Some of you have questions on why RioBot Jr and RioBot haven't been online all the time. I'm not here to deliver grave news, but, at the same time, not the sweetest news either. Many of you may know that making and running an online Lichess Bot is a very complex task. Me, not being fully immersed into the coding world, is not capable of this. Sure, I was able to make the bots, and they're not having much trouble performing, but having them online 24/7 is a different story. My inexperience isn't the only thing holding me back. I'm also not able to afford the plans that would keep the bot up 24/7. You see, both of these bots are hosted on developer servers on Replit. These, unlike deployment servers, aren't able to consistently stay up all the time and eventually shut down after a period of time. So, I came up with the method of pinging these servers by adding a web endpoint and using Uptimerobot.com. However, this has yet to work, and I'm going to need to find a different approach to handle this problem. For now, the only times both bots will be up are for short development periods each month - Replit also has restrictions on how much time free users can run their programs. If you want any updates, feel free to join my team, Rio Grande River Association [lichess.org/team/rio-grande-river-association] for any updates or announcements on the situation.
