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From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 10:01:25 -0800 |
UFOMIND NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
Below are some of my goals and wishes for the Ufomind website in 1999....
1) HARDWARE
In the early part of the year, we expect to upgrade to a dedicated web server
from our current shared server. The user won't see any obvious difference --
All of our URLs will remain the same. -- but we'll have many times more disk
space and computing power at our disposal. Response times may be faster, and
we'll have the capacity to offer more services, such as archiving more mailing
lists.
Our site is now receiving between 45,000 and 70,000 hits a day (about one every
second), peaking at about 100,000 hits on some days. In 1998, the site received
a total of 21,050,532 hits (that's right, twenty-one million), averaging 57,672
hits a day. With the new hardware, we should be able to handle several times
that volume.
Our provider will continue to be Pair (www.pair.com). We highly recommend them
to all webmasters.
2) QUALITY CONTROL
The high number of dead links on our site continues to embarrass us. In 1999,
we hope to improve our technology to remove or repair the links that no longer
work.
Quality Control will continue to be a never-ending battle in 1999. We'll do our
best to make sure everything works, but as the site continues to grow, the time
we can spend maintaining each page will shrink. The key to coping with the
growth is new programming to better automate our work, and I will continue to
work on this throughout the year.
3) NEW SERVICES
In 1999, we will continue to offer new services and innovations on our website,
all of which will be free of charge. One project in the works is a "Spam-Free
Message System," which will allow you to send brief messages to any of the
hundreds of researchers listed in our People section.
We have been reluctant to publish personal email addresses on our people pages
because they would be collected by spammers and used for unsolicited mailings.
In the new system, we still will not tell you email addresses, but we will let
you send a brief message to them through our server. There will be strict limits
on how many messages can be sent by one person, and whether the recipient
replies is strictly up to them. For hints on how the system will work, click on
the partial email address on my own page at
http://www.ufomind.com/people/c/campbell/
4) Y2K COMPLIANCE
Some correspondents have asked for our "Year 2000 Compliance Plan," so here it
is:
A) Wait for the year 2000 to arrive, then
B) Fix any software problems when they happen to come up.
5) BOOKSTORE
The Ufomind Bookstore will continue to expand at a quickening pace. We recognize
the threat posed by Amazon and the other mega booksellers and will be more
effectively countering it in 1999. In our catalog, we will be highlighting the
many instances where our prices and service are better than Amazon's. We will
also be aggressively adding more items that Amazon does not carry, including
used and out-of-print books, foreign publications and research documents without
ISBNs.
See "Ufomind vs. Amazon" at http://www.ufomind.com/catalog/philosophy/amazon/
45,000 to 70,000 hits a day does not translate into a lot of paying business. At
present, the number of orders is just enough to keep us going, so we've got to
hustle in 1999 if we hope to stay alive. Since the Ufomind Bookstore provides
the sole financial support for our website (and our two full-time staff
members), it must remain our first priority. If orders are weak, then we must
devote more time to the catalog; if orders are strong, then we can relax a bit
and spend more time on the rest of the website.
6) WRITING PROJECT
People keep asking me what happened to the Desert Rat and whether a new writing
project will replace it. It happens that I am working on a new on-line
periodical which will make no mention of Area 51 or UFOs but that I hope will
satisfy most Desert Rat readers. (Rest assured, there _will_ be aliens.) Watch
for the first installment in the early part of the year, with notices
distributed on this mailing list.
7) MAILING LIST
This mailing list will continue in 1999 as it has in 1998, with periods of
moderate activity interspersed with unpredictable periods of silence. I will
continue to be highly selective about what I release to the mailing list,
focussing on my main criteria: Is it interesting?
Glenn
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Created: Jan 1, 1999