| Userpics |
[Aug. 21st, 2010|12:54 pm] |
I have finally gotten around to switching the userpic count on free accounts to 50. I have also added a new account class that has the exact same capabilities as a free user, except 200 userpics, for $1.50 / month.
In other news, we're losing money again. From 1 May 2010 to 31 July 2010, we have taken in $69.00, but spent $247.50 in hosting fees. That's a difference of $178.50 coming out of my pocket. As some of you know, I do IT contracting on the side, but my contract revenue has been low lately. I cannot afford that kind of loss every month. Unless account revenue improves soon, I will be forced to shut down the site.
-- ![[info]](http://www.inksome.com/img/userinfo.gif) staff_kit |
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| Update |
[Aug. 9th, 2010|08:45 pm] |
I don't really have too much in the way of an update for you folks, but I wanted you to be sure we're alive and well and still tinkering away over here.
A fair number of you expressed an interest in just being able to purchase icons. I hear you, and I'll discuss with Kit if and how we can set that up. It seems to apply to a number of people and any source of income that isn't sponsorship is entertained, welcomed, and hopefully to be implemented. So thank you for your suggestions, and feel free to keep them coming.
Sorry I don't have more for you, but it's been over a month and I just wanted to check in with you guys. Thanks for all your continued support!
--staff_shell
EDIT: For those who are unaware, please note that updates about downtime are posted at our twitter and LJ community. If you experience downtime, please check either of those sites for an update! |
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| Update |
[Jun. 15th, 2010|09:07 pm] |
We apologize that this update comes so late. There have been some hiccups in our own personal lives that made it difficult to get to anything but the basics to keep the site running. Thank you for your patience.
Where we stand now is that we're doing all right for money. We keep barely managing our monthly bills, and it's just enough to keep the lights on. We could always do with more. We know there are plenty of things along the site that need fixing, but we frequently don't have the time to work on them. There's also the project of converting to the Google App engine as promised.
We will still be cutting down icons, but that may take a bit of time until we have the chance to do so. But the cut to 50 icons for free accounts should still be in the works.
To that end, we're going to put our focus into that conversion. That does mean however that current problems will not be worked on. What that does mean though is that once we've finished converting, those same problems should not exist. In the long run then, we'll still be fixing them. We just will not be spending the time now to fix errors now that will be just as easily fixed once we're running Google App.
To address the site going down yesterday, we're sorry it took so long to come back up. Our host had a bad stick of memory and basically couldn't quite support the site, and so it was down until they got us up and running again. We tried to keep you as updated as possible via our twitter and the livejournal community.
Again we apologize this took us so long to address and we thank you for sticking it out with us.
- staff_shell |
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| Future changes |
[Mar. 10th, 2010|09:39 pm] |
Following on the heels of this post, we have decided to lower icons on free accounts, but down to 50 not ten. The change will still occur on April 1st. We need to encourage people to buy paid accounts and extra icons, and this is a step in that direction. However dropping down to ten might have been seen as too large a loss, so we reached a compromise.
There will be more efforts made to encourage more money coming in to the site, as well as things to improve the site's looks and functionality, as we have time to implement them.
Thank you for your suggestions so far; they are being considered and taken to heart.
-- staff_shell |
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| Changes |
[Feb. 21st, 2010|02:37 pm] |
For the past few months, this site has been losing money. I haven't had the time or energy to work on it, and unfortunately those people who have offered to help have not been able to help in the area that Inksome needs most - programming and technical expertise. This is not to say that I am ungrateful for the help I have gotten - I am very grateful to all of Inksome's volunteers. But if Inksome is to become a viable concern, I need two things. First, I need for this site to stop losing money. I cannot afford to pay all of Inksome's bills. Second, I need help maintaining and improving Inksome technically.
The second issue I'm trying to address on my own, but I haven't had much luck. The first issue, however, is something I can do something about. Starting April 1, free users will no longer have 150 userpics. Free users will instead be limited to 10 userpics. Paid and permanent users, as well as early adopters, will still have the same number of userpics they currently have. Also, if by April 1 of 2011, the site is still losing money, I will shut it down permanently.
staff_kit |
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| Back online |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|09:21 pm] |
The good people at Leeware inform me that our new PSU is installed and we are up and running. |
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| Planned downtime |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|12:33 pm] |
The good people over at Leeware, Inksome's current host, tell me that the PSU (power supply unit) in Inksome's server is on its last legs and they need to replace it. So at 9:00 PM CST tonight, 22 November 2009 (3:00 AM, 23 November 2009, GMT/UTC) Inksome will be down while they replace it. The whole procedure should take no more than thirty minutes. |
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| Embedding security issue on LJ |
[Sep. 23rd, 2009|07:48 am] |
LiveJournal experienced a limited security breach on 22 September 2009. This security breach involved embedded content. As Inksome does not currently support embedded content, it is my belief that we are not vulnerable to this issue. As always, however, if you have experienced any sort of security breach, please let us know by filing a support request.
staff_kit |
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| Want to help with the refactor? |
[Sep. 1st, 2009|11:28 am] |
Then join ![[info]](http://www.inksome.com/img/community.gif) inksome_dev. |
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| Feature requests? |
[Aug. 30th, 2009|01:22 pm] |
What features would you like to see in the new Inksome?
