Site announcements.

Last Changed on 09/09/2008

9/09/2008

If you want to add a comment or start a blog YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN! That is the whole purpose to creating an account so you can participate and add to the site, otherwise you don't need an account.

9/08/2008

I'm not sure if RSS is affected but for the past several month the cache on the website has been on most of the time to help with the sites performance. It's set to a live period of 1 hour which means if I change the site you might not see the changes for an hour but RSS send you notice right away of a site change. The upshot is you visit the site and it looks the same, you won't see the changes until the pages expire. I will attempt to remember to turn off the cache every time I do a change so you will see the changes right away.

09/05/2008

Since Spammers seem to be under control with some of the new anti-spam software I'm changing the blog settings to auto turn on after a 3 week sign up period. Also all users that have had their accounts for more than 3 weeks have their Blogging capability turned on as of today.

Remember a blog is like a diary you keep adding to it, it's not for one liners for that purpose I will turn the forum back on this weekend.

08/09/2008

Performed some updates to the Parts Place Catalog to attempt to fix some bugs, hopefully no new ones are introduced.

07/23/2008

I was forced to change the default theme,  although the old one looked nice one person reported that it did not work correctly with IE. It always worked fine with my PC using Firefox and IE 7 but when I tried it on someone else's computer at work it was all messed up.

07/07/2008

I have enabled the forum back and it's open for use. Everyone that has an account can post comments once they log in.

 

06/14/2008

It looks like something is finally going to be done about the situation, my site is being moved to a new server, hopefully that will fix the slow response.

We are moving this site to a new host!

Due to very poor performance and service during the past several month I will be looking for a new host Service Provider to host this and other sites.

My current host "Dreamhost" for about a year provided good service but there seems be a change in policy, they lowered their prices to attrack massive amounts of custumer the results have been very slow site respose that is getting worse by the week.

The service is so bad that it the delays in loading new pages can take over a minute and these are pages without graphics. One minute it takes 3 seconds to load a page a little latter it takes minutes, this is unacceptable.

I have tried to mitigate the slow response by loading a cache module so most of the time the page is not generated fresh but you more quickly receive a saved older page. This helps a little for the visitors but they might miss changes to the site and not know it.

For me the experience has been horrible, I can't have cache turned on I must be able to see the changes I'm making immediatly, also saving changes is far worst in response, so bad that many time the transfer is aborted due to server timeout and I must do the changes all over again.  So I'm being forced to make small changes and save them then continue the edit after a very slow save. This process is so bad that to add a part to the Mini Buy Catalog takes over an hour per part, I have about 60 parts to go, this is unacceptable.

 

06/07/2008

At this time 8 out of 10 applications for an account are Spammers, so I have added a couple of features to try to slow that down. My goal is to knock spammers out so I don't have to deal with them.

One method is adding questions that trick robots into answering incorrectly. A couple of days ago I added a CAPCHA questioning engine to have one of the questions changing all the time, the results are good, it knocks out 8 out of 9 Spammers right off the bat so they now can't finish the application correctly. If you answer incorrectly it quietly tosses your application in the trash bin.

Today I just added a new method and I mention it because it could affect users, maybe. It's a set of modules that checks the IP address of anonymous users against a database of known spammers, if you are on the list, you will not be able to even see the site.  I picked this particular list because the low numbers of false positives so hopefully no one will be affected.

It uses an interesting concept, it has a bunch of dummy sites that email home to let them know that a spammer tried to create an account on the site.  They call the sites "honey pots" I added two sub-domains to their list of "honey pot" sites, if it works well I will add a "honey pot" sub-domain to all 11  domains I own to help catch spammers.

 

05/12/2008

It looks like the present ratio of legitimate applications to bogus spammers is roughly 1 in 5 is a spammer trying to get in. So far no internal user problems have croped up, lets hope it stays that way.

05/04/2008

I have re-enabled registering to the site, we will see how it plays out. Registering allows you to make comments, and optionally create a personal blog.

