The time has finally come...

The new WxNotify is here. :)

It's been many months (probably close to a year truthfully) in the making, but the new WxNotify has finally dropped. I'm super excited and proud to finally release to the public the many hours of work that I have put into this service. So far, I've received very positive feedback from those that I asked to graciously help me test things out.

There were many, many changes with this new version. Aside from a new landing page at www.wxnotify.com, the biggest improvement in my opinion was the complete overhaul of the application infrastructure. From the Cloud hosting perspective, I decided to move everything to Hetzner. I had been using Digital Ocean, but found that DO just can't compete with the prices and quality of servers that Hetzner offers. Architecture-wise, I moved everything to a 3-tier system, including a "product downloader" server, which takes care of receiving weather data from the NWS, an "alert engine" server that handles the decision-making around sending notifications, and finally the "front-end" server, which hosts the user alert dashboard. It uses the wonderful Filament PHP framework.

If I have to ramp things up in the future due to user-demand, this new architecture will be much easier to scale. The core software running on each server uses the latest version of the awesome Laravel PHP framework. I was fortunate to attend Laracon US this year in Denver, which hosted many insightful talks on the framework and many other interesting topics. I also met the creators of Native PHP, which I will soon be using to create mobile apps for WxNotify!

Users will notice that I will soon be offering paid tiers of the service. This was not a decision made lightly. I have always said from the beginning that having WxNotify was never about making money, and because of that, the service has always remained free. I want to make something perfectly clear, there will always be a free version of the service. I would honestly rather discontinue the service altogether than to force everyone to pay. The main reasoning behind the paid tiers is this: the use of some features that I will be offering (such as the mobile apps) require annual software licenses, and simply put, I would like to cover these costs. The hosting costs won't be changing that much, but I would of course love to cover that as well if possible. It's always been my mission to warn my users of severe weather, and that will always remain my first priority. How I've decided to structure the paid tiers is based on what users have told me they wouldn't mind paying for. I've never had a product or service that I've charged for, so I will likely be adjusting things as time goes on. I just please ask that you bear with me while I figure things out.

With all the changes, and all the little details that make up this service, there are likely bugs or things that I missed. If you encounter something that's broken or doesn't make sense, or even have suggestions for improvements, I encourage you to please reach out by using the form on the landing page, or by using the Support Center once signed in.

To wrap up, I want to make sure I thank all my users! Simply put, without them, WxNotify wouldn't be a thing. I hope everyone enjoys the new service and finds it to be more intuitive, dependable, and performant!

Thank you!

Jim Buitt
WxNotify Administrator