Hum...

posted in Misc. News by swampgas on Jun 6th, 2001

First on the agenda...the popups. The majority of visitors said they really didn't care if we showed a popup...it's better than ZD dying. Of course, since I'm 100% against popups, I've worked out a deal with our host to avoid them. You might see one here or there, but definitely not on every load and absolutely not the kind that spawn more popups and you can't close them. Besides, the current popup scheme shows a popup every 2-4% of hits...so that means (at the MOST) only 1400 hits per day will see a popup, or every 1 in 25 people to the site (we only see around 11,000 unique people per day). All in all, they'll be gone soon thanks to the profit from the ZD Store. And speaking of the store...it's time. Gameboy Advances get shipped this weekend (release date is Monday)...I can't wait to hook my GBA up to the Gamecube this fall (yes, the GBA connects to the Gamecube). We're also going to be selling PSX/DC/N64 accessories since we had a boatload of requests. The supplier sent me an example of each item....the Dreamcast light gun is possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen. One more thing about the store...a long time friend has offered to help me (he came over this past weekend and helped me balance the books, check the GBA orders, etc), so expect to see him around this summer. I definitely needed the help. Let's give him 15 mins of fame: WHAT'S UP JON @ LVC? Next...the other day I had asked about people willing to help out for the PocketPC, Linux, BeOS, and Mac sections. If you didn't hear from me, just chill...I'm still wading through the hundreds of emails. Thanks for all the offers...we have some really experienced people willing to lend a hand. Finally, you may have noticed some problems over the past few days with downloading (404 errors...slowness). Our host installed a brand spanking new caching server (in addition to the 4 caching web servers already in place) and they were tweaking it. Should be fine now, and they've upped our bandwidth cap to 3Mb/s (we only reach that during big emulator releases...we normally do 1-2Mb/s during the summer season). Wait..I'm not done. A couple people on the message boards mentioned online chat (via IRC)...they wanted to shoot the goose with me and the staff. In the past, it really hasn't worked out....but perhaps we can arrange a moderated chat session with a "celebrity" in the scene. I'll send a bunch of emails out and see who's willing to do it... Ok..I'm done now :)