I switched servers this evening. Everything seemed fine, but there are problems with recognizing the time limit on the voting. I took down the cause pages for voting because you can currently vote as many times as you want without needing to wait. I have been trying to figure out why this is happening, but to no avail. I will try to fix it within 24 hours and if I can’t, I will switch back to the old server until I can figure it out. Sorry for the inconvenience. This move to the new server is the first big step towards improving this site, so please bear with me!

Marc

Hello everyone!

I am alive. Sorry I haven’t made any announcements recently. I have been extremely busy with non-web related things. I have signed up for a new server, but I haven’t transferred Vote4Cause over yet. I have spent what time I have learning a lot about running a web server and learning new programming languages that will allow me to create a more robust Vote4Cause site for everyone to enjoy. Of course, learning these things and providing application overhauls take time and I don’t have a bunch of that right now. However, I haven’t abandoned this and I do plan on making improvements soon.

I want to address 2 concerns that seem to come up a lot.
1) The colorful avatars: As most of you know, I removed these because they were creating a strain on the server. Without getting too technical, they won’t be feasible to bring back even with the new server without some moderate coding work. I need to make a system where you choose one and then save it to the database without having them generate on the fly (how I was doing it - very easy to implement but a huge resource hog). The new overhaul I am working on will allow you to upload your own image that will be used to identify you.

2) The voting times: The voting waiting times have changed significantly (as have many things) since the site started back in November. This has acutely been due to the server strain, but also is related to what this site really is about. I go back and forth and get different opinions on the matter (of course, you are all free to make a case for one way or the other). While I love that people spend more time on Vote4Cause with the shorter waiting times, that wasn’t my intention when I set it up that way. It sort of evolved into a site where you chat and vote. It is more fun that way, but it lends itself to having just a couple of runaway winners each round… the ones that have dedicated voters. In lieu of shorter voting times, the other option is to look at an extreme like voting once a day. Then the votes become really valuable and competition each round will be more even. Recruiting a friend to vote once will mean a lot, where now those votes carry little impact. Of course, the downside is that it is boring for the dedicated supporters. So where I am leaning right now is moving away from 5 minutes. Only because it seems to be too long for the dedicated bunch to have fun chatting, but too short where the votes still aren’t that close. I will likely make the voting period even longer. I know I will get a lot of flak for this, but the site is doing its job even with the 5 minute breaks. What I mean is that money and awareness is being raised. As of this writing, the Fistula Foundation has raised $330 from a lot of the very generous and kind visitors to this site. It is something that I appreciate and I am sure many of you reading this appreciate too. This is money that wasn’t being raised before. Of course, I would like to hear what people think about the logic behind lengthening the time.

By the way, Larkia brought up the idea of creating a chat channel that I could embed into the site. This would be a more robust chat option right out of the box and would allow you to see who is online and voting in real time.

Marc

Hi everyone,

I’m headed up to SF for the weekend. I have received a bunch of e-mails recently that I haven’t responded to yet, but I have read them all. Thank you to everyone that is supporting Vote4Cause and contributing to the Vote4Cause winners. There’s still plenty of time left in the Dian Fossey pledge drive. If you haven’t pledged, please consider doing so. It is really a great organization! Have a great weekend!

Marc

Well, I would first like to congratulate the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for winning this week’s Vote4Cause pledge drive. With less than 1 day into the drive, $170 has been raised. Thank you to everyone that has contributed. It is also worth mentioning the USO here and all of the committed supporters that brought it into a close 2nd place finish. There was talk that the USO is funded by the government. This is actually not true. This is taken from the USO website:

Q: Is the USO an agency of the United States Government?

A: The USO is chartered by Congress as a nonprofit, charitable corporation. Not a part of the U.S. Government, the USO relies on donations from individuals, organizations and corporations to support its programs. The USO is endorsed by the President of the United States and the Department of Defense. Each President has been the Honorary Chairman of the USO since its inception. For more information and history on the USO, please click here.

The Vote4Cause status is one of continual development. I do this very part-time, although I really wish I had more time to work on it. I am happy to see people meeting each other and being passionate about different causes. I made a couple of changes to mitigate further chaos/crashes in the near future. One was removing the avatars. The other is extending the waiting period for votes to 5 minutes. Both of these will provide less of a strain on the site for now. Some of the timing problems this last round had to do with the daylight savings time change. I made a quick fix, but apparently it didn’t do what I intended it to do. I will try to look into it more. Things seem reasonably stable now and faster because the avatars aren’t being generated anymore. Of course, if you are running into problems or notice strange things, feel free to let me know. I think my time available for this site will be better used to build it from the ground up with a different framework, which is what I have started doing recently. It will not only make the site more stable, but will allow me to implement new features more easily and will be a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

Thank you everyone for your feedback!

As more traffic comes in during the last hours of this round, the server is more likely to go down. I will do my best to bring it back up quickly. As it doesn’t selectively lock out one group or another, it is ‘fair’ although far from ideal obviously. I think I am going to bite the bullet and upgrade the server this week. I will keep everyone posted and thank you for being patient! Good luck!!