talkmagic.co.uk

I see that the launch date has been put forward to the 26th....

Let's all pester seige so he launches it sooner !

http://www.nothingupmysleeve.co.uk

Kati

what is nums?...

Nothing Up My Sleeve ?

Grrrrrrr

well yeah....
what do they hav ethere tahtas exciting

Zero, not to be rude or anything...but can you maybe read over your posts and check your spelling from time to time?

Actually, the reason I put a link in my post was so that I wouldn't have to keep describing NUMS...



Kati

Demitri wrote:Zero, not to be rude or anything...but can you maybe read over your posts and check your spelling from time to time?

nuts.... it's called lazyness, and I'm always in a rush cause i check the forums during class. you know, teachers walk by and stuff

In our school we use macs so we just make the browser window small, and hide it behind whatever we are doing

Seige -

I applied for membership (of course ) and as I'm being stupid today I can't find where to log in - is it actually there?

Kati

signed up too just one thing though any chace of changing the text to yellow white on black is killing my eyes.

For all those who are waiting to hear news, there's a note on the site as follows:

*** DUE TO AN UNEXPECTED HIGH NUMBER OF REGISTRATION APPLICATIONS,
THE REGISTRATIONS FORM IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED.

A SERVER CHANGEOVER DURING WEDNESDAY FEB 1 WILL TAKE PLACE, WHERE THE SITE WILL BE UNAVAILABLE.
THIS MOVE WILL INCREASE SERVER POWER AND CAPACITY

IF YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY REGISTERED AND RECEIVED NO NOTIFICATIONS, PLEASE CONTACT retrievemember@nothingupmysleeve.co.uk

APOLOGIES AND THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE

magicdiscoman wrote:signed up too just one thing though any chace of changing the text to yellow white on black is killing my eyes.

Ello

In the main "NUMS" members only areas, where there's LOTS of text, there is a button which allows you to swap the page colours from white on black to black on white. I've been trying to adhere to the W3C.org guidelines!

Now... there's an old saying which goes "Don't try and run before you can walk!". And it's something I should have listened to.

I self-taught myself some more advanced PHP and MySQL than I already knew to complete the NUMS project and bought myself a chunk of server space. The membership scripting engine (written by yours truly) relies on automation and a clever little bit of email magic to verify email addys etc.

Now... on Jan 26, when I opened the memberships, there were over 300 applications. And yet, it seems, only about 25 emails sent out to applicants. (Checking the server logs).

It seems that I hadn't catered for a small security feature which I'd flagged which may possibly have been the cause, which allows only 1 email per 60 seconds to be automatically sent. Perhaps this is a security feature to stop automated email servers spamming?

Second point: The server 'died' internally as the database came to a screeching crunch. Mainly because my little scripting knowledge hadn't catered for such a big response. And in some areas, I'd tried to be a bit too clever for my own good! (i.e. auto-emailing a JPEG of a randomly chosen playing card with each reply, etc.)

The whole thing came crashing down around my feet. It would seem on the whole, the registration database is intact, and the mail server has a backup copy of each application. But I've tried mining through to see who had a reply and who didn't.

Oh, and on top of all that, I exceeded my monthly bandwidth allocation within just 3 days :O

So—I've invested in a private server. One with more horsepower. One with lots of GIGS of HD space. One with a 50Gb monthly bandwidth, on a tier one UK server.

And I've employed the help of a third party backend coder to clean up my scripts and make sure they work properly!

What this now means...
I will 'feed' the database entries back through the scripting engine manually. This means, you may receive ANOTHER confirmation of acceptance, with a DIFFERENT playing card.

Use the newest.

Secondly, it will mean I can host movie clips on the site.

Thirdly, I can 'map' domains in, so if any magicians are considering having a website designed and hosted, I'm your man (so to speak) and I can sort it out at a VERY reasonable rate.

Fourthly: I am looking to recoup some costs. NUMS has now COST me a total of £900. I will be looking into ways of retrieving this, but it shouldn't be too drastic.

Fifthly: I am STILL looking for contributors. [b]If you have an effect which you would like NUMS to market, I offer a copywriting, editing, illustrating and production service—basically meaning I'll take your scribbles from the beermat they are on, produce a lovely PDF, and sell your item straight from the site on a 30% commission basis. It's all legit, and with credit card processing and bank transfers in place, the site is already e-commerce enabled. (for info, contact trading@nothingupmysleeve.co.uk).

I've offered this as a service for any breed of magic creator from any skill level to share their wares for money. If it sells, you make money, if it doesn't sell, you don't loose. It's an offer, from me to you, of a non-outlay marketing channel.

Sixthly, and finally: Thanks to everyone over the years for your support with NUMS. It's rich tapestry has been defined by people like yourselves.
I hope its' all you desire!

Chris

will pm you regards quote for webspace and site.

seige wrote:Fourthly: I am looking to recoup some costs. NUMS has now COST me a total of £900. I will be looking into ways of retrieving this, but it shouldn't be too drastic.

Who will this fall to? Members or not?

seige wrote:Fifthly: I am STILL looking for contributors. [b]If you have an effect which you would like NUMS to market, I offer a copywriting, editing, illustrating and production service—basically meaning I'll take your scribbles from the beermat they are on, produce a lovely PDF, and sell your item straight from the site on a 30% commission basis. It's all legit, and with credit card processing and bank transfers in place, the site is already e-commerce enabled. (for info, contact trading@nothingupmysleeve.co.uk).

I think this is a great idea - one question though (and I decided to post it here rather than email you as I thought it may be of use to others) to what extent do you help the creator? For example, if someone came to you with an effect but needed some help researching it, would you help with that or is it expected that they have done all of that beforehand?