My apologies to everyone for the dearth of posts and updates. Not a whole lot has happened on the Rankforest front over the past month beyond some progress on setting up the new servers.

In the past month I found a new job in Atlanta and we moved. A lot has happened around that. I’m finally in a position to put some more time into the release. A lot of the work will center around configuring the server and making sure that all of the currently tracked books are moved over in as seamless a way as possible.

The new site will have different urls. I’ll do my best to redirect you to the appropriate page based on the older urls, but some urls will probably stop working entirely.

Thanks for your support!

Currently, the comparison chart states that anyone with a free account can add a limited number of books. The current limit is actually 10. In preparation for the new version of the site, which is still a way off, I’ll be moving to limit the number of free additions to 1 new book (not currently tracked) and a few existing books (books that are already being tracked and that require no additional overhead). I’ll make the changes sometime after this Friday.

If you have a free account and have already added books, you won’t be affected.

If you’re new to the site, you can still add a book that you’re personally interested in. Data will pour in over time for the title and you can get a feel for the various charts. Additionally, you can add existing items to your collection to see how it feels to track multiple titles. As a benefit, these existing books will likely have much more data behind them so you can see longer term data now instead of waiting.

The main reason for doing this isn’t to limit or punish those with free accounts, or to goad them into paying for a subscription. It’s really about serving those with premium accounts better.

The new version of the site will track books from 3 sources and does more work behind the scenes. Spending time tracking free books takes away from spending more CPU cycles on the books premium subscribers are tracking. As the site grows, the number of books that can be processed in an hour grows close to a hard limit, so something has to give (one day I’d like that to be the point at which I buy another server, but for now this makes more sense).

While premium accounts will only ever be scaled upward in terms of functionality, the free accounts are a little more variable.

Thanks for your continued support.