So the question floated around in my head the majority of the day, aside from being excited about the new season of Heroes, it came down to a bit in my brain going on and on about a new hosting promotion, package, offering, special, etc. trying to build up the finances, and in some regard I want to do it quickly, it’d be nice to have a infusion of a few thousand dollars, but growth one day at a time.
So it leads me to my question, what do YOU web visitor want to see in a hosting package? I already have had folks say “Windows Hosting!” well that’s all fine and dandy, but even then - what functionality do you need to make it a sale, and have you sign-up today? That’s the question I am trying to get answered, so if you get a minute, please take a second and post a comment about what you feel would be the best bet for hosting in your mind, it can be SSH access, it can be a full-on server, but please take 2 seconds out of your busy day, and post what you need in the realm of hosting, and what you’d be willing to pay.
In other quick news, Wordpress 2.3 is pretty slick - so far so good, even has Tags support via Textmate (use Keywords) - pretty slick indeed! More later.
One of the main tools in this new anti-spam system is DSPAM and I must say I quite enjoy it, it’s filtering has been more dead-on than SA, not saying SA can’t be tuned, but just out of the box this seems (thus far) to be doing a lot better, for example…
My dad’s Spam Stats for the last 24 hours, my dad’s email has become a spam-trap (actually that’s my moms) - but all in all, this has done great, some mini-false positives here and there but the DSPAM WebUI is wonderful for managing the Quarantine of spam, and re-training the system what is good, what is bad.
So for the last 12 hours I have moved TN to this filter, and so far so good, like 2 marked as spam that were not, but now it has been trained they are good. So I am thinking if TN looks good tomorrow, FH will follow suit and get anti-spam’d long-term I want to work to really re-configure the system to work off domain, not per-user-account created, I want to make it simple as a pass-through spam proxy, so I can migrate entire servers to this anti-spam solution and give everyone a more robust solution against spam, and in the end, help take some load of SA on the server side of each server.
So this week I am hoping to really push some sales, get some finances in check, and first and foremost get some bills paid off, secondly get monthly revenues up, so I could definitely use some prayers - I want to continue to raise profits, and get things even more streamlined, but it just seems things keep holding me back, but this week my hope is some of the projects pay off, and things can continue to grow and expand and allow me to get my own place, get a stable/steady monthly budget, so hopefully this week will enter a few good things like a new Credit Card processing system including Discover and AMEX, but also expansion into the new billing system and getting folks all up-to-date in their billing, so I know where I really stand on some things - so lift a few up for me, and if you have some spare cash just lying around, feel free to send it to me
Anywhoo - this night seems to be dragging on and on, a tad bored really, though at 10:30pm I suppose I should be sleeping… who knows maybe soon, for now though, I’ll say good night and take care!
So for the record, I didn’t die. It may of seemed like it, but the truth of the matter is - I got fed up with SPAM, so of course, I do what any good server nerd would do…. start testing everything I can get my hands on - and I came across some great tutorials, some great software, and sort of did a mix of them all to see what I could come up with, and I think I made myself a pretty nice proxy for mail, basically the way mail flows now is as such:
Outside World -> Filter -> (if clean) -> Server
So it’s pretty nice, reduces the load of servers a bit, but the catch to the system as-is, there was no front-end to manage users in the system, so in other words, I unlike my other option (which wasn’t supported by most Datacenters) which was easy simply add the domain, it did the rest, this one requires each… user… for…. each…. domain….. to… be… added. So the original method was using phpMyAdmin to manage a database layer which managed users, which while was handy, for adding say, oh I don’t know 350 users, would be a pain in the but to do at some level, so what did I do? Spent the last two days developing and deploying a very ugly, but functional PHP application which while not GREAT code, it works and allows me to make as many users at one time as needed, so if I want to add all the users on a single domain all I do is make it as such “user:password” - the system does the rest, whatever domain it is managing it appends that domain to the user so say I was using this domain, it’d append @charlesabrown.com to the name for me automatically.
Needless to say I was pretty happy, and the system has some great tools for the end users which I didn’t code, but I am going to spruce up and customize a wee bit to make pretty for my customers, but so far the testing has gone really well - my parents both have accounts on a domain I own, and they were test subjects, so far it’s tagged about 4 good as spam, but that is because I have things turned up to the highest filtering on their two accounts, simply because they get a decent amount of spam, so currently as their MX records update, they are getting a slow steady stream of things going into their Quarantine - it’s lovely.
