Admin: Technology update

tHey everyone, our website was down this evening for a while, 6/7/2014. I contacted our web host and found out there was a performance issue with the server we are hosted on. One of the causes was too much international traffic. So I’ve enrolled ubfriends.org in a worldwide optimizer solution provided by our webhost company. Now our content will be optimized for faster loading and zoomed around the world, as part of our hosting company’s global cloud network. That means our international readers in countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Germany and South Korea will be able to access ubfriends.org much faster and more reliably. We also get improved stats, additional spammer blocking and less downtime. This is a free service (but please buy my books if you want to financially support this website :) This is probably a good time to also share some helpful tech information.

How do I know if ubfriends.org is down?

You can click this link and find out if we are down or up or if it is just your computer (Then click the Check button)

How can I keep up with all those 14,000+ comments?

One of the best ways to read comments en-masse is to use our RSS content feed.

How can I get notified of new articles automatically?

Just enter your email in the Subscribe to ubfriends via Email  field above, in the right-hand side, under our Purpose statement and click Subscribe.

Also, when you comment here, you can check the following boxes to get notified via email whenever someone comments on an article you are interested in:

– See more at: http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/01/23/if-not-for-ubf-i-would-not-be-married/#comment-14188

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11 comments

  1. Hey everyone, I also did a revamp of my priestlynation.com website over the weekend. In terms of technology, I added Avatars to the discussion sections. That means each person can upload their own picture/image or use the default icon. If there is any interest in adding Avatars here, let me know. It seems to add something to the discussions.

  2. I couldn’t figure out how to add/upload an Avatar on your website? I wouldn’t mind avatars here.

    Could these visit stats (from your website) be added on UBFriends?

    Last 30 days
    Flags Countries Visits
    United States 192
    Hong Kong 22
    Canada 18
    South Korea 15
    Brazil 9
    Germany 4
    China 3
    Russia 3
    Australia 3
    Philippines 3
    Total Visits: 294
    Total Pageviews: 851

    • Sure Ben those stats are easy to add. Where does it make sense to place them? Maybe after Comments?

    • Yeah, maybe after the comments. Perhaps we could reduce from 30 to 10 recent comments?

    • Thanks for the stats, Brian. Wow, three quarters from the U.S. (68%) and Canada (6%)!

      Could you also set up the ability to upload an Avatar?

    • This averages 160-170 visits/day in the U.S. Seems a lot, but wouldn’t that be from many of the same people? Is there also a way to track how many different people there are who visit?

    • Ben, the Google Analytics stats are somewhat tedious to explain. Here is a good article: How Sessions are calculated in Analytics

    • In regard to Avatars, I’ll check if our custom theme can support them. If so, maybe we’ll turn them on and see if anyone likes/dislikes the format?

  3. So I added the Avatars… we have a couple libraries to choose from. Each user here can click the “Edit Profile” option in the upper right corner of the website after logging in.

    We might have a page load/performance issue, but maybe we’ll see how it goes. I kindof like the added personal touch. At least I’ll be smiling for each of my bitter critical comments :)

  4. Note to everyone: The new Avatar pictures were automatically chosen by the system for each person. If you don’t like the picture you got, upload a new image!