Timeline/Roadmap of SpaceWeatherLive

[Christopher S.]

I'll start this off by asking a straightforward sort of question:

Assuming adequate funding, where do Marcel and Vancanneyt see this website in 10 years from now? Will this remain a passion project, enabling aurora watchers, scientists, and science enthusiasts alike? Another: Are there any goals in the back of your minds about the evolution of the website, within the limitations of the particular API that SWL uses, or will that too receive an overhaul at some point?

I sincerely appreciate the upkeep and contributions of you two as well as the community of visitors. There is something about the attitude you convey that brings me here on a daily basis seeking the stimulation of solar activity and discussion about it.

Uh unrelated, but the Facebook node on the home page is currently broken, the one under the Twitter node. Refreshing or visiting the website may automatically force-scroll to center the node since the error message displayed has elevated priority. 😛

[Vancanneyt Sander]

I've been making my astronomy websites since 2003, so I'm already doing this for 17 years and as long as everything goes great I'll keep going ;-). It still is a hobby that got out of hand, we do this all besides our main jobs and much of my free time goes into this. Since the beginning we strive to make it better and bigger and we've grown quit big now and we want to continue that way. Don't forget that we do a lot of stuff behind what you're seeing here too (server operations, scripting/coding, refactoring, app, ...). We keep a project board with all ideas we have, ideas that are submitted, works that we need to do, things we need to look out for, ...) so we haven't run out of ideas yet 😉 , not each idea is executable as we sometimes are limited by our own knowledge as well but we do our best each time. Some overhauls can be made in the future, we have done quit a few of them in the past and the bigger we get the more difficult it gets too.

PS.: I've checked the Facebook 'node' on the site, we don't see any issues on safari, but only on Firefox and Chrome. We checked our code and it still up to date, so it looks to be a Facebook issue that we can not resolve, it's something for the Facebook devs.

[Christopher S.]

Wow, 17 years man. You're a seasoned webmaster and space weather nerd  I mean that endearingly by the way. I really appreciate the response, and hope that it helps bring confidence to visitors and patrons of the website alike. I've seen this particular Web API in use elsewhere before, and it seems to provide more than enough features while looking quite modern in comparison to other space-weather websites(even NASA/NOAA's websites pale in comparison and need some quality-of-life and GUI updates). I couldn't imagine what else you'd want to add - could you give an example of the next idea you wanted to work on?

By the way, one workaround for the broken FB node on Chrome and Firefox is to use AdBlock(not AB Plus, mind you) and manually "block" or rather disable the FB widget with the "Block an ad on this page" feature. Move the slider to the right 2-3 times and I believe that will keep it from loading upon refresh. You can always pause AdBlock and check back later to see if it's working again. 

While I don't necessarily condone using AdBlock on SWL since the ad revenue does help with the upkeep in server costs(I presume), it's your choice ultimately and you can always give your financial support by donating directly instead. If you are feeling guilty using this method, or AdBlock in general, you know what to do.

[Marcel de Bont]

We know of course that folks do not like ads so that is why we try to keep them to a minimum but they are one of the most important sources of income for us and vital in keeping SpaceWeatherLive online. Over the past few years, our visitor numbers have sky rocketed and with that comes extra costs. But it is not only the hosting of the website which costs money. All the services around it that we have introduced over the past few years like the alert system and of course the app also cost money. Without ads and the generous donations of our visitors, all of this would not be possible. Like Sander pointed out, this is a hobby for the both of us, a hobby that grown to a size beyond our wildest imagination but we are very proud of this fact of course and continue to serve our visitors with the latest news and site updates whenever we can. We hope to have another surprise in store for you all later this month... watch this space.

I got interested in aurora and space weather while on vacation in Scandinavia in 2011. That is when I discovered poollicht.be which is the Dutch version of SpaceWeatherLive. Since 2011 I have been frantically learning about space weather and thanks to poollicht.be I got into contact with Sander. I joined forces with him like in 2014 (I am unsure of the year) to expand the Poollicht and SpaceWeatherLive brand and we have become friends ever since. Sander is the webmaster and he is the technical master mind. I fill the project board with ideas and it is up to him to make them reality. Well that is a joke but I am sure it sometimes feels like that for him. I do a little little little bit of coding but Sander usually has to fix my errors so can't really say I am much of a help but I do my best. Most of the social media and news updates come from me, that's my main role.

[Christopher S.]

4 hours ago, Marcel de Bont said:

We know of course that folks do not like ads so that is why we try to keep them to a minimum but they are one of the most important sources of income for us and vital in keeping SpaceWeatherLive online. Over the past few years, our visitor numbers have sky rocketed and with that comes extra costs. But it is not only the hosting of the website which costs money. All the services around it that we have introduced over the past few years like the alert system and of course the app also cost money. Without ads and the generous donations of our visitors, all of this would not be possible. Like Sander pointed out, this is a hobby for the both of us, a hobby that grown to a size beyond our wildest imagination but we are very proud of this fact of course and continue to serve our visitors with the latest news and site updates whenever we can. We hope to have another surprise in store for you all later this month... watch this space.

I got interested in aurora and space weather while on vacation in Scandinavia in 2011. That is when I discovered poollicht.be which is the Dutch version of SpaceWeatherLive. Since 2011 I have been frantically learning about space weather and thanks to poollicht.be I got into contact with Sander. I joined forces with him like in 2014 (I am unsure of the year) to expand the Poollicht and SpaceWeatherLive brand and we have become friends ever since. Sander is the webmaster and he is the technical master mind. I fill the project board with ideas and it is up to him to make them reality. Well that is a joke but I am sure it sometimes feels like that for him. I do a little little little bit of coding but Sander usually has to fix my errors so can't really say I am much of a help but I do my best. Most of the social media and news updates come from me, that's my main role.

You do an awesome job, Marcel. Community outreach in a very important part of any project like this, and without your efforts I wouldn't be here, nor would many people I think.  

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Yes 17 years and I’ve seen the most intense solar activity of SC23 live (What magnificent time it was in 2003 😍). I started the space weather section on our Dutch astronomy website (yes this is not the only website) because of frustration that data was very divided over multiple websites (you didn’t have tabs in browsers And had +10 Windows open), so I made my own handy page with all that I needed without the need of having all that open. One thing led to the other and now where one of the biggest and the only multilingual space weather website. 
We can’t tell all that we’re working on but soon we’ll have something new on the site...

Also, we don’t like adblockers as the revenue of these ads is also needed to keep it all online. We can’t survive solely on donations, thus there are ads that we don’t find very intrusive as they are limited. That’s also the case on the app (but on the app you can do an in-app subscriptions to remove ads). Our costs have grown a lot as we invested in heavier servers, CDN, app, push notifications, translation platform, ... all to make sure we stay online in high traffic (and we have a lot of traffic), keep everyone updated and provide the best experience.