What’s the hap’s?

Due to recent events on the site I feel an update is needed.

1. NSFW Controversy

As I am sure you have all noticed, I have introduced a NSFW category (Not Safe For Work). To launch the category I posted a Top 10 Naked Celebrities. While most of the comments on the list are very positive, I have had some negative feedback – including one email from a person who is unsubscribing from the site feed. This is very unfortunate as I value the views of every person that comes here. Please use the comments on this update to tell me whether you think I should remove the list and category. Majority wins – so be vocal. If you have never posted a comment before, this is the time to do it.

2. New Servers

We have now moved to a new hosting provider called Pacific Rack, a hosting company based in LA, California. I would like to thank Alex from Pacific Rack for making the transition so painless for me, and for minimizing the downtime suffered. Prior to leaving our last host, we were experiencing downtime of up to 6 hours per day. Since moving to Pacific Rack and getting the site stabilized, we have experienced no downtime at all. This does, of course, come with a caveat – the price of hosting has quadrupled. All donations toward this cost would be greatly appreciated.

3. Site Cleanup

I spent a day this week going through the code on the site to remove all unneeded extras. As a result, we no longer have comment karma or page ratings. I have also removed the majority of adverts from RobertSherman (one of our larger advertisers) to speed the loading time of the site. I think it has made a noticeable difference and I hope you are all enjoying the benefits of it. I have also made a few visual tweaks that you may have noticed.

4. Design

When I first started the List Universe, I used a free web template for the design. It fit our needs at first but I don’t believe it does any longer. If you know of a really great designer, would you ask them to email me with some samples and quotes for a redesign of the site? When you talk to them you should mention these words: Ajax, WordPress, CSS, PHP. They will understand what it means.

5. Spreading the news

Now that the servers are able to cope with a larger load, it would be very helpful to the site if you can all submit your favorite lists to social networking sites (such as reddit, fark, digg, i-am-bored, etc.) These sites can generate a lot of traffic which, in turn, helps pay the bills. This, in turn, means that I can spend money on improvements to the site. Yay!

6. Sister Sites

I have been toying with the idea of making a sister site. We currently have an RSS feed for today in history and I am wondering whether people would like a small subsidiary site which doesn’t just list the events from history, but also talks about them a little. If you think this would be a site you might visit regularly, let me know and I will see what can be done. Any other ideas for a sister site are welcome!

7. Christmas

There are only four weeks to go until the Christmas Competition closes. Please send in your lists! We have had very few submissions so far so your chances of winning a prize are very good.

8. What do you want to see?

To a certain extent I am still taking a guess at what might interest you all – some people have made suggestions in comments on various lists, but it would be very helpful to me if you can tell me what sorts of lists you would like to see. You can email me at any time ([email protected]) with suggestions. Also, please feel free to tell me what you think I can do to improve the site. Oh – and remember, you can also tell me what you definitely do not want to see.

9. Forums

The forums have been down this week as the servers are being tweaked for performance. They should be back up in the next day or two. Sorry for the downtime.