Changelog

V1.0 — ShopWithMore Goes Live

The first version of ShopWithMore. Built from scratch — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON and now SQL. Hundreds of retailers, some of the UKs biggest brands and more than a fair share of amazing brands you dont! Built solo, around a full-time job.

• NewNineteen more UK retailers added, each one link-tested by hand: Carphone Warehouse, Wex Photo Video, Officemonster, Demon Tweeks, iHerb, Gameseal, Damart, Hatshopping, Currys, Magic Madhouse, Sweetcare, Travis Perkins, Crafty Arts, Land of Rugs, Machine Mart, Welzo, Sockshop, Merlin Cycles and Millets. (14/10/26)
• NewNew homepage hero. The search now sits beside a large square feature image with a Spotlight Product card. A new product is chosen every day at 01:00 GMT, it links straight through to the retailer, and the same retailer is never featured twice within 100 days. (13/10/26)
• ImproveThis Week's Spotlight has moved from the retailers page to the homepage, directly under the search bar. The retailers page is now just the retailer search and the retailers themselves. (13/10/26)
• NewSearch by retailer. Type a retailer name into the search bar and you get that retailer's products, however you spell it: "autodoc", "auto-doc", "marks & spencer" and "marks and spencer" all work. (12/10/26)
• ImproveThe retailer name on every product card is now white bold text on a black label, so it is easy to see at a glance which shop a product comes from. (12/10/26)
• NewLive products pass 6.5 million (6,528,656). Eleven more UK retailers and one very large Irish auto-parts retailer (1.26 million products on its own) were added after every one was link-tested by hand, taking the catalogue past 6.5 million live products. (11/10/26)
• FixTwo retailers that the network deactivated overnight were removed straight away, along with their products, so no shopper lands on a dead link. Their feeds are archived and can be restored if they return. (11/10/26)
• InfraConfirmed the overnight chain (fetch, rebuild, stale-product sweep, logo check) ran start to finish unattended, and that the database tuning from yesterday survived. Rebuilds with unchanged feeds now take around 18 minutes instead of 49. (11/10/26)
• ImproveFixed a retailer logo that had no source image by pointing it at our own hosted copy. (11/10/26)
• InfraServer restarted to apply pending system updates. It came back cleanly with every service running, the database tuning intact and all 6.55 million database rows present. (11/10/26)
• NewLive products back above 5.2 million (5,251,244). Retailers that were held back have been re-tested and brought back, and a large batch of additional retailers has been added. Every one passed the same rule as before: a retailer only goes live once its links have been tested end to end by hand. (10/10/26)
• InfraFixed the real reason full product rebuilds were slow. The database was running with a tiny memory allowance for a catalogue this size, so it spent most of its time waiting on the disk. Giving it a proper allowance and a faster write setting took waiting time from 74% down to 12% and roughly quadrupled import speed. A complete rebuild of all 5.25 million products now takes about 49 minutes, and the change is permanent across restarts. (10/10/26)
• ImproveRetailers with no logo of their own now automatically get one based on their website, so no retailer page is left with a broken or empty image. A nightly logo check covers 92 retailers and found none broken. (10/10/26)
• FixRemoved one retailer that was listed twice under two separate accounts, along with its 17,000+ products, and archived its feed so it cannot quietly return. (10/10/26)
• InfraAdded a safeguard to the product rebuild: it refuses to start if a retailer's feed fails to download part-way, so a bad day on the retailer network can never shrink the catalogue. One retailer's feed is currently failing on the network's side and has been left out until it recovers. (10/10/26)
• InfraBuilt a permanent safeguard: every night the site now checks the Kelkoo network's live list of active retailers and automatically removes any retailer that is no longer available, along with its products and feed files. It also sends an alert whenever a retailer drops out or a new one becomes active, and has a built-in safety stop so a faulty response from the network can never wipe the catalogue by mistake. (05/10/26)
• FixFound why the nightly retailer refresh had not been refreshing anything: the scheduled job was running without being told which retailers to update. Replaced it with a single nightly job that checks retailer status, refreshes every live retailer's feed, and then rebuilds the product database. (05/10/26)
• InfraRemoved products that had disappeared from retailer feeds but were never cleared out of the database (around 147,000 stale UK rows), after a safety check confirmed every live retailer's fresh feed matched the rebuild. The product import only ever added and updated, so these had been quietly piling up. (05/10/26)
• InfraRemoved feed files for the dropped retailers from the live site and archived them safely off the public web, so they can be restored in minutes if a retailer is ever reinstated. Retailers with two Kelkoo accounts merged under one name (Sweetcare, Harts of Stur, Harbour Lifestyle, Pharmica) keep both feeds. (05/10/26)