The site domain name moved over to the new host without so much as a blip. The files are really located at dspradio.org and that is considered the main site.

I keep debating when to have the next Mini-Sale, I have the parts in stock, all the components of the buying site are in placebut the fine detail such as photos, and part weights are not in place, the only problem is that Dayton is coming so I will be out of town for a week

 

04/20/2008

I moved the main site content so that when the softrockradio.org domain is being moved the site can be accessed at

http://www.dspradio.org/

In preparation of the next buy I started ordering parts this weekend, so far I have ordered around $800 worth of parts, I will be ordering additional parts over the next few days.

The sale will be anounced once I have the parts in stock and the website to take orders and handle transaction has the item details setup.

 

 

04/03/2008

I worked on the VirtueMart software late last night and made some significant progress on making some of the important features work. I can now compute mailing cost correctly, it's not finished in that all entries for shipping methods and weights are not in, but it work in principle. There will be the option of selecting regular First Class Mail (cheapest) or Priority Shipping for both domestic and International shipments for those in a hurry.

The PayPal module has been configured and I modified the software to automatically add the Paypal fees to the buy when paying by PayPal, it also sends you to PayPal site with all the information of the order so that is good. Those two items were critical to making the process a lot easier for everybody.

Other features like invoice handling, status notification, and other sundry part maintenance has been tested and found to work fine. There is even a feature that will notify you by email when a part becomes available. Barring any work related emergencies I should have the guts of it ready by the end of this coming  weekend.

 I put the "Recent blog post" and "Recent comments" list back on the left side of the page to help people find new content.

 

04/02/2008

The VirtueMart software is installed and I'm learning how to use it and set it up, right now I'm working on having the order system talk to the USPS office and get mailing prices, mailing labels, stamps, and customs forms printed. By tomorrow the USPS account should be live and I can start testing it. I also did some information gathering on how to configure the PayPal module to automatically calculate the fees that they charge, it looks like it's not difficult.

The shipping module is active and starting to work, but all is not well yet, the USPS module does not show First. But one way is working but it's a lot of work, I have to enter a massive table of weight versus cost, after some testing it works well.

 

03/30/2008

On the next buy I will be doing it through a completely different mechanism to overcome some of the massive problems I've encountered in the Mini Buy.

I have installed some software that will help eliminate many of the problems and make it considerably easier to carry on a buy and make it less work and stress.

I have installed VirtueMart a catalog based shopping cart style way for people to enter and pay for their items, here are some properties of the software;

1. Catalog based organizing of components with pictures and description of components.
2. A shopping cart based purchasing that most of us are familiar with.
3. Keep track of running inventory so items can't be ordered that are not available.
4. Have special dated pricing sales, and support for free components with your purchase.
5. Collect name and mailing address before purchase is allowed to proceed, will save the information for later use.
6. Pay directly through PayPal at the time of purchase.
7. Ability to print pick ticket, mailing labels and postage directly from orders.
8. Provide current feedback to the users on the status of their orders.
9. Ease of maintenance so new items and sales can be easily added.
10. Automatically calculate postage and offer alternatives shipping methods when possible.

There will be some changes as to how the sales operate to make it easier on both the buyer and myself;

1. Only after items that are in stock will they be put on sale.
2. Popular items will be in perpetual sale as long as there is a demand.
3. More items will be added on a continuous basis to build up a large inventory of usable parts
4. Free items will continue to be a feature with reasonable size orders.
5. Shipping will be at cost or very near, this is a issue with a lot of places that people buy from.
6. Orders will be shipped within 1 business day after the purchase, no pileing them up to the end.
7. Prices will be re-adjusted to cover all expenses and a small fudge factor to cover all items not selling.
8. I will attempt to make the process so easy that I can maintain a constant sale.

Here is a link to the software;

virtuemart.net/

Here is a link to the store, it just has sample data loaded at this time, but you can play with it;

http://store.dspradio.org/

After the next few days when I finish mailing some of the remaining Mini Buy packages I will be working full time to get this ready ASAP.