PSPi 6 In-Stock Notification

When the PSPi 6 released, a lot of people subscribed to the in-stock notification. Enough that it became a problem.

The first problem was the emails. Several thousand people subscribed, and sending that many emails at the same time would take the website down. It would also look a lot like an attack to my host, and I’d rather not find out what they do about that.

The second problem was the stock. Even when boards were available, they sold out almost instantly. If I sent notices to thousands more people, they would just go out of stock again before most of the people on the list made it to the store.

To deal with this temporarily (or so I thought), I set up a second product page for the PSPi 6 and sold it first-come, first-served, and hid the original.

I never put the original product in stock, and the number of subscribers on it kept growing the whole time, which only made it worse.

I’ve been working on a fix for a while, and it’s ready now. I’m using a custom plugin to handle the notifications. Instead of sending every email at once, it sends them out a few per hour. That keeps the website up and keeps the boards from selling out before people have a chance. If the PSPi 6 goes out of stock, the emails pause automatically and pick back up when it’s in stock again.

The notifications are going out now. If you entered your email, you’ll get one. I’m aware that many of you have already purchased a board, so it may be weird getting an email after so long, but I didn’t want to pick and choose who would get the email that they requested.