• InfraIrish retailers (all six) and PaidOnResults retailers were left completely untouched by the clean-up. About 26,500 outdated Irish rows still need clearing and are on the to-do list. (05/10/26)
• ImproveXML sitemap updated automatically after the clean-up and now lists 15 product sitemaps covering only live products and live retailers. Resubmitted to Google, and the Cloudflare cache purged. (05/10/26)
• FixRemoved leftover debugging lines from the sitemap file. (05/10/26)
• FixBig clean-up: the Kelkoo network restricted access to most of our retailers, and the network's feeds kept listing their products anyway, so many product links led to a "product is not available" page. After checking every retailer against the network's live list, 220 UK retailers whose links no longer work were removed, with their 4.57 million products. 31 fully working UK Kelkoo retailers remain, alongside our Irish and PaidOnResults retailers. The site now carries around 643,000 live products (down from 5.2 million) and about 69 retailers, and every link goes where it says it does. A smaller catalogue that actually earns beats a huge one that doesn't. (05/10/26)
• NewRetailers we chose not to add for now: Potters Cookshop, Autodoc, Lions Pharmacy, Buy a Battery, MicroDream, Pharmanord, Mex Grocer, Refurbed, Glisten Cosmetics, Home Cosmetics, Rowen Homes and AliExpress, plus A1 Tech Deals. The rule from here is that a retailer only goes live once its links have been tested end to end. (05/10/26)
• InfraPublisher Center email alerts switched on so any future change to a retailer's status reaches us straight away, and Kelkoo has been updated on the clean-up and asked whether the restricted retailers will return. Search Console domain verification is pending a DNS re-check. (05/10/26)
• NewShopwithmore.com finally gets secured with an SSL. www.shopwithmore.com - Ready for the US launch in 2027.
• NewLive products pass 4.6 million, following the addition of Wallis (525,000+ products) as a retailer. (19/09/26)
• ImproveCompleted a full retailer category clean-up across the entire catalogue — every product now maps to a single, standardised category system, up from a patchwork of inconsistent labels across different retailers. Search and browsing accuracy across the whole site benefits from this. (19/09/26)
• FixFound and fixed a database configuration issue that was causing category updates to run extremely slowly at our current catalogue size. What was taking over an hour now completes in under a minute. (20/09/26)
• InfraBuilt an automated onboarding pipeline for adding new retailers — fetching, importing, and categorising a retailer's full catalogue now runs as a single background process that keeps running even if the connection managing it drops. (20/09/26)
• NewSet up scheduled social media posting (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) for ongoing retailer spotlight content. (20/09/26)
• NewLive products pass 4 million. (14/09/26)
• FixFixed the root cause of the vast majority of "page not found" errors reported in Google Search — a retailer editing a product's title (a vintage year updating, a capitalisation change, a promo tag added) was silently generating a brand-new URL for the same item, orphaning the old one. Old links that Google, shoppers or bookmarks already had now automatically redirect to the current page instead of 404ing. (13/09/26)
• InfraIntroduced a stable product identity, separate from the URL — built from each item's EAN barcode or the retailer's own product code rather than its title text. The pretty, SEO-friendly URL can now change freely without ever losing the product's identity, search ranking, or previously-indexed link. (13/09/26)
• InfraRolling this out gradually, retailer by retailer, as each one's feed reprocesses on its normal schedule — zero downtime, and the live site was unaffected throughout. (13/09/26)
• NewLive products pass 3.4 million. (11/09/26)
• InfraResolved an email delivery issue on shopwithmore.co.uk caused by a DNS handover gap — nameservers for our core UK domain, plus .com and .net, are now fully switched over to our own infrastructure, with mail flowing normally again. (11/09/26)
• FixFixed broken SSL/DNS on the "www" address of our European sites — shopwithmore.de, .fr, .it and .es now all resolve correctly with valid HTTPS, whether visited with or without "www". (11/09/26)
• InfraRebuilt our retailer feed import tool so it can reliably handle merchants of any size — including individual catalogues of 2 million-plus products — without timing out or running low on memory. (11/09/26)
• NewAdded an email signup to our Germany, France, Italy and Spain "coming soon" pages, so visitors in each market can register interest ahead of launch. (10/09/26)
• ImproveAdded quick-navigation flag links to the footer of every regional site, making it easy to jump between our UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish storefronts. (09/09/26)
• ImproveBegan normalising thousands of inconsistent retailer category labels — things like "Mens", "Footwear - Mens" and "Clothing > Mens" — onto a single, industry-standard product taxonomy. The foundation for more accurate browsing, category pages and search relevance across the whole catalogue. (11/09/26)
• NewLive products hit 3,000,000 and growing.
