• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Potential down time coming

WebSlave

WebSlave

Maybe seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
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I just got an email notice automatically generated by my server:
Device: /dev/sda, SMART Failure: FAILURE PREDICTION THRESHOLD EXCEEDED: ascq=0xf8
Click to expand...

I have submitted a ticket to the server people, but best I can figure, looks like there is a potential hard drive failure imminent in the server.

Not sure how much of a problem this is going to be and when, but if it indicates a failing hard drive, then I suppose the server guys will be replacing the offending drive sometime sooner rather than later.

Not sure how much, if any, warning I will get as to either the drive replacement, or an actual failure.

So if the site is down sometime soon, those of you who read this will have a heads up as to why.
 
BTW, I am generating backups of all the sites on the server right now, so expect some substantial slowdowns for a while today.
 
Well, apparently a false alarm.
We have already checked the drives in your server earlier today when we received the same alert and we see no indication of pending failure. Please note that the /dev/sda device indicated in the email is a RAID array and therefore it is not actually capable of SMART diagnostics.
Click to expand...

But I am doing backups anyway. Just in case.
 
Actually, backups kind of scare me. It is the kind of thing that you never know whether you have a good backup until you REALLY need it. And by then, if the backup is not good, it is too late to do anything about it. Testing a backup for a server would mean leasing another server for that purpose. I probably should do it, but likely I never will.

The backup file for FaunaClassifieds creates a 254gb compressed file. I create one of these roughly every month. Then nightly I backup all MySQL databases. I store copies on my desktop PC and also copy them to a NAS here.

But are they GOOD backups? Beats me. I won't know until I am forced into a do or die situation. The backup either works or it is the end of the road for my internet sites.

I am pretty sure my programmer has a copy of all my vBulletin sites, but he lives in Turkey and I haven't heard anything from him since that big earthquake over there. Hopefully he is OK, but apparently a lot of people over there didn't fare very well.

Just seems like a lot of BAD things happening lately, of which, a server failure doesn't really rate very high on the list of things to lose sleep over. I am just riding the surf board as long as the wave holds me up, I suppose.
 
Would this be why the home page hasn’t refreshed since the 23rd and no one can upload pictures on the classifieds?
 
Probably not.
 
To elaborate.......... :D

To mark all threads as being read: Quick Links -> Mark Forums Read

As for the photo upload problem, I have contacted my server guys and my programmer to take a look at the problem. I suspect at update of the server OS code has caused this problem. There was an update done recently that caused some odd error messages to appear to me via email, so things like that always seem to be just the tip of the iceberg.

So, they are looking into it. ETA of a fix is unknown at this point.
 
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