Blog

Written by Joe @ 2:11pm on 28th March 08

Well well well! The website went live about three days ago. And since yesterday, we’ve been getting loads of hits and loads of people signing up to get a free t-shirt (good for them - all 2481 right now)!

But, although this is a good thing, it also brought with it some problems. Not that this is a bad thing, because it was a good chance to fix everything and iron out any creases in the system! Don’t worry - all is well again now...

The main problem we were having was to do with emails. Basically, our server was set (by default by our hosts) to only send out 50 emails an hour. We were trying to send out around 400, so everything past the first 50 failed. This meant that people didn’t get an email, and worse still, they got a big red error message saying that there had been a problem (the server had sent back something that it shouldn’t have) even though their details had in fact been added to the database (so they could not try again, because it said they had already registered, which they sort-of had).

So, after a couple hours trying to get to the bottom of the problem and then a further two hours talking to our hosts support team we were promised that everything had been fixed. They actually got the wrong domain. So, second time around and, shock horror, it really was fixed.

I then set about rectifying all situations whereby people had not received a confirmation email with the all important verification link. There was, of course, no way of telling who had received an email and who hadn’t – so I simply sent out new emails to every-one who had not yet verified their email address. With this in mind, sorry to everyone who got two emails AND sorry to everyone who had to wait up to four hours before they got one at all.

Well, that was a fair bit of a ramble. Apologies if you got bored back then… What I was really trying to say was a big thanks to everyone who sent in an email telling us about the issue and a big fat apology for everyone who got caught up in it.

Moving on…! Another couple people have dropped us an email saying that they wanted to link us from their myspace or their personal website. Well, this is a brilliant idea and I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before… So, taking the advice on board checkout the fancy new images that you can post onto your blog or myspace or whatever takes your fancy – Link To Us.

Well I think that’s about it for now. Keep ordering those free t-shirts! And, if anyone is interested in buying a space on the free t-shirts (think of all that publicity), then do get in touch!
Thanks for reading,
Joe

Written by Joe @ 7:24am on 5th March 08

It’s been a long time in the making but, FINALLY, our (if I don’t say so myself) *beautiful*, *fancy*, *whistles and bells* website is nearly complete. The mapping software seems to work nearly seamlessly in all browsers (how us web developers hate cross-browser accessibility). IE7 still has some problems when zooming in, causing some z-index issues to arise. Anyway, I’m really quite pleased with its progress. The content is reading well and making some sense (hopefully what we’re doing here is quite obvious by now!!!). AND the back-end server side scripts are seeing no issues what-so-ever. Even the database is holding together haha!!!

You never know, perhaps in the next few weeks we shall be releasing to the unsuspecting public! Then within another few weeks it will be clear if there is room for two more entrepreneurs in the business web.

Personally, the first thing I’m gonna do when the website launches, is order myself a free t-shirt. Perhaps I can make an exception for myself and get one, only one mind, delivered outside America. I’ve gotta make myself feel special sometimes, after all!

you’re reading this, you should probably. No, wait, not probably, definitely – go get yourself a free t-shirt!!! Perhaps once a few people have signed up for one of them, we might start selling some of the fancy printing spaces on the t-shirt itself.

Anyways, that’s enough rambling for one day,
Cheers!
Joe