We launched the old website at the start of 2023 and it has served us well, however I started working on the website when I was relatively new to Laravel, so as a result it accrued a lot of technical debt as the feature set grew. We were still writing Javascript by hand for almost everything, and we were still using outdated libraries like jQuery.

Another limitation was our choice of UI framework; Bootstrap. While good for simple projects and admin interfaces, it does not scale well, especially if you want to change the design of some of the components.

So before the meetup this year I set out to do a complete design overhaul.

We also shifted to using the latest web technologies. Using TailwindCSS 4.0 for styling and AlpineJS for Javascript related things, it really increased the speed of development which is why I was able to do a complete re-write in 4 months.

I wanted to create a website that Lambda deserved, and I now feel like we have that.

Below I will cover some of the major changes that come along with the new website.

We've redefined how you discover and find Lambda Servers.

Instead of picking a server, you first pick the game you wish to play. Clicking on a game will reveal a list of servers you can choose to play on.

We've done this for a few reasons:

• In the near future we plan to increase our presence in other continents, including North America, Asia and Oceania, and as a result there will be multiple servers running the same gamemode.
• It provides a quick and easy way to play the gamemodes you want to play

In addition, you can now find Servers, Games, Daily Missions and Leaderboards all in one place.

Premium and Lite users can also customise the card style for each game mode.

We plan to open this to content creators in the near future.

Premium is back!

We now have two tiers of Premium:

• Premium
• Lite

Premium is the same as before, but we've changed how it works with addons.

After you've purchased a Premium subscription you can then purchase various addons.

Unlike with the old Premium system; Addons are now lifetime, regardless of your chosen billing period, however you are only able to use addons while your subscription remains active.

If you cancel your subscription and then come back, you will keep any addons you previously purchased.

We've introduced Lite as a minimal, no fuss tier allowing some customisation and an in-game tag.

Previously, you could only use balance in your Lambda Wallet for in-game purchases and for CS2 Pick 'Em events.

Today the wallet is useable everywhere. This includes:

• In game store purchases
• Pick 'Em Tickets & Store purchases
• Community Market
• Lambda Store

A big part of the website redesign was to unify as many things as possible, one of those things were comments.

Previously we had 5 different comment systems for 5 different features.

We now have a single, unified comment system that works across different features.

One of the features I really wanted to add when bringing the website in to the modern era, was a reactions system, similar to how it works on Discord.

Reactions are available on comments, in addition reactions are available on Issues, news posts and much more.

Go ahead, try it! You can react to this news post section!

With this updated, we replaced the old "Reports" system with a brand new Support Tickets system

Premium users get priority support (Response within 2 hours compared to regular users with a 24-48 hour response time)

The new system is extensible and we will be integrating some in-game functionality such as player reports to use the new support ticket system.

While what we've delivered today is already a massive update, we're not done there.

There's still quite a few things left which we're going to deliver over the next few weeks and months.

• Bringing LambdaNet in to the new website

LambdaNet was always a "seperate" page as we decided to use the technology powering this new website, as such it had to be a seperate page. We plan to integrate this in to the new website with a complete friends and chat system.

• Bringing Pick 'Ems in to the new website

For similar reasons as with LambdaNet, we created the Pick 'Em feature using the new technology we're using right now, so we plan to migrate this in to the new website to create a unified experience

• Game Filtering (Tenancy)

We plan to add a global, unified game selector which reflects what's shown. For example, the "Play" page will show a different set of game modes and servers if CS2 was the active tenant, this would also filter down other aspects such as Community Market, Inventories, Workshop and more.

Have an explore around and let us know what you think.

If you come across any issues, please let us know via the Issue Tracker