• NewDomains acquired; Shopwithmore.it and shopwithmore.fr. (06/09/26)
• InfraShopwithmore.co.uk has fully completed its move to the new VPS — files, database, and search all now running independently on infrastructure we control end to end. (06/09/26)
• NewSSL (HTTPS) secured across every live domain — shopwithmore.co.uk, .com, .net, .de and .es — with automatic renewal in place going forward. (06/09/26)
• NewOur blog has moved to its own dedicated setup at blog.shopwithmore.co.uk, running on fresh infrastructure with a proper security certificate of its own. (06/09/26)
• FixFixed a search bug where gendered terms like "mens" or "womens" weren't matching products listed as "men's" or "women's" — searches for men's, mens, man, women's, womens, woman, kids, boys and girls now all return consistent results regardless of how the product was originally listed. (06/09/26)
• FixFixed a bug in the XML sitemap that was silently capping how many product pages Google could discover — sitemap generation now scales cleanly no matter how large the catalogue grows, with no ceiling on pagination depth. (06/09/26)
• InfraDaily product import pipeline restored and running automatically on the new server — the catalogue is back to growing on autopilot. (06/09/26)
• InfraVPS Server secured. Giving Shopwithmore.co.uk a lot more room to expand and more power under the hood for growth! Shopwithmore.co.uk will begin a slow transition to the new VPS over the coming days to ensure a smooth cross-over and then we start grow the brand further in the UK and into Europe. (31/08/26)
• NewProduct numbers smash 1.2 million, sourced from 250+ UK retailers (23/08/26)
• NewProduct numbers smash 2 million products milestone, from 270+ UK retailers (19/08/26)
• NewLaid the groundwork for Ireland — three live Irish merchant feeds added, bringing around 250,000 Irish products into the catalogue (23/08/26)
• InfraDatabase rebuilt to be country-aware, with products and retailers now tagged by country — the foundation for shopwithmore.ie (23/08/26)
• ImproveSite-wide filtering, currency display (£/€) and SEO data now adapt automatically for Irish products (23/08/26)
• NewComing-soon page live at shopwithmore.co.uk/ie ahead of the Ireland launch (23/08/26)
• NewProduct numbers smash 900,000 (952,373) - (15/08/26)
• FixSearch results now up to 4,000x faster — down from ~6 seconds to under 2ms (15/08/26)
• FixFixed a silent crash in the product import pipeline that had stalled growth for several days (15/08/26)
• ImproveHomepage now shows live product and retailer counts (15/08/26)
• ImproveSearch results now show "X results for [query]" (15/08/26)
• FixFixed inconsistent styling on the Retailers page (15/08/26)
• NewRetailer numbers surpass 250 - (15/08/26)
• Fix Manchester United's merchant logo restored — added a manual override system so any retailer's logo can be fixed instantly if the source feed's hosted image ever breaks, without needing a code change.
• Fix Fixed a mobile layout bug on the retailers page where long retailer names (e.g. domain-style names with no spaces) could push the "This Week's Spotlight" cards off the edge of the screen.
• Fix Fixed the "Featured" badge overlapping retailer logos on the spotlight cards.
• New Product numbers surpass 500,000 for the first time from over 210 UK retailers. (05/08/26)
• Improve General performance and stability improvements as the product catalogue continues to scale. (1/08/26)
• Improve Migrated the entire product catalogue from a flat file system to a proper database — faster search, faster page loads, and no ceiling on how large the catalogue can grow. (1/08/26)
• New Search now understands broader everyday terms like "children's toys" or "gifts for her," matching relevant products across retailers regardless of how each one categorises them. (30/07/26)
• New Product catalogue passed 370,000 live products, sourced from 190 retail partners. (31/07/26)
• New Product catalogue passed 250,000 live products, sourced from 180 retail partners. (30/07/26)
• New Product catalogue passed 200,000 live products, sourced from 174 retail partners. (29/07/26)
• New Product catalogue passed 156,000 live products, sourced from 156 retail partners. (27/07/26)
• New First affiliate sale confirmed — commission tracking verified end-to-end. 🎉
• Improve Retailers page completely redesigned — real-time stats counter, a "Biggest Ranges" spotlight for top retailers by volume, category tags per retailer, and a refreshed card layout.
• Improve Search results tightened significantly — now matches against product titles (and brand names) rather than full descriptions, cutting out irrelevant results that only mentioned a search term in passing.
