Oh hey everyone. It's me, the person who wrote most of the code in the Portal.

Now I always knew there would be some conflicting emotions tied to the Portal. After all, this is a vibrant community with some very dedicated people that sacrifice their own free time to actually contribute back to the community and help it grow and thrive.

Anyone who's in a locker room with me probably knows that I'm an 'old head'.. maybe not in SHL terms, but in life terms. Being an old head, however, doesn't mean that you should ever grow complacent with what's considered the 'norm'. You should always be open to things that can help make your life (or the lives of others) better, easier or more productive.

When I joined the SHL just over a year ago, I nearly didn't finish my Create a Player post when I realized it was all forum based. I did forum based things, sim leagues, etc... 25+ years ago. What I quickly realized is that there was an opportunity for me to give back to this community, to help it advance in some way. Within a few days I had created a simple app for creating and storing builds, and to spit out the TPE changes in a way that I could copy/paste them into my post. I shared some of this in the Rookie Discord and was quickly recruited to help create an 'Update Portal'.

I could have easily said no thanks.. after all, I figured out something that worked for me. But I knew that there was an opportunity to help grow the community by simplifying the Create and Update process. Once I pressed @luke and @DrunkenTeddy for more details about what the actual end-product should be, I was finally able to dig in and work towards delivering the Portal that you all have access to today (and lots of conversations about what's next).

I guess the point that this old head is trying to get to, is it's important that we always work to make the communities that we're a part of BETTER in some way. Like I said, there are a lot of people who have dedicated a lot of their time to make each different part of this community work. The power each of us has is to determine what we're going to do when we see that opportunity. I spent hundreds of hours creating the Portal, and I definitely feel that it will achieve what I wanted it to from the start: Increase the amount of new creates, and increase retention.

I encourage all of you, if you see something that could be improved in our community, just figure out how to give back and go do it. On top of that, be kind to those that are already dedicating THEIR time to do extra work to help make our community better.