Community Annual Update 2023

[Matt]

Greetings everyone,

Another year and Special Operations Group still stands as a community after 17 years!

It is genuinely great to see a good few of the team still visiting the site and sticking around.

I thought as it has been a while since our last community update, I would post a brief summary which I will do now annually.

Community Purpose

We aim to preserve the SOG community for as long as possible. We are existing for nostalgic purposes and to keep the familiarity and contact channels for the close group of SWAT 4 friends made over a decade.
We will be hopeful for server/client side support in Ready or Not but until then still support SWAT 4 where there is appetite.
When the time comes that we have no further interest in the community or SWAT 4, we shall consider the future. It remains under constant annual review.

Supported Games

SWAT 4 continues to be the main game and Ready Or Not for those who own it.
We intend to support a Ready or Not server as, if and when the possibility becomes that dedicated server support is available.
SWAT 4 servers are inexpensive and will always be run when donations / support allows.

Community Finances

Expenses and costs have significantly been reduced over the last 3 years with finances remaining in a stable position.

• The website and security is renewed annually costing circa 14 GBP
• Website domains sog-team.com & sog-team.co.uk are renewed bi-annually at 20 GBP
• Discord is a free server / app with no cost
• A SWAT 4 gameserver is able to be run annually for circa 35 GBP

We currently have no further expenditure and the above costs are flexible dependant on donations. Note the costs above are guide prices and good estimates.

Donations

We recieved no donations for 2022, but this was picked up and funded by Matt. However we thank DemonSpeed who donated in 2023 an amount to keep our website running for another year and the SWAT 4 server until May 2023.

Website Development

The website has undergone clear transformation since 2020. In 2022 a new clean and modern homepage was added with a new forum style.

In 2023, we have continued migration from our dated vbulletin software running the whole site, to a clean HTML based modern look. Key changes below:

• We have removed many dated links and clutter not required site wide
• The site Arcade has been removed due to flash player being discontinued
• The servers stats page has been relocated / integrated to the homepage
• A clean forum theme has been utilised replacing the dark theme
• The forum homepage has been decluttered with less links / pages
• Discord has been integrated into the forums sidebar & homepage
• PHP has been upgraded from 5.5 to 5.6

In the future we will migrate the majority of the website & forums to Discord. The majority of the current site runs using PHP version 5.6 which is unsupported and eventually will become defunct. Therefore further migration / upgrading will be needed away from current setup. The website will however remain in some capacity to enable past community members to find us and keep in touch. We therefore will continue to streamline the site keeping the simple, clean and efficient styling, but promoting our discord server.

Any questions or comments, please ask below.

See you around!

Matt