Galleywinter: The Little App You Didn't Know You Needed

A lot has changed in the twenty years since Hogleg's "Tore Up From The Floor Up" was rebranded to "Galleywinter." We've been through multiple renovations of this website, with two of them having occurred since I joined the team back in 2017. The bones have always been good, but occasionally we've needed a facelift to keep things fresh. Our last reimagining came about two years ago, when "Tank" Hargrave's began pinging me about rehosting the website. You see, for years the site had been hosted on some server tucked in a closet at his house. Photos and various web debris from the past were littered everywhere, filling up his hard drive to the point that occasionally the entire server would crash because we ran out of drive space. We'd go back and forth, figuring out the good stuff from the old stuff, free up some space, then fire her back up. We would frequently have to "jiggle the handle" as Tank liked to put it, to keep things up and running.

In the midst of finding a new home for Galleywinter, Brad and I brainstormed on how we could usher in a renaissance with the website. In its heyday, when people liked websites and "websurfing" was the hobby of the Gen X crowd that made up our core readership, we had a bustling, interactive community of folks who would post on our much-storied forums. Meetups and parties were had, "Slappyville" was a thing, Ragweed, Pat and Cory were all the rage.

Then the world changed in 2007, when Apple release the first iPhone. Over the last decade we've transitioned, and rather than accessing the internet mostly from a computer, we now go straight to our phones. Websites and blogs are still around, but admittedly they are less en vogue. Apps have taken over our lives, and so began the process of reimagining Galleywinter as an app.

One of the criteria we had when finding a new hosting company was the ability to package our website as a mobile app. We settled on one of the more popular platforms you've probably seen ads for and moved everything over. All was good, but our expenses to keep Galleywinter going went up. Tank's little server was free, but modern web hosting companies with the latest whizzbang features were not. At first the expenses were modest enough to cover, but to bring a Galleywinter app to life required 'iPhone money." as Dez Bryant once said.

So in 2024 we set off to find good folks who could help us fund the Galleywinter app. Those of you in the Galleywinter family know Scott Webre and his late wife Shelby. They have been lifers. Not only has Scott allowed us to host our listening room events at his venue, The County Line, out in West, but he and his venue are now official sponsors of Galleywinter.

We also want to give a huge hat tip to our other premiere sponsor, The Happy Cow Bar and Grill in New Braunfels. Owner John Perry reached out to us about running ads on our website. The timing was serendipitous, and his contribution was the final piece that allowed us to pull the trigger.

So today we can now unveil the Galleywinter app for Apple devices!

Go to the App Store now and download it. It's free. On it is all of our writings, links to socials, the merch store, you can even get notifications from us. And yes, THE FORUMS ARE BACK. Create your account and join The Posse. Get on there, tell us who you are seeing, post pictures, GIFs, whatever. Let's bring everyone out of the woodwork. For those of you at Mile 0 Fest, use our app to schedule meetups. Let's go!

This is only phase one. We have additional plans. I hope we can make them a reality. With feedback, time, and a little money, Galleywinter will continue to live on.

We're still here and we plan to be here indefinitely.

For you Android folks? We are still working on it. We need somebody that has access to an Android phone to be our guinea pig. Reach out to me and let me know if you can help. I'm on the app :)