News section

We ended up tweaking some features in the members area (see 27 April newsletter, below).  We will be doing more updating to the public area of the site in the evenings Tuesday-Wednesday April 28-29. So there may be some temporarily broken links while we add the new info.

If you want to see the current pipline newsletter, go to News/Current pipeline

More changes are coming, and we hope you enjoy them!

2010-03-09 -

Subject:  Weekly VS-TEN statistics for Webmaster
Webmaster VS-TEN 2.0,

Well, despite a data center outage over the weekend, it's
been a fairly even-keeled week, with traffic generally
between 350,000 and 400,000 views/day each day.

*** IMPORTANT ***
Auto-Pause is in effect, and that means several sites
(about 45) have been paused over the last day or two. 
Make sure you check the site status in this email, to see
if you need to un-pause your site.

I still haven't found a good way to un-pause sites,
because we're still making software that can tell the
difference between a temporary error and a permanent
error... so this will improve over time.

(Frankly, my thought for this week will be to re-test
paused sites when they send traffic out to the network...
that would be a good hint that the server is running).


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Exchange owner: The exchange owners only area is not
working... we had server issues over the weekend and
Monday, so development will resume on that page later in
the week.  That '1 page' will probably become several
pages before all is said and done.


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I hope you all have a great week.

2010-03-07 -

The data center outage seems to be over

The auto-pause system went nuts (apparently some routers failed before the data center dropped), so we have un-paused all sites that were paused this morning, through 5am server time.

2010-03-06 -

Current issues being worked on:

1. There was an issue where some entries in the blacklist were ignored. That has been corrected
2. Auto-pause is now in effect: if errors are encountered when connecting to an exchange, the interface will be paused, and an entry will be added to the \'notes\' table (under my exchanges). It will be up to the exchange owner to un-pause their exchange when the issue is resulved.

• Exchange-owner only inside board for quick member alerts
• Back-Scanning to check sites shown for compliance.

2010-03-02 -

Subject:  Weekly VS-TEN Statistics for Webmaster
Webmaster VS-TEN 2.0,

Well, we've had a volume decline this week, from 450,000
down to slightly over 300,000, because some higher volume
sites are again (or still) doing maintenance.  As always,
it should perk back up in a few days.

We have essentially been running 'even', with respect to
active exchanges, over the last 3-4 months... we gain 1-3
a week, and lose 4-6 a month.  That tells me one thing:
it's about time for a new membership drive!

We'll put together a contest and add some improvements to
the affiliate system while upgrading this week.  This all
should have be ready by next Monday, so we can bring more
systems in to 'smooth out the valleys' in volume. 
Remember, we were running a steady 250,000 views for quite
some time, now we have peaks over twice that, so the
valleys are pretty dramatic.  We will fix that with more
members, and early Spring is the time to get started!

Logs and inter-member communications systems (other than
private messaging) has not been enabled yet... we're
still doing a bit of tweaking on it.  It should turn on
before the end of this week.

I hope you all have a great week!

2010-02-24 -

Subject:  Weekly VS-TEN statistics for Webmaster
Webmaster VS-TEN 2.0,

Well, another good volume week has passed.  It was a
little more, um, 'variable' than most... we had a high
of 570,000, and a low of 350,000 views/day this week. 
Several sites are working on new interfaces, or are doing
site audits.  It is that time of year: Christmas is over,
and companies are busy getting things ready for the late
Spring/early Summer selling seasons.

That includes us here at VariSearch.  We finally got the
next Directory Patch out the door yesterday, so we're
working on a few updates here next.... keep your eyes
peeled, as several new and improved pages should show up
between this evening and Saturday (weather permitting).

Yes, I said "weather permitting"... we're expecting
snow, and I'm hoping we're not expecting another power
outage, but that's possible.  Again... It's that time of
year.

Site auto-pausing will be re-tested this evening, and
hopefully Thursday evening will be the restart of
backscanning, and some member to member features.

Don't forget we've already added the Private Mail Box
features to the site, as well.

I hope you all have a great rest-of-the-week!