ONSIM v4.0 Dashboard Launch

We are thrilled to announce a significant upgrade to our ONSIM dashboard! We have successfully migrated from PHP to Next.js hosted on AWS Amplify - essentially a full re-write!

This change aims to enhance the performance, user experience, and feature release schedule of our platform.

We have to admit that the limited functionality on offer through the V3 dashboard didn’t reflect the capabilities of ONSIM as a platform and our ultimate aim here is to deliver all the advanced mobile features of our network as user customisable options.

Moving Away from PHP

Our original dashboard began development years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth and PHP and dedicated servers were the default choices for building web applications. Over the years watching the JavaScript ecosystem get all the love and attention has been painful. We are now in a state where PHP lacks features provided by almost all full-stack JavaScript frameworks - resulting in a development process that hinders our release schedule and results in user features that lack the desired polish. Pair that with the complexities of managing dedicated servers, and we also have to worry about performance bottlenecks during peak traffic periods.

Why Next.js?

Next.js is a tightly coupled client-server framework that allows us to build rich, interactive user experiences while benefiting from the speed and security of server-side rendering.

1. React: A dashboard by it’s very definition is an interactive information management tool, so having a powerful client-side framework like React will allow us to build local-first, performant and interactive tools. The holy trifecta!
2. Performance: Next.js also brings server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG), which significantly reduces time to First Contentful Paint. Most things do not need Browser APIs nor are inherently reactive! Faster load times mean happier users.
3. Developer Experience: With features like automatic code splitting, handled routing, and a rich ecosystem, Next.js streamlines the development process. This enables our developers to focus on what matters: features.

Why AWS Amplify?

“Serverless” is a buzzword that has been thrown around lately, but what does it mean? To us, it provides us the ability to scale down to 0, and up to 100 without having to worry about the headaches of provisioning infrastructure or developing internal tooling. For our sector in the market, we firmly believe that things should be designed in a serverless way first—and Amplify allows us to achieve all of this. Observability, scalability, integration, and security are headaches no more.

By moving to Next.js and AWS Amplify, we are investing in a more robust, efficient, and future-proof platform that will provide you, our users, with an exceptional experience. We are excited about this transition and look forward to leveraging these new technologies to bring you even better features and performance.

V3 Deprecation

The existing v3 dashboard is still live here (https://my.onsim.uk) and will remain accessible at that link for at least 1 month following the V4 release, but the intention is to remove this service at this time and redirect traffic to the new app (https://app.onsim.uk)

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for supporting us, thanks to our internal teams for all their hard work and please do let us know what you think of the new dashboard by emailing support@onsim.uk.