So that’s where I have been - My goal is to spruce up the code over the next week or so and make a interface for end users, thus it’s hard wired to a customer domain, so if a customer wants the filtering - they have full access to add users, and create new logins for the training interface for their users, needless to say, very nifty!
Tomorrow I am getting my car washed, my friends are working a car wash for my old Jr. High’s music dept. and quite frankly I am a sucker for music programs and I want to do my part, told them if they sold candy too I’d buy it all up but with some light rain, a little car wash will do nicely I hope! But other than that, no major plans for the weekend, I know I have some things to do around here (read: clean room more), and I am still trying to get the budget happy so I can get on my way to an apartment, so if anyone wants to give me money on a constant basis, please do! Heck I’d even work for it if needs be… well work within reason.
Anywhoo - thats really the catch-up of things, a pretty nice week, some good things taken care of, have some sites to clear from servers tonight, and some final bits of billing to adjust for customers, but all in all, tonight should be mellow, I think since no one has responded to going to Denny’s later, I am going to go put in a pizza, and then watch last night’s Burn Notice finale, next week all the good TV starts, how will I get any work done?
So today has been quite the Monday, but in a good way, just busy busy. I solved a Frontpage server issue, which was nice, well by solve I mean the customer hasn’t come back saying it didn’t work, but it’s only 2:30pm so the day is still young! But there have been some nice things evolving here for me, so far very nicely:
New Billing System Reviewed - I enjoy it, I think Customers will too!
New Credit Card Processor - Lots of good reviews around the web, applying tomorrow - hope it helps fix up processing issues.
New Server Setup - Been wanting to do this for a while, not 100% up thus far, but by Friday hope to move support/main websites to a new server.
New Affiliate Application - To help encourage sales around, I am going to give an affiliate program a whirl, should be fun!
New TN Website - Layout is simple - not going for a lot of FLASH, just going for lots of clean, simple, concise information.
But all in all, quite a day, still a lot to do on all these projects, as well as on a few others, but it’s a start, hopefully this week I’ll get more info on the other client projects in the wings right now, as well as some side work for the kMan, would be nice, a good day thus far, though I am hoping to take a short cat-nap @ 5pm and then come back to it into the evening (unless I get a invite to dinner) - but the billing stuff looks awesome! Pretty excited overall, means a full billing audit & transfer, but well worth it!
Anywhoo - back to it, few more hours to put in before a good break… okay okay, maybe a short break to play a game really quick… lol. More later.
Well my old old old old (insert additional old’s) keyboard was having some issues, just seemed to take more and more to get the thing to type, things like oh I don’t know “spacebar” decided on occasion not to work, or the E key would simply not work either - so after thinking about it and watching CompUSA (wanted to see it first) I decided to venture down and give the new Apple keyboard a demo, the feel is actually rather nice, I saw the new iMac’s and I must say - still not impressed, Apple makes nice stuff, but at the same time its the iMac, I had hoped for some innovation in the all-in-one design, but at least it had the keyboard attached for demo.
It is very nice, still haven’t done the apple keyboard update, requires me to reboot, and I have things running for a while, so I can’t really shut down just yet, but probably tomorrow - but all in all, it is a nice feel, sleek look, and things plug in really nicely. Now I just need a Mac Pro and 2 big monitors, and I am set!
Tomorrow flags a new day, some things on the todo include - some CSS, working to make a little “Client Preview” app to replace the ol static HTML, everything will run off a txt file and let me do updates a LOT faster vs. by hand editing some HTML code, all formatting will just work, once it’s done, its easy to update and then some - also the more pressing project is to finish the first run of the sign-up app, still fiddling with AJAX to do dynamic username lookups, but I may ditch that and do a secondary screen after failure that says “Your name was taken” and have them choose another, or simply pick the username first before they re-enter passwords and such 30 times.
