Well, it’s been a while since I blogged. This is probably down to the fact I’ve been so damned busy the past few weeks.
We released EM2. Server load has been tiny, there’s even free RAM kicking about. All the sites on the box are now running nginx/Passenger instead of Apache/Passenger, which seems to be working well. nginx is crazy fast at static assets. Everything has worked nearly flawlessly- of course, still the odd bug here and there we didn’t spot but compared to EM1, it’s nearly perfect.
Work continues, of course. We’ve been furiously hammering away to improve things performance-wise now we’ve got some real data and real users. New graphs and statistics have been slowly surfacing after rigorous testing, and we’re now polishing off a few of the remaining feature requests before we move onto our own list for what we’re dubbing 2.1. As with all our releases, it has a name: ‘What are the civilian applications?’ (2.0 was ‘Irregular Apocalypse’. My version/ship names are borrowed from or themes upon the ship names in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, mostly).
2.1 is all about pulling the huge repository of information (approximately 500,000 orders are active at any one time in EM2) together with your own information as a market user to provide a foundation for more useful tools. That means API integration (with my usual ultraparanoid attitude to API keys- it’ll be very secure and feature some pretty good granular control over what is loaded), plus tools to make use of your data. We’ve got a lot of tools in the works, plus we’ve got some partnerships with other sites coming up soon. Still, more on that later- for now, I’ve finished deploying the brand new CSV export feature to EVE Metrics, complete with documentation.
One other thing we’re looking at is crediting users for uploads more intelligently. We’re still trying to settle on a formula for the rewards, but we’re getting close now, and that’ll be out soon. More info in another blog post.
2.1 will also be the first release to bring user tiers into EVE Metrics. Our first uploader-only feature went out last week, the fantastic punchcard graph, which lets you spot good deals at large volumes quickly and easily, amongst other things. Uploaders will be getting some other tools, plus a fairly chunky discount on any of the paid tiers, as a thank-you for uploading data.
To wrap things up, a huge thank-you to everyone who has assisted with the site, be it uploading data or submitting feature requests/bug reports. We wouldn’t be spending all our spare time making these things without the people to use them and we couldn’t manage it without some help. Thanks!
Loving the site, I’m making use of it for an application I have written, and find your API easy to use. Thanks.
I was wondering when you are going to start promoting the site on the eve-online forums? The more people you can get to start uploading data, the more accurate it will be.
Also, I love the culture naming schemes… some of my favourite books those. GCU Just Testing.