The site is currently undergoing database maintenance and may be unavailable for brief periods while we worked on our database this week.
Brand New site!
Posted November 4th, 2012
The database was created almost two years ago, and today we've topped 1.6 million codes! When the site was in it's early stages, I didn't put that much effort into database optimization or site performance. As a result, the site gradually began to get slower and slower as more data was added to the database. Now, a random lookup takes over 5 seconds, a normal search takes over 3 seconds, and a simple pull request from the database takes over 300 milliseconds. While this doesn't seem like a particularly long time, it is noticeable while navigating the site and looking up codes.
For the past week, I've been rebuilding the site from the ground up. I've kept the basic layout the same, but the search function, the CSS, the images, and the database structure itself underwent major optimizations.
Here's a few things that are different:
- The site now uses the Spacelab Bootswatch for the major CSS styles.
- The database has been optimized to improve search and lookup capabilities.
- The site's width has been reduced from 1000px to 900px.
- The QR code generator's script has been optimized, and you can now create an image right from your browser.
- The Check Digit Calculator is much more efficient, and it now handles UPC-A, UPC-E, and EAN at the same time.
- The database will soon be subjected to a test of validity. Products will be flagged with a 'valid' flag if certain criteria are met.
- The QR Code wallpaper page has been converted into a QR Inspirational Quotes page.
- The ".php" extension on all of the pages have been removed. This looks much better.
- The product page layout has been significantly changed. The image is now on the left and the barcode looks much better.
Coming soon:
- A new API.
- A new moderator control page.
Let's keep it going!
-admin
Hot new updates!
Posted January 7th, 2012
We've been pretty busy this past week creating new things for the site! We created a more elegant-looking product page table layout, replacing the pastel colors we had before with a new blue/grey color scheme. The voting bars on the product pages were also buggy, so we recoded them from scratch too.
In order to accommodate these changes, the entire cache had to be purged.
We also fixed a number of bugs around the site, a list of which can be found in the changelog. Most of the changes were code optimizations, so while you won't notice much visually, the site is running much more smoothly
Since we moved to our new VPS over Christmas, we noticed that the server load would go up and down each day, so we added a sine wave to the server load graph and modified it to match the load!
We had a banner up on the site for the past week, but in case anyone missed it, we hit one million codes on December 31st!
Thanks,
-admin
New Moderator Panel
Posted December 30th, 2011
We are pleased to announce our brand-new moderating system!
Instead of displaying the moderator panel below the item on the lookup page, the moderator panel now has it's own page.
From here, you can edit all of the item details. You can even select an image for the item just by clicking on one of the relevant images provided.
A call for moderators!
We've been running a poll for the past few weeks asking you if you would be willing to moderate the site, and quite a number of you said yes. We are indeed looking for moderators, so if you truly want to help out, just e-mail us with a short message telling us why you would like to moderate and your username, and you'll be making edits in no time!
Thanks,
-admin
Small Outage
Posted December 29th, 2011
I want to inform and apologize to everyone for the small outage that we experienced in the past 24 hours. There was a small problem with our new VPS server and as a result, we had to migrate over to another server. This migration did not go as smoothly as we had liked.
Anyway, everything back up and running. The site now has more resources at it's disposal, meaning everything should be as fast as ever.
Thanks,
-admin
New Server!
Posted December 25th, 2011
Happy holidays everyone! I am pleased to announce the UPC Database has moved to a brand new VPS server. This will allow us to significantly expand our services and the codes we can deliver.
The site was moved over last night, so please let us know in the comments or via e-mail if you experience any problems with the site.
Happy holidays to all,
--admin