Hey everyone, just a quick rundown of what's been going on behind the scenes and what's coming up. It's been a busy stretch, and not entirely by choice, so here's the full picture.  

 

Axiom Project - Being Removed & Rebuilt

  If you've been watching your stats lately, you may have noticed something unusual with Axiom. The project admin recently slashed user credits down to roughly 1% of their previous values. That kind of drastic credit reset cascades through everything: milestones, first-to achievements, hall of fame entries. It creates a cleanup nightmare that would take an enormous amount of time to untangle on a record-by-record basis.   Rather than chasing down every affected milestone and first-to entry manually, the cleanest solution is to remove Axiom from the database entirely and let it rebuild itself organically from current data. It's not ideal, but it's the right call. Once the project is back in, everything will reflect the new reality from the ground up. We apologize for any temporary disruption this causes to your Axiom stats.  

 

Badge Fixes & New Badges

  Several badges are currently not displaying correctly, and that was actually what was being worked on right before the hardware situation hit (more on that below). A fix is in the works. Additionally, new sub-project badges from PrimeGrid and a few other projects are being added. More details on exactly which ones once they're pushed live.  

 

Login Session Fix

  The login system has a known issue right now. Sessions aren't persisting properly, which means you're being kicked back to the login screen far too frequently. This is on the fix list and will be addressed shortly. Sorry for the annoyance in the meantime.  

 

CC_Config Generator - Almost Live

  A BOINC cc_config generator has been built and is in the final stages before going public. The tool itself is done and just needs the links pushed to the main site so the community can start using and testing it. It's had some internal testing, but real-world use will almost certainly surface things to tweak, so consider it a public beta when it launches. Feedback will be very welcome.   Once that's stable, the next step is building a companion app_config generator for individual projects.  

 

Codex - Per-Project Wiki Pages Coming Soon

  The Codex system is very nearly ready to go. This is a per-project knowledge base, think wiki, FAQ, optimization tips, configuration guides, troubleshooting, and more, for every project tracked on Free-DC. It's been in development for a while and is close to being pushed out. Stay tuned.  

 

Chart & Graph Migration (Ongoing)

  If you've looked at the host detail pages recently, you've already seen the new charting system in action. The plan is to roll this out site-wide, but given how many places charts appear across the site it's being done incrementally, one file at a time, as time allows. More pages will be converted as we go.  

 

CPU Data - More Curators Needed

  The CPU catalog is growing, but there's still a lot of ground to cover and we need more curators to help populate the data. If you're interested in helping out, reach out on Discord. On a related note, GPU data is nearly ready to be pushed out as well, so that's something to look forward to.  

 

Why Everything Is Delayed - Water Cooling Leak

  Here's the not-so-fun part of the update. The main development workstation sprung a water cooling leak earlier this week. One of the EK fittings connected to the CPU block started dripping onto the GPU backplate. Fortunately it was caught before any damage occurred, but the system has been down since.   Out of caution, all the EK fittings in the loop are being replaced rather than just the one that failed. The new fittings were ordered from Titanrig, but shipping has been slower than expected and they won't arrive until Monday the 16th. To make matters worse, there's a work trip scheduled Monday through Thursday, which means the rig won't be going back together until Friday night at the earliest.   The goal is to get everything rebuilt over the following weekend and resume work on Free-DC in earnest. Thanks for your patience. This stuff was supposed to be done last week and the timing couldn't have been worse.  

  That's the full picture for now. As always, if you have questions or want to get involved, especially as a curator, jump into the Discord. More updates as things get pushed live.

— Skillz

Hey everyone! 👋

If you've been browsing host pages on Free-DC lately, you may have noticed we're building out something new — a CPU catalog that adds images, specs, and reference links to every processor in our database. The goal is to make host pages more informative and a lot nicer to look at.

The thing is... we've got over 45,000 unique CPU model strings in the database. That's a lot of hardware to catalog, and there's no way I can do it alone. That's where you come in.

What's a Curator?

A Curator is a volunteer role on Free-DC. It gives you access to add and edit CPU information in the catalog — things like:

• A clean, top-down image of the processor
• Links to official product pages (Intel Ark, AMD Product pages, etc.)
• Links to quality reviews and benchmarks

You don't need to be an expert. If you can Google a CPU and find a good image and a couple of links, you've got what it takes.

What You Should Know

• There's no rush. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Do one CPU or twenty — every entry helps.
• Not every CPU needs an entry. Some are engineering samples, OEM one-offs, or so old that info simply doesn't exist. If you can't find anything, just skip it and move on.
• Quality matters. We want clean-looking images where the CPU fills the frame (top-down shots work best) and links to reputable sources. The admin page has built-in quick lookup links to help you find what you need fast.
• You'll have guidance. Full guidelines, image standards, and tips are posted on Discord for curators.

How to Get Involved

Getting started is easy:

1. Join our Discord — All curator coordination, guides, and announcements happen there. It's where I'll be communicating with the curator team directly.
2. Let me know you're interested — Drop a message in Discord and I'll get you set up with the Curator role.
3. Start cataloging! — Once you're set up, you'll see an [Add/Edit CPU] link on host pages. Click it, fill in the details, and save. That's it.

We already have a couple of awesome volunteers getting things rolling, and the more hands we have, the better Free-DC looks for everyone. If you're a hardware enthusiast or just want to pitch in and help the community, we'd love to have you on board.