• Fix Fixed a bug where the retailers page was taking several seconds to load at higher retailer counts — merchant statistics are now pre-computed for instant loading regardless of catalogue size.
• Fix Fixed the XML sitemap — it had been silently serving outdated data since the database migration and was no longer reflecting new products. Now reads live, current data and updates automatically as the catalogue grows.
• Infra Database schema optimised — oversized text fields resized appropriately, reducing storage overhead with no impact on speed.
• New 100,000 Product milestone reached (24/7/26)
• New 120 Retailers now live on Shopwithmore.co.uk
• Fix Fixed a timing issue causing merchant pages to occasionally show products from all retailers instead of the selected one, and populated the previously-empty "All Categories" filter with real category data. (23/07/26)
• New Kelkoo Group partnership secured — automatic access granted across their UK network of 300+ retailers and 9.7 million products, with European expansion (Germany, France, Italy, Spain) already on the roadmap for phase two.
• New Product catalogue passed 80,000 live products, sourced from 75+ UK and European retailers.
• Infra Product feed importer rebuilt to stream data rather than load it fully into memory — allows safe processing of catalogues far larger than today's, within strict server memory limits.
• Infra Entire product catalogue migrated from flat-file JSON storage to a proper SQL database — enabling instant search, instant retailer lookups, and the scalability needed for Kelkoo's full catalogue.
• Improve Built a genuine server-side search engine, replacing the old system that required visitors' browsers to download the entire product catalogue just to search it.
• Improve Retailer and product pages rebuilt to use instant, indexed database lookups instead of scanning the full catalogue.
• Fix Identified a stock-accuracy issue affecting a major retailer's affiliate feed and reported it directly to the network for investigation.
• New Shopwithmore.de (Germany) has been secured, paving the way for our first location outside of the UK. (20/7/26)
• New Over 80,000 Products now available (20/7/26)
• New Added a grid/list view toggle on search results — browse products your way, and it remembers your choice
• New Retailer pages now show real business logos and a short "about this store" description, pulled directly from the retailer's own data
• New Fixed a bug causing some product pages to fail to load as the catalogue has grown
• New API integration is live — new retailers can now be pulled in and added to the catalogue directly
• NewStore pages now display richer retailer information (categories, logo, description)
• NewAdded a "Why Join ShopWithMore" page for retailers interested in listing their products
• NewAdded a Meet the Founder page
• NewUpdated business contact details across the site
• NewGeneral performance and stability improvements as the product catalogue continues to scale
• New Over 66,000 Products now available (09/07/26)
• New Over 50,000 Products now available (02/07/26)
• New Blog now live. Updated often it can be found here >>Blog
• New All change!!! We decided to jump to Stage 2. Affiliate feeds. And lots of them! Stage 2, was always going to happen. So over a 4 day weekend, I rebuilt the parts of the site that needed to be rebuilt, including the import facility of the files that handle the products. We no longer depend on outside platforms to handle; the products themselves, images etc. Its all in-house. We'd just hit 47,000 products from our original supplier, and with our new route, we're on just over 22,000 from 28 different retailers and whilst I am writing this, another 2 retailers have joined and will be adding close to 20,000 products - so not much of a difference! The site is still built using HTML, CSS, JS and a dash of PHP.
• New Flickering bug solved.
• New Moving image hosting to Plesk account to save on costs.
• New Working through some minor bugs on v1 - Images not showing (Library being rewritten so place holder image "comingsoon" in place), search results page and /new page showing flickering with code looping. (10/06/26)
• New Products now available reach 40,000 milestone and growing (10/06/26)
• New Issue with pipeline pulling products. Lower than expected on import numbers.
• New More than 5,000 Products to be added daily.
• New 25,000+ Products Live Milestone. (05/06/26)
• New 10,000+ Products Live Milestone. (30/05/26)
• New Products now being indexed by Google Shopping, imported and updated to Google daily at 10am.
• New More than 2,300 products now added daily.
• New More than 2,100 products successfully added via created pipeline. More than 2,400 products live.
• New Shopwithmore.co.uk v1 goes LIVE (18th May 2026) .
• New New Categories page added, linking from homepage and other relevant page.
• New Loading 120,000+ products via supplier import API with daily automated import pipeline.
• New Product search with category sidebar, sort options and pagination
• New What's New page — fresh products updated every weekday morning
• New Full customer accounts — register, login, dashboard, order history, edit details
• New Square payments integration — secure checkout with payment links
• New Products You May Like — related products on every product page
• New Blog and Changelog created.
• Infra Render.com automation — two cron jobs handling daily product sync and image processing
• Infra Cloudinary image hosting for all product images
• Infra Supabase customer authentication with SHA-256 password hashing