I’m a software developer based near Cambridge. I’ve been building and running software since 2011, when I co-founded a game-server hosting company while I was still at school. It grew to more than 3,000 servers.
Since then I’ve shipped mobile apps, public APIs and data tools, and I’m currently building two AI products of my own. This site covers my own projects. If you’d like my CV, email me.
Projects
Minecraft Panel & GCPanel
Co-founder, 2011 to 2019
In 2011 Minecraft hosting was taking off, but every host was stuck using the same few control panels, and they were frustrating to use. I thought the industry needed something much better, so I built one from scratch for the hosting company I’d co-founded: a PHP front end over a C# monitoring backend, running on Linux through Mono.
Minecraft Panel 2, from 2017. The file manager, with live server status and controls in the sidebar. Click for the full screenshot.
Usage grew ten-fold in six months, so I reworked the backend to spread the load across machines. At its peak the panel ran more than 3,000 game servers on over 70 dedicated machines around the world. Company turnover went from $6.5k in 2011 to $150k in 2012 and $320k in 2013, and has since passed $1.5m.
There were only four of us, so as well as writing the code I decided what we built next, planned the infrastructure and handled customer support. In 2017 I rebuilt the backend in Node.js as version 2, with a REST API, a live console over WebSockets and two-factor authentication, and rolled it out gradually, one node at a time.
Built with PHP, C# on Mono, and later Node.js, Express, WebSockets and Redis, all on Linux.
RL Stat Tracker
iOS and Android app
An app for Rocket League players to look up their skill ratings and stats on their phone. When I built it, only a few apps could do that.
Player overview, skill leaderboard and stat leaderboards.
It ran on Psyonix’s official API, which I had access to during its closed beta. I built it once for both iOS and Android using Ionic and AngularJS.
In the works
AI Alt Text. A SaaS and Shopify app that uses AI to write image alt text for online shops, so product images work with screen readers and show up in search. Built, not yet launched.
Personalised books. A platform for creating and customising a long, hyper-personalised book with the help of AI. Built, not yet launched.
Other things I’ve built
Rocket League Status & API. A status service that cross-checked several sources before calling an outage and posted updates to Twitter automatically. When community developers asked for the data for their Discord bots, I added a public API.
RLCS Stats. Esports statistics that no other site recorded, such as possession, demolitions and passing plays, worked out from raw match replay files.
BestMCHosts. A review site for Minecraft hosting companies, with dashboards for hosts to manage their listings and reply to reviews.
About
Most of what’s on this page started the same way: something annoyed me and I couldn’t leave it alone. Every Minecraft host was stuck with the same frustrating control panels, so I built a better one. Nobody could tell whether Rocket League’s servers were down or it was just them, so I built a status page. I was about fifteen when that habit started, and it hasn’t worn off.
I picked up a first in Media and Internet Technology from Anglia Ruskin along the way, but I learned more from running something thousands of people relied on, and from answering the support tickets myself.
These days I’m a software developer by day, and in my own time I’m building two AI products. What I enjoy most is explaining things. I like helping people look at a problem from a different angle, and it’s a good day when someone goes away, thinks it over and comes back seeing it differently.
Contact
Email is the best way to reach me: hello@jakecrooks.com. CV available on request.
