It used to be I could just add a line in my whitelist.json in the oxide/data directory but now it only seems to use the oxide.grant method. Also it now oxide/data/whitelist.json seems irrelevant or does nothing. Should I delete that file now?

I think many plugins have changed the way things work since I started this server in 2015. I probably should wipe everything out and reinstall oxide and put things like my guishop.json since I manually entered all items and it's 4696 lines. Also if I did I woud have to redo all the permissions for everything. 

It has been using permissions only for quite a few years, but I'll likely be adding support for a file again when I get around to overhauling it.

A fresh start would probably be best though.