Halo2.Junk.ws is the largest aggregator of Halo 2 statistics. Over the course of the almost three years it was open, over 30 million games were collected for over 65,000 registered members.
Halo3.Junk.ws is the next-generation Halo statistics website that features similar features to those of Halo2.Junk.ws, along with significant new features and performance upgrades. Development began in late 2006 and the site was released to a limited public beta on October 12, 2007.
Halo3.Junk.ws is managed by a team of five administrators: oi1, Indutiomarus, Excardon, xATHENAx, and M0NKEYNUTZ.
Halo3.Junk.ws utilizes over 80,000 lines of custom-built software designed for the highest possible performance.
Halo3.Junk.ws runs on a pair of servers:
In addition, we have two archive database servers for processing statistics queries:
All of the servers run CentOS 4.5 or 5.0, a freely distributed enterprise Linux distribution. The website is served using Apache 2.0.46 and the database is managed and replicated using MySQL 5.0. Most, if not all, of our code is written in PHP. To enhance performance, memcached is used as an intermediary to the database.
We wouldn't be here without the support of a lot of people; these are a few people and organizations that have helped us:
Bungie Studios: Almost all of the data featured on this site including all of the statistical and player information is graciously provided by Bungie.net. Many of the images used here--including emblems, player models, screenshots, medals, and weapons--are owned by Bungie. We appreciate Bungie's continued support of their fan community. If they didn't provide the awesome statistics for Halo 3 that they do, this site wouldn't exist.
Microsoft Xbox Live: Microsoft provides us access to gamer presence and profile information, much of which is used on Halo3.Junk.ws, especially in the signatures.
JpGraph: Aditus Consulting has released a free version of JpGraph which we use for creating graphs in real-time for the statistics pages.
Justin Vincent: Justin develops a set of database abstraction classes that greatly simplify our work. Most--if not all--of this site is based around the ezSQL class he released.
The idea of creating a stat collecting website was conceived one night late in 2004 by our founder and head Administrator, Brandon (oil). He was viewing the stats offered by Bungie.net shortly after Halo2 was released and realized that Bungie didn't give aggregates. He knew that he could do it himself with the RSS feed they offered. After writing a program that did exactly what he wanted it to do, he felt like sharing it with his friends. He didn't realize it at the time but he had just created Halo2.Junk.ws that someday would swell to over 65,000 members. The creation of Junk was simply so he could add up his stats and compute aggregates for himself and his friends. His project, that started out as a hobby in his free time, worked like a charm so he decided that he should share this new ability to compute aggregates with as many people as he could but he still needed more people than just his friends to test it. Brandon already owned a domain that he named (for lack of a better name) "Junk.ws" as a place to put the Junk that he would create so he was ready to share his project with others. He posted in various forums asking for Beta testers. People like DRT117 and Psybertech responded and became some of the first members and Beta testers for a more public version of his project. DRT117 brought some friends from his Clan and Psybertech brought in his fellow Clan mates (The Senior Citizens, made up of older gamers like BarryW, M0NKEYNUTZ, Phlux124, WildGzsr, Hammer, etc.). After a short Beta test in the spring of 2005, memberships were opened to the public and Halo2.Junk.ws was born.
Not long after, Indutiomarus joined the site and was instantly recognized for his ability (and his God-like spelling and grammar abilities) to contribute to the website and was made an Adminstrator. He was brilliant with database optimizations and that was exactly what oil needed. His first task as an Administrator was to redo and optimize H2J's database. H2J wouldn't have made it as far as it did without his changes.
As the site began to grow by leaps and bounds, oil determined that he still needed help with the Administration of the site so he enlisted help from a trusted friend, Excardon. Still the site continued to grow so a fourth Administrator was added, xATHENAx, (Excardon's wife) to help with operations and new memberships The site was still growing beyond expectations and possibly could have made a nice profit by charging membership fees but Brandon is a very unselfish man and continued to insist on free memberships and a site that was totally ad free unlike many of the other Halo stat sites. He even offered the use of free, custom forum signatures for members to display their stats on different forums. The fifth and final Administrator, M0NKEYNUTZ, was added to police the forums and to help with daily operations as new members continued to flood the site. The site changed considerably over the years but still remained true to his original vision by offering free memberships while remaining ad free. Halo2.Junk.ws was the largest aggregator of Halo 2 statistics. Over the course of the almost three years it was open, over 30 million games were collected for over 65,000 registered members.
With the release of Halo3, a completely new website was created. Halo3.junk utilizes over 80,000 lines of custom-built software designed for the highest possible performance. Halo3.Junk.ws is the next-generation Halo statistics website that features similar features to those of Halo2.Junk.ws, along with significant new features and performance upgrades. Development began in late 2006 and the site was released to a limited public beta on October 12, 2007 and to the general public on November 11, 2007.