Site Update: May 2008

It has been a couple of months since my last administrative update so it is fitting that there should be one this month as so much is happening. I hope you find this update useful and if you have any questions or suggestions for the site, be sure to tell us in the comments!

In four days I will be flying to New Zealand from England where I have lived for the last three years. It is a permanent move. As a result, I am now in the final stages of preparing to depart which involves the awful task of farewelling family and loved ones. You might have noticed that I have not been as vocal in the last couple of weeks – this is due to packing and other preparations for the trip. Once I arrive back in New Zealand I will be able to dedicate myself entirely to the site again.

We are about to introduce a new webserver (bringing our total to two) and a load balancer. A load balancer is used when you have more than one webserver – visits to the site first go to the load balancer and it decides which webserver is doing the least work and that server sends you the webpage you have requested. This should improve our uptime and overall speed considerably.

A few people have noticed recently that the site appears to be logging them off. This is because we have to start running a special piece of software on the site to help cope with the traffic. The consequence is that it is not always able to tell if you are logged in or not. Once we have our new servers this will cease to be a problem; in the meantime you can hit the refresh button on your browser and it will show your correct login status.

We now have well over 5,500 subscribers and are receiving tens of thousands of visits every day. This has been wonderful for the site as we are seeing many new people commenting – and, thanks to the tone of comments from our regulars, people are being very respectful and insightful. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our regular readers, and to welcome the new readers – earlier on in the life of the site I would have greeted you all by name, but alas that is no longer possible as there are so many of you! Rest assured, however, that I see you all and no comments are ignored.

I would like to just remind everyone that we have forums on the site for people to get to know each other off the lists. While we do get to know each other on the lists, this is often in a limited way – the forums help to improve on that. So, be sure to head on over to the forums and introduce yourself.

We also have an unofficial IRC channel on EFnet which is getting more popular by the day. This is the ideal way to chat with other listverse readers in real time. IRC is a great place to hang out – but be warned, it can be addictive! For instructions on how to access IRC (not just for Listverse, but hundreds of thousands of chat rooms and people), visit this section of the forums for information on IRC, of simply click this link (thanks ToKiLoKi), enter your nickname, and join on the web! [NOTE: we have no control over the content on IRC]

This is also a good time for me to remind you all that we have a store! You can buy tee-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, and all kinds of things! We even have preggie clothes and baby gear. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already. You can visit the store here.

Occasionally in my admin updates I ask for some help – this is one of those updates. What I would like to ask is that anyone who has an idea for a list, or who has written a list, please send them in. Alternatively, if you have an idea for an original list but don’t have time or the desire to write it, send in the idea – this all helps me a lot – and I need the extra assistance for the next two weeks as I move and get settled. Some of our most popular lists revolve around bizarre things, books, movies, music, and religion. Do not be afraid to send something in – everything has merit and I consider all submissions – most of which make it to the site! You can make submissions here.

Please don’t forget about our hotlinks section – this is updated as often as possible. The more links you send in, the more it is updated. Please send in any links you think may be of interest to the readers here – they don’t have to be lists, they can be anything you find interesting or unusual. I would love to have enough submissions to update daily but I need more contributions for that to happen. I look at every link submitted and always publish those that I think people here will like. You can read the hotlinks here and you can make submissions on the same page.

Finally I would like to remind you all about our widgets! We have a Mac OS X Dashboard app, a Facebook app, and our own widget which you can embed on your webpage. All of the widgets are updated to show the latest lists and number of comments and they are a great way for you to share your love of the List Universe with your friends. Check out all the widgets here.