Planned features (note that a lot of these things might "go without saying", but I want to be clear):
- No more "friends". Instead, the journals you read will be your "subscribed" list, and the users that read your journal will be your "subscribers". (Note: apparently this is what DW does, but I promise I came up with it independently. Great minds think alike. *g*)
- Public / private / all subscribers / custom subscribers groups visibility of posts
- Ability to control who can comment on your posts
- Ability to screen comments on your posts
- Userpics on your posts
- Custom mood themes
- Ability to edit posts and comments
If there's a feature that IS currently supports that I've left out of here, let me know. It's probably just an oversight on my part, but there are certain things - like BML - that I don't intend to support. Also, interoperability with existing LJ clients is important to me, but it's not happening until I've got the basic feature set implemented. |
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| Coding progress |
[Aug. 28th, 2009|02:13 pm] |
Just wanted to let you all know that the task of porting Inksome to Google App Engine has begun. It's going to take a while to complete, and it won't even be ready for alpha testing for at least another month, but it's in progress. :)
I've set up a page on SourceForge for it: http://inksome.sourceforge.net/. Donations to this project go towards helping me pay my bills while I'm redeveloping the site.
It occurs to me that while I posted about the Google App Engine plan in staff_kit, I didn't do it here. So here's the plan:
I'm redeveloping Inksome to run on Google App Engine. This allows us to (hopefully) reduce our expenses, because up to a certain level of resources Google App Engine is free, and increase our reliability, because Google App Engine is a cloud platform - there's no one machine to go down. This will require a complete redesign of Inksome from the ground up, however, because GAE doesn't support Perl or MySQL. Thus it's going to take a while. :)
And yes, this means there's another Switcheroo coming up sometime next year. |
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| State of IS |
[Aug. 23rd, 2009|09:16 am] |
I need to make this a monthly thing, I know. :)
Right now, we're doing all right for money. If my figuring is correct, we have four months' worth of expenses in the bank account.
The Google Apps project is stalled ATM. I've had other things on my plate - things that I need to do to get paid *g* - so I haven't had time to do the development like I've wanted to. I'm still looking for people to help me.
mysticshell, who has been handling paid accounts, informs me that she needs help processing paid accounts. If you'd like to help, please let me or mysticshell know.
I'll open the floor to general questions. |
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| New pricing and site plans |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|09:16 am] |
As I said in my post in staff_kit, I've lowered the prices for paid accounts in an attempt to increase our paid account volume. The new pricing has been updated in Paypal and is listed on the Paid Accounts page.
I would like to address those people who suggested I put ads on Inksome in order to increase our revenue and help keep the site afloat. While I appreciate the suggestion very much, I'm not going to do that. Not only do I not wish to go back on my "no ads EVAR" promise (though that's a big thing) but putting ads on the site is a whole lot of trouble. I have to seek out advertisers for one, then add code to various parts of the site to display those ads to free users, but not paid users. And then there's the fact that Internet advertising is becoming less and less viable as a revenue source, so I'd have to display more and more ads, and more and more annoying ads, to keep up revenue. It's just not worth it, IMO.
Finally, as I said in my post, I'm going to be redoing IS in Ruby on Rails. Any Rails geeks out there, or anyone who wants to learn Rails with me, is welcome to help - most of the IS code will be GPL'd anyway. Why Rails instead of PHP or Perl? Resume fodder, plain and simple. Unless and until IS can pay me, I need to work a day job, and Rails would be a nice skill to have. |
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| Unplanned downtime |
[Jan. 16th, 2009|01:06 am] |
Apologies, folks - looks like our server went down temporarily in the middle of the night. Thanks to a quick call from mysticshell, we're back up and running. |
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| I'm not dead! |
[Jan. 7th, 2009|12:47 pm] |
Yes, Inksome is still a going concern! We had lots of people join yesterday so we thought we'd let you know that everything is fine. As always, this site is run by one guy, staff_kit, in his spare time. To make that spare time even less, he just got a new job (and it's a good one with benefits!) which comes with a much longer commute.
Over the holidays, he and his wife (me!), were also very busy with a fundraiser for our church and spending time with family.
This is also a request that any kind of technical problems or issues about payments be discussed either on the support boards or in an email to Kit. Technical problems go on the support boards and payment problems go to Kit. Please do NOT use the LiveJournal community, tsfkas, as we don't always see these posts right away and we'd like to avoid rumors flying all over the place.
In conclusion, We Aten't Dead!
There are two geeky fandom jokes in this post. Can you find them?
Love,
staff_jamie |
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| Downtime |
[Dec. 8th, 2008|06:54 am] |
Apologies, folks - looks like IS went down sometime in the night, and I didn't get it up (snicker) and running again until this morning. We should be back now, though.
Thanks to mysticshell for alerting me. |
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| Inksome's privacy policy |
[Nov. 25th, 2008|06:57 am] |
So I hear LJ have updated their privacy policy. In a spirit of fairness, here's our unofficial policy - unofficial only because it's not written in legalese.
Inksome will not share your personal information with anyone outside of Inksome staff, Inksome volunteers, and law enforcement officials (when we are legally required to do so). That's it. I don't want my personal details being sold to a zillion and two different marketing agencies, and I don't expect you do either. |
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| Roleplay hosting now open for business! |
[Nov. 22nd, 2008|11:10 am] |
Inksome now offers roleplay hosting! For $50/year, you get:
- A reserved block of usernames with the roleplay's abbreviation. Every username created with that group's XXX will be a character in your game.
- 50 invites to use for character players or additional communities
- A paid IS community (which means the ability to customize it to your heart's content)
- 500 MB of webspace on IS's server to create a "Story So Far," the list of available characters, and all the OOC stuff in a way that avoids some of the inconveniences of such info being buried in a community journal.
If you're interested, contact myself or staff_jamie. |
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| Temporary downtime |
[Nov. 22nd, 2008|10:46 am] |
I need to take the server down for just a few minutes. I don't expect us being down for more than 15 minutes at the outside. |
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