It’s been a whirlwind few weeks! I’ve been juggling one of my busiest photography periods and building the next evolution of Usedlens, so I sincerely apologise for any recent downtime. Much of this has stemmed from running a heavy data processing site on a shared server webhost – but that’s about to change too!

Let’s dive right in with a teaser

One obvious change here is the suggestion box, I’m working hard to make it more of a help than an hindrance.

I’ve built the new site from the ground up with scalability and performance in mind, as well as making the data import more robust. Gone are monolithic import scripts that would break the site import if interrupted.

A huge step forward will be a move to a AWS Lightsail host server. I will need to configure it manually but it will provide much better hardware performance for the site, no more websites competing for the same resources.

Whilst the original Usedlens may get migrated and enjoy the performance of the new server for a time, the successor will take it’s place with a new domain name and eventually all traffic will go there instead.

I have streamlined the development process, and created a framework to make it easier to work with. This means I’ll look forward to reviewing your feature requests and implementing those that I feel fit within my design philosophy.

I’m eager to hear what you think! If you’d like an early access preview of the new site, drop a comment below, and I’ll grant you access as soon as I have a version I’m truly happy to share. By then, it should be even more advanced and complete than Usedlens, and your feedback will be invaluable in refining the search engine to be even better.

On top of everything, I’ve still found time for a bit of personal photography amongst the professional. If you want to keep up with all my photography, follow on instagram