Server upgrades.

In addition to launching on demand embroidered beanies, we found time here in early 2026 to make some much needed improvements to site performance. We migrated servers in January (did you notice?), leaving our long, long time host Linode for something with significantly higher performance per dollar. Linode was a fantastic partner for the entire life of Cotton Bureau and we can still recommend them for fantastic reliability and user experience, but times have changed and so have we. Our needs have increased over the years. To keep costs in check, we had to find something else.

If you’re curious, we ultimately decided to switch to Vultr after reviewing our options. (Link is an affiliate code since why not. Get $300 in server credits when you sign up.) We’ve been more than happy with the service. We doubled our CPU, increased storage by 350%, and added over 6X the RAM. So far, so good. Everything is faster for a very modest increase in our monthly server bill. 

Image Rendering

Beyond hardware improvements, we put most of our effort in February toward making smarter choices about how and when to render images. Since moving from pre-rendering to dynamic rendering in 2023, latency on our product and gallery pages due to slow image loading has been one of our biggest frustrations. Thankfully, with a combination of more sophisticated caching and de-duplication, our most frequently accessed products now load instantly in most cases.

More Updates

While we have a lengthy list of features and products we still intend to bring to Cotton Bureau, there is an equally long list of neglected parts of the site that desperately need our attention. To that end, a big focus for us in 2026 is building a smoother and more polished experience across the board. We’ve got bugs to squash and optimizations to make, and it’s already started. Bulk image downloading for created products is back. Pre-order campaign sales figures can now be optionally hidden. Shop navigation has been improved. Altogether, hundreds of small changes have been made to streamline operations and user experience.

The Future

We have one major quality of life feature in progress right now, though we’re not sure exactly when it will drop. Currently our best estimate is April. All I can say at the moment is that we may finally be able to resolve an issue going that goes all the way back to the beginning of Cotton Bureau on demand apparel, and we couldn’t be more excited.