Hi all,
Due to all the server issues we’ve had lately, I had a utility installed that gives me a view into what the server spends its time doing. Thanks to this helpful little program, I’ve realized that the server spends a *huge* amount of resources dealing with banner ads. Every page refresh on the forums, the calendar, and Spots’ Corner was causing the server to work at counting the number of impressions each banner was receiving.
So, I’ve done two things to address this:
- I disabled the function which counts banner impressions. I realize this makes it difficult for sellers to monitor their banner effectiveness, but the trade-off is increased server function across the *entire* site, so I’m hoping you agree it’s the right thing to do.
- Secondly, I’ve evened out the monthly banner ad fee to $10/month across the board (previously, some of the ads were $5/month). Again, I hope you agree that this is a reasonably move, considering the calendar averages over 7,000 hits a day and the forums see over 30,000 hits a day. In addition, this price increase will make the banners work harder financially to reflect their load on the server. Don’t forget — you can still use HC$ to pay for banner advertising, effectively making it free, if you do enough talking on the forums 🙂
One other little note — I’ve added functionality for both HCS and HCM so you can see the email addresses of all the bidders on your auctions (see the main stocking list on your vendor pages — the # of bids is clickable on HCS, and the work “Auction” under stocktype is clickable on HCM). I hope this will enable sellers to contact bidders as needed. I’ve put some thought into allowing sellers the ability to delete bids, but it’s a tangled thing to do logistically, and I will hold off on that for now.
Thanks all — there are some exciting things in the pipeline, including a site redesign and a feedback system for Spots’ Corner, so stay tuned!