The Ramblings of an Incoherent Administrator

I dont really ever do this kind of thing here. But my sister-in-law is in a major bind and I'm trying to find her help anywhere that I can. insanity has setup a GoFundMe for her to help her get things back on track.

I'm happy to answer any questions about this in the comments or via a PM (if we're not mutuals just nudge me and I'll friend you back).

https://gofund.me/5f0879c5

Thank you all for considering and maybe even sharing this link out.

Hey all!

I know the site has been a little flaky during busy hours lately. I’m aware and have been looking into what’s going on. Unfortunately my Internet at home was down for several days and I don’t have wireless coverage at home so I haven’t been able to dedicate the time you all deserve me to. That said I will be looking into it and should get things a bit more stable soon.

I recently received a wonderful email from one of the creators that used to send a lot of advertising our way back when we were hosting ads from Project Wonderful.

They used to run ads for the webcomics “Sandra and Woo” and “Gaia”. They wanted to let everyone know that Gaia is coming to an end after nearly 10 years, 950 published comic pages and almost 100 million page views.

They are currently raising money via Kickstarter for a Gaia anthology ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/novil/the-complete-gaia ) that’s on track to become one of the most funded webcomic campaigns of all time.

Due to their historical support of InsaneJournal I am more than happy to give them a shout out here on my personal journal!

Hi Gang!

It appears that Yahoo/AOL is blocking all of our emails from the site again. There really isn't anything we can do to prevent this. It is also causing some other emails to be delayed. We highly suggest, if possible, to use another platform for email. Yahoo does not provide a method for us to contact them.

The main cause for this is Yahoo/AOL users using the “report spam” it “report email” functionality in their email client or in your web based email. Always report spam comments here on the site and then delete them from your email if they are unwanted. These reporting functions are what is causing our emails to be blocked at this time.

Due to the enormous success of our holiday sale. We are extending our current prices though Monday.

InsaneJournal user tessisamess is holding an auction of some really cool stuff to help her raise some money. if you've seen her stuff, it's really cool and we are also big fans of her!

I see there has been a lot of security concerns here on the site. We do take these concerns seriously and would like to address them. This will take a significant development effort to implement. And may take some time to come to fruition.

In the meantime. Understand that the security of your account, by design, is implicitly tied to the email address used when the account was created. At this time, that original email can always recover an account. This is why we have discouraged trading and selling usernames. Some users have found ways to get around these concerns using renames, though it’s still outside of our scope of support. It has always been out policy that we do not intervene in incidents where an account was traded or sold and then reacquired by the original email.

As we work through how and what we are going to implement to improve password security, we will keep you updated.

Guys, we have deiced to start using Patreon. We are going to try to build a sustainable income so we can make this site better for all of you. Please let me know what you guys think about this and any rewards you can think of that we could offer. For now we are just looking for recurring monthly income so we can start making the site cheaper and better for everyone.

https://www.patreon.com/insanejournal

Guys I am aware of this icon upload issue. I have not had time to look into it. Can you please use this thread to post any details that I can use in debugging. What are you using to create these icons. Is it always giving an error or only sometimes? Is it always the same server that is giving the error, if the server is listed in the error message?

Thanks for the help!

So I know I said I wouldn't put Permanently Insane accounts back on sale until the Holiday Sale. That said we need to raise a bit of money (we've run into the red a little bit the past couple of months) so we are making up a Holiday.

We're having a Christmas in July sale!!!

Permanently Insane accounts for $40
Permanent Extra userpics for $25
Insane Userpics for $150

The sale is going to run through this weekend. http://www.insanejournal.com/pay/

I have a friend who's little girl could benefit from a great new device that is coming out. While she's already reached her funding goals, there are some stretch goals she would like to meet to be able to get an ipad with very expensive but essential software to help her communicate as she has had some issue learning to vocalize. If you want to help, that would be awesome!

As I am not usually awake and on the site during peak hours, I'm putting this question to all of you out there.

How has the site been performing during peak hours. It seems fast to me, but I'd like to solicit your feedback. Please share this post with your friends so I can get as much feedback as possible.

Sorry I haven't been getting to all of the support request in a timely manner. I seem to have come down with the flu. I will get to them as soon as I can.

We have decided to run this sale until Friday September 7th. This will be the LAST TIME you will be able to get a Permanently Insane account until our annual holiday sale starting in late November.

Just a reminder, here are the details of the sale:

First off regular paid accounts are being sold for a significant discount

1month $3
6 months $8
12 months $15

In addition we are selling Permanently Insane accounts for $40 (%20 off the regular price when they do go on sale)

As well we are putting our rarest item up for sale right now Insane Userpics gives you access to 5000 userpics. This rare item is only available if you have a Permanently Insane account and costs $150.

In order to continue to beef up the sites cash reserves for some upcoming server projects we are holding a sale

First off regular paid accounts are being sold for a significant discount

1month $3
6 months $8
12 months $15

In addition we are selling Permanently Insane accounts for $40 (%20 off the regular price when they do go on sale)

As well we are putting our rarest item up for sale right now Insane Userpics gives you access to 5000 userpics. This rare item is only available if you have a Permanently Insane account and costs $150.

If you do purchase the Insane Userpics option, please allow 48 hours for it to be activated as this is a manual process.

Thanks for supporting InsaneJournal.

The full page ads are going to be gone completely, they just aren't bringing in enough revenue for me to be willing to take the hit on how they affect the site. It's going to take a few hours for them to cycle out of the rotation, but they will be gone by the end of the day.

Thank you all for your feedback and willingness to have a civil discussion. We are still looking at and testing several different ad networks. Please let us know if you start to get warnings from your virus protection or start to see more ads that have auto start video or audio.

After the testing over this weekend and the feedback we've already received. We have decided it's in the best interest of the site to no longer continue using full page ads on entry pages. These ads have been disabled, though it may take a few hours for them to stop showing on the site.

We are, however, going to continue having them on profile pages for the time being.

In addition we are looking into a different ad network, as we aren't totally happy with the one we are using. Hopefully we will be switching within the next week.

In addition, about the virus warnings. I have looked into these, they are not alerts about actual malware being installed on your machine. Apparently AVG has a database of sites that they deem to be unsafe, one of the full page ads has been pointing to a site that AVG determines is a "Social Engineering" risk. This means that the site is potentially trying to convince you to give away personal information, not actually install a virus or tracking cookie on your PC.

Please understand that InsaneJournal would never knowingly accept any ads that would install harmful software on our users' PCs. That is just counter-intuitive to the business we are trying to continue to build.

Please feel free to use this thread for any further feedback.

Thanks

If the ads on the site are triggering your virus scanner, please post more information about it here. Such as the message your virus scanner is giving you, a screen shot of the ad and the error, and, if possible, the URL the ad is trying to bring you to.

I know a lot of virus scanners will alert about certain cookies, and I want to make sure that the alerts you are seeing are due to that or actual malicious code in he ads.

If we can track down whatever sites are causing this, we can eliminate these ads.

Also if you come across a talking ad, please let us know so we can remove it.

Thanks,

Guys,

I am hearing your complaints and I am looking for yet another different ad network. The one we are using is obviously not going to cut it. I have to leave these ads on for the time being as we cannot afford to not have ads, but we are actively working to replace them as soon as possible.

Due to the mostly hesitant yet positive comments we have received, we have decided to go forward with the full page ad test on journal comment pages. We will start them asap and then shut them off first thing Monday morning.

At that time I will open a new thread so we can discuss their impact to your experience and how we should go forward with advertising space in the future.

Thank you all for your civil discussion and understanding as we go through this rough but unfortunately necessary transition.