I can't say there weren't a few bumps along the way, but I'd like to start off by saying I think the release of the new user shops has been one of our most successful in a while. There weren't very many, but we've been able to fix most of the bugs that weren't caught during the initial testing period (including at least a couple that seem to have miraculously fixed themselves with no intervention from us at all!), and have tweaked interfaces here and there based on your feedback, which we will continue to do.

As was said when we first announced this project, one of the major reasons we were revamping the user shops now (when, to be honest, it's been on our to-do list for a few years) was due to the 502 and 504 errors that have been plaguing the site since our move from Rackspace to AWS. While the new shops didn't completely solve the problem, we did see the volume of 5xx errors reduced by more than 75%, which we were cautiously optimistic about. They were clearly still a problem, but we started to have an end in sight (keep an eye out for a post from about how we've seen almost no 5xx errors at all in the past few days since the removal of pusher.js - which was a big surprise!).

The new user shops have relieved so much strain on the servers and the database. Even buying from the legacy shops still being available via shop search has had a much smaller impact than we initially anticipated, so I'm happy to announce to you all that the legacy shops will remain in shop search results indefinitely!

Last but not least, gallery item limits have been raised once again, to allow 7,500 unique items per gallery for everyone, and 10,000 unique items for Gold Account users. These, along the current shop limits of 2,000 and 2,500, are likely to be the final item limits. That said, we will continue to monitor the new system and make adjustments as we see fit.

Thank you all so much for sticking with us through these tough times. You guys are why we do what we do!