Workblog


Lost In Space Hosting

April 23rd, 2008

I’ve mentioned it before, but I have to give huge thanks to Josh at Lost In Space Hosting. Whenever we run into issues, he’s right there to help us out and get everything squared away. If you’ve seen the major speed improvements in the last month, you know who is responsible. I recommend their services to anyone looking for a web host :)

Chris

Fundraising Complete!

January 14th, 2008

Thanks to a sudden flurry of donations this past weekend, the fundraising drive has finished! Thank you SO much to everyone who donated to the site, it will always be greatly appreciated. I’ve placed the order for a new laptop and it couldn’t come at a better time - my current machine is about to die any day now. Again, thank you to everyone who contributed!

Fundraising Update

November 23rd, 2007

First off, I hope all of our American users had a happy Thanksgiving!

Second, an update to the fundraising efforts - after just two weeks, we’ve already raised 53% of our goal! This is fantastic! I really appreciate everyone’s help! If we can keep this rate up, the begging can stop and I can get back to adding more great stuff :)

Third, as an added bonus for our wonderful donors, I will be killing the “ComicBookDB.com Needs Your Help!” banner if you have donated. You don’t need to see that anymore ;)

Fourth, we’ve got some fairly significant additions to the site coming in soon, possibly as soon as this weekend. So keep any eye on the forums for more news!

Chris

Happy Birthday To Us (#2)

September 13th, 2007

Our second birthday passed by and I didn’t even notice it! Happy (belated) birthday to us :) Where to go in year three? We passed 100,000 indexed issues in under two years, moved to our own server, added a ton of features - where can we go from here?

A breakdown of issues by publisher in the database:

Marvel: 27997
DC: 27469
Image: 5819
Dark Horse: 4954
Other: 37315

This includes variants, TPBs, hardcovers, manga, everything. Most of the modern mainstream stuff is in the site. We have a lot of silver age stuff and some golden age books as well. My guess is that our strongest area for growth is in indy books (despite them being our largest category), non-US books and older mainstream books.

What do you think? Where can we grow? What would you like to see done for year three?

100,000 Issues

August 8th, 2007

House of Mystery (1951) #145, you are our big winner as the 100,000th issue contributed to the site!

Fantastic work, thanks everyone!

Some new fun

July 4th, 2007

If you haven’t already, check out this thread in the forums.

Skyhawke has come up with a fantastic idea to greatly improve the database and we’re giving it a test run for the month of July. I really hope everyone gets into this because it could really make the site special :)

As always, if there are any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Chris

Dedicated Server

May 9th, 2007

Well, we made the switch to the dedicated server last night and if you are seeing this, you’re seeing the new machine.

Reactions? Comments? Problems that have come up from the switch?

All feedback is welcome :)

Chris

(Another) Server Switch

May 1st, 2007

As most of you are aware, our host moved to a new data center and so we switched servers. It turns out that even though we moved to better machines, we’re just getting too big to reside on a shared server with other websites.

So, I’m very happy to announce that in the next few days we will be moving to our very own dedicated server which will be all ours!

What does this mean for us?

1. Of most importance, it means that no one else will be using the server other than us. All processing and bandwidth for the machine will be strictly ours, which should have the immediate result of making the site a bit faster.

2. We get to decide what software gets installed on the machine. This means that we are no longer restricted to using outdated versions of PHP and MySQL and can take advantage of improvements in each. These improvements will gradually be worked into the site as time goes on, enhancing the performance and functionality of the site.

3. There are a lot of new features that I want to add to the site that I didn’t always consider possible due to the limitations of our being on a shared server. No more :)

So, after the annoyance of one more server switch (during which we’ll lock down the site like last time to make sure no one accidentally makes changes to the old site), we’re going to be up and running on our very own machine :)

As always, any questions are always welcome :)

Chris

Server Switch

April 3rd, 2007

As mentioned a few weeks ago, our host is switching data centers. It looks like tonight is the night. During the time that the site is being copied over (starting at roughly 10pm EST), the site will be down so that we can capture all data. The site will remain down on the old server but will be up and running on the new one. Thus you will know quite easily if your ISP is recognizing our new location. If you are still seeing the old site, it’s merely a matter of waiting for your ISP to update its records and you will then see the new site on our faster hardware.

As always, any questions can go to me.

Chris

Upcoming Server Switch

February 5th, 2007

Our host is moving to a new data center within the week which will result in a server change for us. For a short time, you may see the old server rather than the new one. I’ll make sure it’s obvious which you’re seeing so you know where you’re at.

In the end we’ll be on a faster machine which is definitely good! When I know more about when the this will occur, I will update the blog.