I think I'm finally overcoming the inertia that is holding me back from change.

I've been running scripts for the past week transferring ALL static files to Amazon's S3 service. In the past, I had been just using S3 for backups of static files (so in case my servers went up in flames, I would have backups of all your images). Two weeks ago, I finally decided that if I am to "compete" (and by this, I mean to give up a fight that's not laughable, because the reality is I'll never be able to compete with all the $$$ backing all these sites like Vox and Xanga and MySpace), I have grow leaner. Less things I have to maintain = more time to develop features.

Sometime next week, I'm going to do the switchover to abandon aces.tabulas.com, lca.tabulas.com, and jbiel.tabulas.com as static file servers and instead to serve everything up from Amazon S3. I'm working on making the transition as seamless as possible (which includes going through all the old entries and updating absolute links to images on the old file servers to the new locations) so you don't have to do anything.

Oh yeah, I am also declaring a temporary victory over the spammers on the tagboards and comments. Since I required all guests to pass a captcha, there's been nearly zero spam (I haven't seen any, but maybe a few have gone through). I'll enjoy this spam reprieve, because I'm sure the spammers will be back.

So I have actually been working on Tabulas the past two weeks with all my spare time :) Soon I'll be able to reap the rewards of all that backend work ... and so will you!

Posted by roy on September 26, 2006 at 09:51 PM in Tabulas | 8 Comments

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Comment posted on September 27th, 2006 at 11:11 PM
I've never understood; why do people spam the website? What purpose does it serve other than to drive you nuts (which is a perfectly good reason, as far as I'm concerned.)
Comment posted on September 28th, 2006 at 12:01 AM
Basically for free advertising. Google gives your page a higher weight if you have more pages linking to it - by spamming Tabulas sites, these spam pages become more valuable in Google, and that translates to $$$ (through advertising revenue or whatnot). It's the equivalent of a moron standing on the street yelling; everybody hears him and can't do anything about it ...
Comment posted on September 27th, 2006 at 04:42 PM
hey dude, thanks for all the nifty work on tabulas.

but all this updating that you're doing, i'm wondering if that is the cause of the persistent time offset problems in some journals (see the help center for details).

it's different for some people, but for me, there seems to be an 8 hour differential between the profile time set and the time on the main page.

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Comment posted on September 28th, 2006 at 12:02 AM
But I do see your time problem; I'll take a look at it.
Comment posted on September 28th, 2006 at 12:02 AM
The front page is generated statically from GMT times, which is why the time show off by 8 hours.
Comment posted on September 27th, 2006 at 03:49 PM
we heart roy. heart, in the straightest sense of the word.
Comment posted on September 27th, 2006 at 08:46 AM
not to be a bummer but in the past month or so i have gotten 3 spam comments, which has never happened to me before. they were all on the same entry, so i deleted that entry. dont know why this happened but hopefully it was a fluke.

keep up the good work roy, you are appreciated. =)
Comment posted on September 27th, 2006 at 07:25 AM
Thanks for the heads up! I'd already noticed my tagboard spam had stopped -- yay!