Thanks for being part of Free-DC! 🙏

On April 5th, 2025, Bok handed over the Free-DC servers to me (Skillz) to continue operating the site independently. This marked the beginning of a new chapter for Free-DC, and I want to take a moment to recognize the incredible foundation that was built before I ever got involved.

A huge thank you to Bok for hosting Free-DC at his home for over 20 years. Think about that — two decades of keeping servers running, maintaining uptime, paying for electricity and bandwidth, and making sure the distributed computing community always had a place to track their contributions. Bok, along with Gopher and AMDave, built something truly special. The code, the infrastructure, the community — none of what exists today would be possible without their dedication. Thank you.

Now, here's what's been happening since April.

Getting Things Running (April – August 2025)

When I received the servers, the first priority was simply getting the site operational again. The codebase needed updates to work with modern PHP, scripts needed path corrections for the new environment, and the database processing pipeline had to be verified end to end. It was a lot of detective work — tracing how gatherstats, boinc_parse, and rollover scripts all fit together across two databases that alternate between serving web traffic and processing updates.

During this time I hosted everything from my home, which worked but wasn't ideal for a site serving millions of page views. Uptime depended on my home internet connection and power staying stable.

New Hardware and Datacenter Migration (November 2025)

I invested in new enterprise-grade hardware, including multiple 1.92TB NVMe U.2 drives spread across dedicated database volumes, giving each major database its own high-speed storage. The database server was packed up, shipped overnight to a professional datacenter, racked, and brought online remotely — all in under 24 hours. The site now benefits from datacenter-grade power, cooling, connectivity, and uptime that simply wasn't possible from a home setup.

Fixing and Optimizing Stats Processing

A significant amount of work went into the stats processing pipeline. Some highlights:

• Diagnosed and resolved severe performance degradation in the daily rollover process. What had ballooned to 7+ hours was traced back to MyISAM table fragmentation and brought back down to approximately 1 to 1.5 hours. Automated optimization now runs every three days to prevent this from recurring.
• Fixed numerous project-specific parsing issues — UTF-8 encoding problems from upstream BOINC servers, corrupted data recovery, duplicate milestone cleanup, and issues with individual project imports.
• Resolved PHP memory exhaustion issues on large dataset pages like Folding@Home's 2+ million user listings.
• Got the "New Apps" stats working again after directory structure changes broke the processing scripts.
• Updated the codebase for PHP 7.3 compatibility across the board.

New Features Added

Beyond keeping the lights on, I've been building new things to make the site more useful:

• User Authentication System — A brand new standalone login and registration system, replacing the old forum-based authentication. Secure PHP sessions with bcrypt password hashing and hCaptcha spam protection.
• Live Chat — A chat page integrated with our Discord server, so messages flow both ways. Logged-in users get their username automatically and skip the captcha.
• News System — You're reading it! A dedicated news page at free-dc.org with an admin panel for publishing updates to the community.
• News Ticker — A scrolling ticker on the stats site showing announcements, upcoming events, and community callouts.
• Project Status Monitoring — Real-time Grafana dashboards embedded directly into project pages showing task throughput, server health, work unit status, and historical trends. Data is collected every minute from each project's server status feed.
• CPU Catalog — A community-driven database of CPU images and specifications that appear on host pages. Includes a curator role system so trusted community members can contribute without needing full admin access.
• About Us and Privacy Policy Pages — Proper informational pages explaining what Free-DC is, our history, and how we handle user data.
• Updated Site Pages — Refreshed the About page with current information, added proper navigation, and ensured visual consistency across the site.

Infrastructure Improvements

Behind the scenes, the infrastructure has been significantly hardened:

• Comprehensive backup systems on dedicated NVMe storage.
• Automated table optimization to prevent performance degradation.
• Server monitoring and alerting through Grafana and Netdata.
• CSF firewall and ModSecurity for security hardening.
• Let's Encrypt SSL certificates across all subdomains.
• Dual-database architecture maintained and documented for continuity.

What's Coming Next

There's still a lot I want to do. Here's what's on the horizon:

• Systems Status Page — A public-facing dashboard at status.free-dc.org showing database health, processing status, disk usage, and overall system state so the community always knows what's going on.
• Chart Migration — Moving from ChartDirector to Apache ECharts for open-source, interactive charts that work better on modern browsers.
• Enhanced Event Integration — The news ticker will eventually pull from a database with countdown timers for BOINCGames sprints, BOINC community events and project milestones.
• Banner System — Community event advertisements in the header area to help promote BOINC events such as SETI.Germany's Pentathlon and other participating events within' the DC Community.
• Donation Transparency — A detailed page showing all incoming donations and outgoing expenses so everyone can see exactly where the money goes.
• Continued Optimization — Always looking for ways to make the site faster, more reliable, and more useful.

This has been an incredible amount of work, and I'm proud of how far things have come in less than a year. But Free-DC has always been a community effort, and it still is. If you want to help out — whether it's curating CPUs, reporting bugs, suggesting features, or just spreading the word — come find us on Discord.

Here's to the next 20 years.

— Skillz

This is a test post to check that everything is working as intended.

Some links do not work. They're just place holders. Will get to them soon.

The formatting still isn't perfect. It will be updated/tweaked over time to match the stats site more closely.

-Skillz