So! I am going to wrap it up and call it a night, as much as I’d love to stay up I want to try and keep a semi-regular sleep schedule, granted it’ll be ruined tomorrow with the eclipse, and mars, but hey such is life but tomorrow I have a lot to get done, and more fun playing with the new billing system which I think will become the new backend for billing/support on FH - and soon will do the same for TN - joy joy
Anywhoo - have a good week folks, thanks for the prayers, im’s and kind donations - who hopefully this week will go well, and who knows, in time that ol iPod may be mine again. Night!
Yesterday was a whirl wind of a day, I went to bed at 7am, only to be woken up at 9:30am by a call, which then I was awake again, and no time to sneak in a real nap, I went to my lunch meeting, awesome stuff, good solid meeting, got some ground work laid out, and I got some upfront money, which is a nice infusion to the budget right now, this month was getting a bit tight there, but thankfully with that, and hopefully something else thats brewing in the sidelines, things will all work out.
Few folks have commented to me the other day they would like to see me with a iPod again, as I do miss the ol bugger, but still holding out, if this one gig works out (which I am praying does) then things all around get easier, get a nice apartment, get savings built back up, a nice touch of stability really - it’d be a lot of work, but in the end, what worthwhile isnt? So hopefully things pan out, a iPod budget forms, and I can enjoy delightful tunes
All in all things thus far this week have gone good, I am hoping for the trend to go the same thru today, and give me a nice relaxing Friday, but life is life ya just never know! But for now, I am going to do some database layout, both for short-term and long-term of this new project, have to map out a user database, I want to do a little ajax bit if possible to do dynamic username checking, so if someone types in “buttercup” it lets them know that is already taken without having to re-submit 30 times.
So what a month July was, now into August things should get, well more crazy but some things will actually normalize for me. You know how when your a kid your excited, you get summer break, now I dread it - the roads fill up, lunch is a wait, basically highschoolers and college folk invade what was once my quiet lunch hour already a friendly battle with other business folk but as August draws on, college and k-12 start back up, and the roads will thin, movies mid-week will be quietly open, and that guy in front of me at deltaco won’t order 400 things.
So I am going to pitch a old friend on a deal, a service contract meets employment, complicated I suppose, but I want to avoid the 1099 bleh I get every year from as many sources as I can until I can get the funds together to get my LLC and avoid some of that, funds have been tight getting the new backup server, as well as the usual year round bills poping up (Car Lic. and Car Ins.) as well as the usual bills that seem to hop up to say hello, made this last month not really “thin” on the wallet, but more bad timing, as I had extra funds coming in from big projects, but sadly the timing of those seem a little off - so I want to pitch an idea for employment which is really nothing too different from things as-is, just getting a kickback for services.
In about 30 minutes (depending on transfer speed) I should have a full image uploaded to the server to deploy the new friends server, going to get things rolling on migrating the cPanel lic. then if I don’t take my mom to the beach this weekend (thinking I am not, but you never know) - I plan to get folks migrated from other servers who are on a “friend” deal, and set them up on there - now please don’t think just because its a “friend” bit, your getting skimp’d on, this server has its perks, less crowded site wise, going to have a few more “toys” long-term, as it is also going to serve as a test bed for things like Ruby on Rails, Apache2, etc. so feel loved…. or else.
Been considering a new mp3 device, while the iPod would be my prefered device since most of my music from the iTunes store isn’t mp3′d as of yet, its the easiest way to go from point a (the iMac) to point b (new 80gb iPod) but as per the previous bit above, funds are tight, and well, doesnt appeare to be happening any time soon, but I’ve heard good things about the Sansa from SanDisk, and it sounds good, does video, so like a iPod Nano with a little more beef? Who knows, but for now it’s simply blasting iTunes really loud
Anywhoo, I could ramble on for a bit more, last 48 hours have been weird, felt kind of sick, but probably just the combined fun of this week and weeks past (ie. no sleep) so I crashed most of Thursday - but it’s all coming together, I think. Need an oil-change in my car (it’s first one! tee-hee) but hoping for a productive friday, granted, I’d love a day off, but I must push on, wrap up loose ends, and hope to get a nap this weekend, who knows, may even be on a beach with a cute blond who I lovingly call my goofball niece, but sadly more than likely, it’ll be here, but things can change in 12 hours, who knows have a good Friday folks.
- so far so good, even has Tags support via Textmate (use Keywords) - pretty slick indeed! More later.
