, but it was not honest about what Miners Online is. It was a bit too technical, ignored the server splits, and was not very welcoming to new players.
I took a wrecking ball to the old website and rebuilt it from the ground up, all in one day, and I am very happy with the result. The new website is made with shadcn/ui and Tailwind CSS, and is much less garish then our Bulma based website. They only thing that stayed is Astro, which we used to build the website.
Feature 1: Logical site navigation
The new site navigation makes finding different server experiences clear and easy. Informational resources and community links are also easily accessible. This is provided by a new header and footer, which are consistent across the whole website.
Feature 2: New homepage
Instead of being focused on just the survival experience, the new homepage is focused on the whole Miners Online experience. There is clear separation of all the different game modes, the Miners Online story is told, and blog articles are featured.
Feature 3: Server summaries
Each server now has a dedicated page on the website including:
- a summary of the server experience and features
- availability information (such as if the server is online or not) currently hardcoded but will be dynamic in the future
- metadata (such as IP, versions, and editions supported)
- modpack if required
This makes it much easier for new players to find the server experience they are looking for, and get all the information they need to join.
Feature 4: Restoration of the blog
The blog is back! It was hidden for a while as it was not being updated, but now it is back and will be updated regularly with news and updates about Miners Online.
Backend infrastructure improvements
Miners Online is now powered by Gate from MineKube, a modern Minecraft proxy server written in Go. Compared to our old Velocity proxy, Gate is much more lightweight which is essential for tight computing budgets.
I have implemented a custom Gate plugin and configured Docker environments to provide the following features:
Feature 1: Dynamic server MOTD
The MOTD now provides colourful advertising that rotates on a schedule making Miners Online stand out in the server list and appear more professional.
Feature 2: Server Links
Right in the in-game pause menu, players can now see a “Server Links” button that opens a GUI with links to our website, discord, and other resources. This makes it much easier for players to find our community and resources.
In addition, the game will suggest players to report a bug by automatically providing a direct link to our GitHub issues page when they disconnect with an error message.
Feature 3: Forced hosts (also lobby no more!)
Instead of having an empty lobby server, we have implemented forced hosts. This means that when players must join the server specifying a subdomain of the server they want. This makes the logical split much easier to understand rather then focusing on one specific server.
By creating our server summaries, players are informed about the different server experiences and how to join them, meaning they can easily find the experience they are looking for without needing to ask in Discord or guess.
Conclusion
The new website and infrastructure improvements represent a major step forward for Miners Online. The new website is much more welcoming and informative for new players, and the infrastructure improvements make the server more reliable and professional.
What’s next?
As always, there is more to come! In the next few months we will be working on:
- Whole site search functionality
- Dynamic server availability information
- Documentation restructure and improvements
- Replacement of dummy/placeholder promotional images
- Restoration of the lobby, once Gate resolves ViaVersion issues