If you noticed my post on MODSonline, I’m working on some updates to the site. Well, I wish it were as easy to do as it is to say. hehe.

I was going to update the tutorials with some custom code to allow user input and updating. The community needs more access to the tutorials and I have a plan to make it happen. But before I start with these updates, it made sense to update the entire back-end. Of course, that’s another involved task. It’s not just upload and update… it’s upload, confirm, test, fix, test, restore, copy, active, done. That’s just a quick list.

When I get that done, I can move onto the Tutorials updates that I originally planned. At least I hope that is all I have to do. ugh.

This year, I’ve seen a number of friends lose their hosting for various reasons. Either the host shuts down, the server crashes, or something along those lines causes them to be left without service unexpectedly.

I’ve discussed it with my web business partner. We’ve decided that we can help out gamers in need with some pretty nice hosting packages:

That’s not bad, right? If you’re interested, let me know.

For a long time now, I couldn’t get email notices from this blog site (yes, the one you are reading right now). It took me a while to figure out the reasons for this problem, but it’s finally solved. I actually filter my email for spam 3 times. Spam is awful… well, I don’t need to tell you how bad it is. When I get email, it first gets filtered via my server and Spam Assassin, a commonly used server-side spam filter. From there, the email goes to two places, it goes to my Spamcop email filtering service and it goes to my gmail account. Spamcop filters the mail and sends it back to a secret account from which I retrieve the email via Thunderbird, which filters the email a third time. On the Gmail side, it just gets filtered the one time and stays there in case I need to check my email from online.

Anyway, wordpress blogs send email notifications from wordpress@yourdomain.com (yourdomain being… well, your domain). But that’s a great way to get even more spam, so I don’t have it setup to receive email. Although Spamcop claims not to check for the sending email address validity, it would reject those emails and I wouldn’t see them (unless they caught my eye on gmail).

Well, needless to say, I had to setup wordpress@yourdomain.com (actually at mydomain, but you get the idea). Now I am getting those email from here. At least I now should know when I am getting comments here. lol.

Am I overly redundant in trying to stop spam? I don’t think so. I don’t get too much spam considering all the domain names (currently 36) and email addresses (only about 20) I have to keep my eye on. And it’s great(!!!) not to have to download that spam just to filter it locally.

However, the biggest problem now is caused by spoofing. That’s when someone sends email from your email address… not literally from your server, but pretending to be you. Then you get thousands of bounce backs from those email addresses that don’t exist. I’d love to hear about a solution for that!

Yesterday, Supersword posted in the MODSonline.com forums asking for comments from the community about how much they can’t live without like the website and what they would like to change. I had no idea he was going to post this… and I think it’s a good post (so, I won’t send the hitman this time).

One of the popular ideas that has come up is regarding the tutorials. Members would like more control over the updating and improving of existing tutorials. Funny thing here… I have that very idea written in my notes from a few months back (before dreaded tax season). So, I think it’s a great idea.

While a wiki-styled system would work, I think it’s sloppy. I’ve been through the code of wiki sites and there is nothing there that is truly secure or manageable without headaches and stubbed toes (from kicking the wall in frustration of course). What needs to be created is something more innovative and flexible. Something that can be tied into the existing architecture of the site. Something that won’t have my wife wondering who I am after I emerge from the dark office after days of programming.

hmmm.. ideas?

I found a pretty cool search engine today… and no, I didn’t make it (askfoyle.com). lol. I mentioned to my buddy this morning that I did some preliminary coding of a search engine to see what I could do (perhaps more on that in the future), and he showed me this: Searchme

What’s cool about this search system is that rather than returning many text links like I’m used to seeing in Google, MSN, or whatever it is I (you) normally use to search, I see a screenshots of the website. This is no tiny little image leaving me to guess at what the site really could look like. It’s a fairly large representation of the site that I can somewhat read. Wait a few seconds longer after my search and my keywords will be circled within those images. Scroll through the resulting images like a jukebox to find what I’m looking for.

And… the whole thing appears to be presented using Flash. Yeah, a flash coded search engine. That’s not normal.

It’s currently in beta, but it still returns the results I was looking for. Oh, and it’s not kicking MODSonline out of the search like Google started doing to me this past weekend (unless you search for modsonline.com).

Follow-up: Go figure, Google has taken me back. What did I do to fix it? Nothing. lol.

So, check this out. Batistablr and I were searching for some domain names that he was considering for purchase. I often go to network solutions (netsol) to do my searching because it’s really simple and you don’t have to login or enter a captcha.

Here it is, a day later and Batistablr has decided to purchase one of those domain names that I looked up on netsol, but to his surprise, it was no longer available. Someone had purchased this domain in the one day since I found it available on their site.

Batistablr looked up who thought to purchase the domain name in such a short time. It turns out that netsol purchased the domain name. But, how can they afford to purchase all these domain names that people search for?

Here’s the trick. Netsol knows that they can purchase a domain name. If they cancel the purchase within about 4 days after purchase, they don’t have to pay for it.

The Lesson: Don’t search for your domain names on netsol unless you plan on purchasing them from netsol. If you do, you will end up SOL yourself.

I’d love to get a new theme on this site. I’m getting bored with this old one now.

This week I spent some time browsing various themes online. I started in the usual places where you can find thousands of wordpress themes for free. The problem is that they all suck are quite boring. Nothing tickles my fancy enough to even consider trying it out.

After realizing that “free” might be the reason for suckage the quality of themes, I hit up templatemonster. Again, I was disappointed by the suckitude quantity of boring themes.

It does cross my mind that perhaps I should just develop a theme that’s less sucky of my own. However, that falls into the whole “not enough time in a day” category that I posted about a few days ago.

Is it me? Am I being too critical? ugh… sucks oh well.

I noticed today that the subscriptions on MODSonline.com are on the decline. They held steady for a year but not any longer. It concerns me that we have to rely more on advertising to pay the bills as I always thing that the advertising could just pull out one day and leave us hanging there.

So, what do we do to increase the membership on the site? Do we run a special contest for subscribing members only? Do I program new features for the site that only the members can access? hmmm… I need suggestions.

I’ve got a set of cordless phones in the office. There are a total of 4 cordless handsets for this 2 line unit. So, if the package was sold with 4 handsets and the phone can hook up to 2 separate landlines, why can’t I talk on more than two handsets at any given time?

The unit is from Panasonic model KX-TG6502. If at anytime I need to have a conference call, a maximum of two of us can pick up the phone. If someone tries to ring in on the other phone line, then forget it. They are out of luck.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good multi-line cordless phone for use in an office situation. I don’t want to spend a thousand dollars.

Supersword, steer clear of selling this phone to any of your customers.

So, I have a question to ask but I don’t know if it’s safe to ask it.

I’ve had this online service idea rattling around in my head for a few years now. I’ve written some notes and prepped the scene on getting it going, but now I’ve come to a point that I might need help. I either have to learn a new programming language or I have to hire someone else to do it. Since my time is short due to other projects, I decided to persue the latter.

Today I got a quote for the work to be done and it’s twice what I can afford. I am left asking myself, is it worth the money to have it done and get this project off the ground or should I revisit the programming language? Honestly, I don’t think I have the time to do the work myself. But geez… twice the price? I’m afraid it will never pay for itself.

That leads me to the topic of this post. I want to know who thinks this idea could sell? The trick is I kinda need to know the answer within the next week or less to give this guy an answer. hmmm.

Follow-up: I posted a poll over on MODSonline to see what the members think of the idea. I can’t keep dancing around the topic and worry that the idea might be picked up by someone else. I have to know now.