myLensDB.com» Project Development

Explore Lenses! and Explore Camera Bodies! improved

Hugo — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:41:51 +0000

We are delighted to announce that Explore Lenses! and Explore Camera Bodies! both received a face-lift today.

How we came to this today is because of the limited number of items that we can show in one page, as each of the item is taking up too much of space making browsing a pain in the ass. We want to be able to browse through as much items as possible, with as little effort as possible.

Thus, we moved on, tried to reduce some blank spaces in between here and there.

Reducing the overall size of the item.

We did it. And we can now fit it much more items in one page. That’s good! But, the searching part doesn’t fit in to our idea earlier.

The idea is to be able to list down all search criteria at the same time eliminating the hassle of clicking open each of the select box to see what’s in there.

Okay, item is much more compact now, but the search does not tell the whole story at a glance.

And, we think…. we nailed it.

Everything at a glance!

Wait…. the improved layout does fares better now but still, in list view, there’s just this much that we can show before the page goes ridiculously long!

Grid view is the ultimate remedy!

We have a great feeling that this update would dramatically improve user’s experience in using the site. Hope you like it!

myLensDB Forum! New forum platform put to test.

Hugo — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:54:29 +0000

Time flies. Remember that back in June when we announced myLensDB Discuss? Back then, we spent few weeks doing some research on what’s the most suitable forum platform that we can put to use here.

We started using SMF but there are too much of efforts and custom developments needed to make the site up to our expectation. We decided to take a painful step back, and see what our target audiences are using.

We decided to venture into Discuz! platform this time.

It’s not popular among the English speaking crowd as it is natively Chinese, developed by a Beijing company but with translation effort from Valery Votintsev. It is made possible. It’s not perfect but we are getting there. We are looking forward to try to contribute back in the translation as well.

Let’s see on how far can we actually go in this stint! Hope that you like the way we are going here and make sure that you secure your own favourite username in our forum now before it’s being taken away!

Optimization, clean-up, caching, subversion, database restructuring

Hugo — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:51:35 +0000

Optimization, clean-up, caching, subversion, database restructuring. All that you can think of.

For weeks, we are going at great length doing housekeeping for the site.

And in short, we optimized the site by throwing in some geeky reverse proxy and coupling it with W3 Total Cache plugin. We are now loading content at double the usual speed and delivering to you at half the time!

In term of database, we shrunk 33% of its original size by doing a little of database table normalization and re-structuring to reflect what the project actually needs as for now. myLensDB started from a very simple price sharing site to the monster that you are seeing today. There were a lot of “rubbish” data left behind as the site evolves.

Shame to tell that, after years since it’s deployed, we have finally adopted a proper subversion control. Integrity of the site is now well preserved and we can roll back any silly changes to the site, easier now.

It’s not done yet. We are still in hot pursuit of making the whole site as solid as rock. And as noted before, we are still planning on a total makeover of the site but it’s not going to be anytime soon though.

myLensDB recovered from technical incompatibility due to new patch

Hugo — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:06:19 +0000

We did not realize that the drop of traffic over the last few days is due to the technical glitch that the site was facing due to the new patch we made. We thought that it is just because of the festive seasons we have here over in Malaysia.

As a result, the photo fetching mechanism failed across the entire site thus bringing down the capability of the site.

The new patch that we made few days ago is supposed to fetch and analyze traffic this site receives so that it would give us a better idea on how to propel and develop features in this site but we have removed it for now. We will be going back to the drawing board once again making sure that the fundamental of the site is well taken of first before going into these “good to have” features.

As an end note, we would like to wish all of myLensDB fans and visitors “Selamat Hari Raya” and enjoy the long holiday!

Explore Camera Bodies! (Find Camera Bodies)

Hugo — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 03:55:54 +0000

Explore Camera Bodies! is yet another feature that worth writing a post for. It may be better known as “Find Camera Bodies” as what we named this feature on the sidebar as this would be more appealing to new visitors. As what the name suggested, it would replicate the functionality of Explore Lenses! but into Camera Bodies instead.

It has been officially “leaked” to the public 2 weeks ago as Alpha release but we are tagging it as Beta release now as we have sorted out some of the bugs over the weeks.

We hope that the addition of this new feature would further strengthen our position of becoming a comprehensive one-stop center for those in the hunt for new camera gears.

Feel free to drop us a note if you have any feedback at all!

Google Map integration on merchant page

Hugo — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 07:10:48 +0000

We have added Google Map integration into the merchant page so that we can find our way to the merchant’s store easily. Hit on the screenshot below to see it in action.

Of course, this would only be available if we know the location of the merchant. If you find a merchant’s location missing or inaccurate, you may help us to correct it by commenting on the merchant page itself.

Have a nice weekend!

Merchant List

Hugo — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:20:24 +0000

myLensDB started from a simple price sharing platform 3 years ago to a quite comprehensive platform that let you to track prices, interactively find lenses, see photos taken by the community, engage in the discussion and many more to come. In this posting, we continue to strengthen our core feature, which is on the price tracking further.

In this release, we would be able to see list of merchants that have their pricing shared in myLensDB’s database.

Of course, we will need to make sure that a merchant’s contact information is legitimate before it is added to the merchant list.

At the merchant page, we would be able to engage in the merchant-specific discussion where we can share our experience in dealing with the merchant or post any reviews or promotions about it too. It is only tagged as Alpha release as there are lots of technical issues to sort out still. If you come across any bug or would like to give us your opinion, please do join us at our forum.

We believe that the power of the community would bring benefits to the masses and we would like to thank you for your continuous support all these years in helping to keep this project alive.

Explore! has Gone Wide

Hugo — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:25:11 +0000

We have made a quick visual update to the Explore! section. The content layout has been stretched to the maximum width allowed by taking out the sidebar.

We figure out that we need not to have the sidebar in every single page.

Here’s before.

And after.

Number of columns has been increased and the same goes to the number of photos in a page. Photos are being displayed out in their native 240px width as streamed over from Flickr.

With this update, we are sure that this would improve our visitors’ experience in using the site.

Click here for the Forum post announcement.

myLensDB Discuss!

Hugo — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 06:22:24 +0000

We are currently assessing the feasibility of running our own full fledged discussion board (aka a forum) that is being tested at mylensdb.com/discuss. This is to replace the ShoutMix chat box found on the right sidebar of our website.

The simple, “one threaded” chat box is very useful for discussion but over time, it does not retain the knowledge being built up by the community thus we firmly believe that by creating a discussion board, we can promote and share knowledge effectively.

Come! Join us at our new community space and say hi.

New website design for myLensDB

Hugo — Tue, 03 May 2011 08:34:00 +0000

We have talked to a couple of people and been getting feedback from some online buddies and decided to finally make the call for a new website design.

It is cluttered, wordy, crowded and confusing.

myLensDB has been riding on this design since November 2009 and since then, hell lots of new features and changes have been introduced.

We have grown so much since we took on There’s too much clutter, too many words, crowded, confused.

This is, of course, just a sketch of many others that we have in mind. We are still in the very early stage of designing so feel free to voice your opinions or concern to us. Thanks for being with us all these while everyone.