Banner Server Back to ImageShack

Sorry, but bandwidth is getting high on the banner backup server so we had to switch back to ImageShack. If we can, we'll switch back in a few days. It depends how much of the bandwidth is sucked up on the first day the banner is created.

Banning for Exceedingly Large File Sizes

Excessively large files are being uploaded far too often. The banner maker already allows up to 10MB per file, which is more than generous and actually means we've got a lot of processing to do on your file, so when someone uploads a file that is 60MB, it's pretty moronic. Since most people that upload files that are too large not only fail to read the maximum size limit but also the error message that appears immediately afterward, we're going to start banning them after the third upload. For those select few that chose to upload files like EXE's and DLL's, we'll be banning them after their first warning. On the extremely large files (over 30MB), we'll be banning them on the first upload.

It's unfortunate, but these people are sucking up way more than their fair share of resources. On a standard cable connection it takes well over 5 minutes to upload a single 50MB file, and that entire time that it is happening it keeps someone else from using that connection from the server. Not cool.

These changes will go into effect later today or tomorrow.

Going Smoothly Thus Far

We are still hosting banners off of the backup server without any issues thus far! I'm pretty hopeful about this, since it is an affordable method of hosting the banners without relying on an image host. If this works for at least 2 weeks worth of banners I'll go ahead and get an additional shared hosting account with Dreamhost as needed so there is more latitude. For the price, we could use five accounts without incurring any crippling costs. What will happen when we have multiple accounts is that the server responsible for the next saved banner will rotate so the banners are evenly distributed amongst them.

Keeping the fingers crossed!

Changing Traffic; Any Insight?

Alright above is a graph showing the traffic trend from profile.myspace.com over the last few months. The big dip in the middle is when Myspace blocked traffic to MyBannerMaker.com. After a couple weeks of that, they realized they made a mistake and unblocked it, and traffic went back up. Well, over the last month it's slowly been dropping and right now it's actually lower than when we were completely blocked, but I'm not getting any complaints from Myspace users and when I test, everything seems to be working just fine.

I'm really starting to wonder what's going on here. From what I can ascertain, Myspace hasn't been losing traffic over the same period of time, and nothing that I could imagine altering the click patterns of Myspace users has occurred. I figured I'd put this up and see if any of you might have some clues as to what's going on. It's getting pretty bad, and with the massive toll on ad revenue, decreasing traffic isn't going to help keep the site running and the A/C on this summer.

Note: You have to click on the graph to see the full thing.

Testing a Permanent Switch to the Banner Server

Since the last post we've been switched to the backup server and we're doing ok on it. It's hosted with Dreamhost since they're great people over there and offer a pretty good uptime for dirt cheap. They also give us a plethora of bandwidth. No, I'm not advertising for them...I won't even bother with an affiliate link (if you want to contribute, get a VIP account), but I wanted to clarify that before the following:

I'm going to try to keep the banners going to the banner server at Dreamhost as long as possible because it's super fast compared to ImageShack and it means we have less dependency upon someone else. However, we may have issues like we have in the past since there are so many banners saved and accessed every day it places a huge strain on the server. They've made some changes exclusively for us that should allow us to do this, but I can't promise it'll work. Don't blame them, either...it's a pretty hairy situation and they're doing a lot more than any other shared hosting provider would ever even consider simply because they understand and they rock.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Switching to Backup Server for Banners

We're still having trouble with ImageShack timing out. It's been an on-going issue for a few months now, and I don't expect to have it resolved anytime soon. It appears that it's been acting up more than usual lately, judging by the number of errors that are logged and reported by visitors.

In an attempt to alleviate some of the symptoms, I'll be implementing a system that will detect when timeouts are occurring too frequently and automatically route people to our backup banner server. Additionally, it will detect when your banner has a timeout and push your banner to the backup server without a reload or anything. This should be pretty seamless for you, and should only really result in having a different URL to your banner.

I'll update when I have it setup and working. For now, though, all banners are saving to our banner server and not ImageShack.

VIP Banner Settings

Somewhere in the mix of things the piece of code that actually gathers and saves the banner settings for you VIP's was broken, causing it to only save the URL and banner type, which aren't too useful. This resulted in lots of banners not working with the edit function. Due to all of the confusion and the relative uselessness of the settings saved by the broken function, I have purged all broken save settings from the database. If you're missing a banner or two, this is where they went.

The function is all fixed now, and with any luck it will remain working this time. Sorry for the complications and inconvenience this might cause!

For the record, the banner settings that are saved do not include the image. In order for us to store your image settings, we'd have to store the original copy of your image. Since some images are as large as 10MB and some of you have hundreds of saved banners, we'd be needing a lot of extra space.

ImageShack is down/slow

UPDATE: There are still some intermittent issues with ImageShack. If your banner doesn't save try to refresh/re-save the banner and probability says you've got a great chance of it working.

UPDATE: ImageShack is back online and hosting, so all of your banners should be back to normal as well!

Currently ImageShack is experiencing REALLY long connect times...resulting in the connection timing out when we try to upload a banner to them. In the meantime, we're hosting the banners on our backup banner server, but it's only capable of so much. Hopefully ImageShack gets everything working again ASAP and we can switch back over.

If you know of or have administrative say in another image host, we are currently seeking partnerships in that department.

Phew!

Today went off pretty smoothly. I didn't really receive any emails with issues/complaints, so that's a plus. I'm hoping the issue with Google Ads crashing Safari is fixed. More extensive testing is on the board for tomorrow.

PS: Thanks to anybody voting in the little poll. Normally, I don't like 'em, but the questions will help make sure the banner maker is headed in the right direction.

Banner Save Time Out

There is a known and on-going issue with the banner-upload to ImageShack.us (for hosting) timing out or not receiving a response. I've been experimenting with different types of uploading, but it doesn't seem to have much effect. It is believed that the issue is due to new hardware installed at ImageShack, which is beyond our control. In the meantime, the page should retry continuously until it gets it to upload. Since I can't control when it times out, though, it's hard to verify that it works correctly. If you have feedback on the page taking longer than 30 seconds to finish saving your banner...whether it was successful in finally saving or not, please let me know so I know whether stuff is working correctly.

Code Box Fixed

As quite a few people noticed, the code box wasn't working for a few days there. It was an accidental overwrite of a newer file by an older one that caused the problem. Despite my doubts that people were trying to use it with non-"Normal" type banners, it was, in fact, messed up. It's all fixed now, though!

FAQ Updated

A bunch of new questions were added to the FAQ, in addition to updating a couple of existing answers.

Google AdSense Ads Are Now Text Only

After having that irritating ad by Smiley Central up for a few weeks and realizing it was flash (which isn't supposed to be allowed per Google's TOS) I decided to trash the image ads from the AdSense ads. I don't really think it'll hurt much in the way of ad-revenue, and it's a lot easier on the eyes this way.

PS: Advertising is available directly through me if you're interested in advertising.

Header "Squashed"

I didn't really change the header...I just hid some of it where you can't see it. The idea was to shorten the length of the page a bit so you don't have as much scrolling to do. Every little bit helps...right?

Menu Updated

It's not the most attractive thing, but it's faster, doesn't use images, and has updated words and links. The JavaScript used to make the old menu work is gone, too...so that's even more speed for you.