Buy on Amazon ~ 0140288988Article of interest
UPDATE: The upgrade completed at 7:30am. This was a little later than we had hoped but the upgrade went without any mojor issues and everything is back up and running.
We will be offline from about 8pm Pacific time on 10/5/2012 and expect to be back online by 6am on 10/6/2012.
There has been a lot of back end work done to make the database more robust and easier for company owners to use. These changes are substantial to both the database layout and the web interface.
To get all the changes in place we need to start by upgrading the database. This process alone takes several hours. While the database is being upgraded, we will move all of the web page files into place. This only takes a short time.
The site will come back online automatically as soon as the database finishes the automated upgrade sequence. Much of the data will be reformatted and that is what takes the builk of the time for this process.
Most users won't see any major change. The company block under each product will look a little different. Company owners and people using our site for automation will see drastic changes.
Things will load faster. Updating company information will be easier. Linking from a company to their products will be easier. Validating changes to company entries will be easier. In short, managing and accessing the data will be a lot easier.
It would be nice if this process could happen without taking the site down but that just wouldn't work. So we are doing it during the slowest usage time.
We put an alert link in the menu bar. Did you see this alert? Was it helpful? We will probably improve that alert process in the future as well.