With our 10,000th sample completed in January, our website’s hosting capability maxxed out. 😳
Starting last summer, our awesome software developer David has been working on a new results page that is purpose-built. We aren’t updating it on the regular yet but here's a preview. Yup, we'll still be keeping the streetsafe.supply domain name.
The old way
Squarespace served us well for 3 years. Behind the scenes our original results page was just a storefront with each sample being a "product" worth $0. We couldn't accept payments and the shopping cart was disabled. We were always worried they were gonna shut us down because from the backend we resembled a cryptomarket! We did give Squarespace a heads up and conveyed out legitimacy at the outset. And wow, it worked.
Why did we have to do it this way with Squarespace? Well, because when we started out, REDCap flat out told us what we were doing is illegal 🖕🏾
Right now we enter results and card data manually into a massive shared Excel sheet. Yeah, we know it's ridic. The lab tab has 40,000+ rows for each substance detected in each sample. This system is not going to be viable much longer.
The new way
The frontend of our new platform is hosted on S3 and rendered with React, the backend is PostgreSQL data tables, and records are stored in JSON format. All this will mean is that we can deliver results faster with fewer mistakes. We also have more layers of backup and better security. David built the whole thing from the ground up! 😍
Improvements
The new site is MUCH faster to load and search. We'll be able to build all the new features you've been asking for, like location and filtering. We'll also be able to build communications tools, like explanations of substances. And we can deliver results as APIs for those so inclined.
Legacy Data
Yup, we can keep all the old pages too.
Blue cards?
We'll update the URL linked to the QR code on the blue cards. So, folks with older cards can use them the same way, no interruption. Phew, glad we had thought of that at the outset!
URL Replacement
If you're using The new URL format will look like this:
https://results.streetsafe.supply/sample/807157
The current URL format is this:
https://www.streetsafe.supply/results/p/808770
We hear some of y'all have been keeping links to samples in Excel. We got you. Once we launch you could do a search-replace to update the spreadsheet:
Search “https://www.streetsafe.supply/results/p/”
Replace “https://results.streetsafe.supply/sample/”
Tell us what you think!
We wanna hear from our power users. Drop is a note at opioiddatalab@unc.edu