February 2020 Newsletter

First off, we  want to wish you all a belated Happy New Year and need to apologise for the lack of updates in the last few months. Its been a hectic time both running the sites and personally with a new addition to our family. We have continued to be able to implement a range of new features and developments across all of the sites regardless of this, we just haven’t had time to write about it!

As a reminder, TheDataDB is a non profit organisation so any income derived goes back into making the sites better. 

Before we go into the specific updates on each of TheDataDB family of sites, we have some news and made some improvements which benefit all of these to share with you:

- We’ve bought an additional new powerful dedicated server to host our websites. That brings our server count now to 3.

- We have a new dedicated web host for the co-located server.

- We’ve extended our domain names for 10 years.

- One of our biggest sets of users are students in coding bootcamps or university courses. We try to set the sites up with a free tier that people can use to learn how to code with API’s in the simplest possible way. Many of these users go on to publish their projects and apps using a private key as a Patreon supporter.  Being able to support people learn to code, learn and have access to information, are some of the driving forces behind TheDataDB and is part of our business ethos. A big shout-out to that section of our user base for being so supportive too!

TheCocktailDB
https://www.thecocktaildb.com

TheCocktailDB is one of the sites which is utilised the most by schools and colleges around the world as a reference base for learning to code or create apps. It’s been picked up by industry bloggers and been shortlisted in API awards, and the data is being used in commercial apps. We never expected our love of cocktails to be such a hit, but it continues to be one of our most used sites.

One of the ways in which we’ve been talking about wanting to take this site one step further is to create images of the cocktails with Creative Commons Licensing. This month we made an investment in cocktail equipment, ingredients and glasses for the photoshoots and have completed our first 50 images which are now on the site. Check for the new database field “strCreativeCommonsConfirmed” that is available on the API. 

More photos are coming soon but as I’m sure you can imagine this is no easy task! One of the hardest parts about the photoshoots is trying to find someone to drink all the cocktails! 😉We’ve also had a number of new cocktails added by our users recently, so thanks to anyone who has taken the time to contribute new recipes with artwork.

TheSportsDB
https://www.thesportsdb.com/

TheSportsDB is our fastest growing site and certainly the one with the most dedicated users, contributing hundreds of edits a day. Our vision is to create a really simple, cheap (and mostly free) platform to provide sports artwork and metadata. Its ever expanding with more users coming on board, and a constant stream of requests coming in for new leagues or entire sports – keep ‘em coming!

Here are some of the most recent updates:

- European Basketball archived results and fixtures have been added

- Support for Call of Duty, Fifa and Overwatch E-Sports leagues

- A new “Honour” page for players achievements

- Support for NHL Ice Hockey live scores (Patreon supporters only)

- Six Nations Rugby as well as many new rugby leagues

- New sports highlights API to show most recent sports

- New golf tours

- NCAA basketball teams (a request from one of our Patreon supporters, only the small job of adding 500 teams!)

- 30+ new soccer leagues added from Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Columbia, Andorra, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Montenegro, Macedonia, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Romania, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Servia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, UAE, Uruguay, Venezuela and Wales!

TheAudioDB
https://www.theaudiodb.com/

TheAudioDB is our oldest site but still remains one of the most popular with a constant stream of edits and artwork being added every day. We are extremely thankful to those loyal users who keep the site up-to-date with new music as well as filling in the gaps for older releases – a big shout out to them!

In other news, here are some of the most recent updates:

- Added a new premium API developer level for $3 with special features

- Working behind the scenes on a new login system and upgrade to PHP 7.4

- Each week we upload the most popular albums and tracks to our trending pages as well as creating 3D artwork for all of them. Check the front page or the charts pages to see the newest releases people are listening to.

TheMealDB
https://www.themealdb.com/

We’ve added a number of new recipes to the site in recent months with the total now topping 200! We’d love to get that up to 1000 in the future – yes we know that’s a big challenge, but that’s why we need you to help us get there by sharing any contributions you have!

As always, Patreon supporters are able to add recipes themselves, just please check you have the required artwork before uploading them. Or send the recipes to us via email and we’ll upload them instead.

We’re working our way through the countries so if you have anything to contribute from your home country then do let us know. We’re also happy to add entire new countries if you are willing to help provide us with some content.

If you cook any of the recipes yourself, why not take a picture and let us know how it goes? We might then be able to feature it on the site.

Thanks again

Thank you for continuing your support to us and for your patience during the last few months. We love sharing the developments with our entire Patreon community and aim to resume monthly newsletters but may review this to being a little less frequent as we don’t want to bombard you or become annoying with these updates! We’ll keep you posted on that, but if you have any preference, feel free to let us know!