Website experimentation

Forum for things that doesn't really have anything to do with hMailServer. Such as php.ini, beer, etc etc.
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martin
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Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-09 14:11

I'm doing some experiment with the web site, such as trying out CloudFlare as a content delivery network to see if I can speed up things a bit.

Everything should keep working as now. Hopefully.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-09 17:50

Top header banner seems to have lost following or link to it is wrong.

http://www.hmailserver.com/top_picture.png

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-09 20:50

Thanks. :)

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-16 04:56

is the online documentation supposed to have google ads in it ?
hmailads.gif

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-16 09:30

Yes and no. I'm having some spare time so trying out different things. I wanted to see what Google Adsense looked like, but I found it to 'verbose' so I've disabled it again.

(I would not mind making some money off hMailServer if I could.)

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by mattg » 2014-07-16 11:02

Are you accepting donations again?
Just 'cause I link to a page and say little else doesn't mean I am not being nice.
https://www.hmailserver.com/documentation

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-16 14:58

martin wrote:Yes and no. I'm having some spare time so trying out different things. I wanted to see what Google Adsense looked like, but I found it to 'verbose' so I've disabled it again.

(I would not mind making some money off hMailServer if I could.)

Understandable, it's a major piece of work.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-07-18 02:45

mattg wrote:Are you accepting donations again?
A good question. Martin are you going to monetize hMail? In the past you have always stayed away due to tax issues etc.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-18 03:06


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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-07-18 13:40

Sweet :)
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-25 20:24

martin wrote:(I would not mind making some money off hMailServer if I could.)
I suspect an email client would be more productive in making money than an email server. The potential client base would be massively larger. But with anything like that you have to provide support if people are paying for it and that requires long term commitment to it and the time to do it. But a quality email client retailing for 30 to 50 euro would sell IMO.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-27 09:41

percepts, sure, but I find writing client-side stuff much more boring. ;-)

I actually get quite a lot of contacts from people who want to pay for help, but I have a lack of time and the long-term stuff is also an issue. (Can't sell 3year support contracts exactly..:)

hMailServer will remain open source and free, but maybe I should just put up a "Pay" button anyway so that users can choose between free version and paid for. It's kind of conter-intuitive that people would choose the pay version, but I've read that other people have done this and it has worked.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-27 12:37

I'd be inclined to put a small donate button/link to the right end of the logo top banner on every page so its more obvious but not too intrusive. At the moment you just don't see it unless your're a first time visitor to the site. Or at the bottom of each screen but at the top is more likely to work as a constant little reminder about it which gets to peoples conscience.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-27 14:24

Ah, looks like you already put it in top menu and I hadn't even noticed :oops:

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-27 19:35

Even I can see it now :lol:

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-27 19:46

No no, I actually put it on the top after your suggestion.

Will see what effect it has. :)

Thanks for the idea.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-27 19:58

Also simplified the download page a bit:
http://www.hmailserver.com/download

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-27 20:55

Ads are shown again now, but only if you come here from Google/Bing. Then ads are shown for one hour.

Want to see if anyone actually clicks ads.

If you're reading this, please *dont* click any ads. :)

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-07-28 16:38

Worrying, I wasn't planning on needing this service for some time yet :lol:
Untitled-1.gif

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-07-28 20:37

Haha, that's hilarious :)

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-08-01 19:17

Well, fun fact: Even though the Donate-link got bigger and so, the number of clicks on the link dropped with 80%... :)

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-01 20:51

its not the number of clicks that counts, its the number of donations that matters. Google ads are a different kettle of fish.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by mattg » 2014-08-02 02:33

You also have to remember that the donations hadn't worked for so long, and there may well have been a spike in clicks due to it suddenly being available again.

Give it a couple more weeks and then swap back, and see if the # of clicks + level of donations increase...
You could ask for donations explicitly at time of download, or even have a nag ware type reminder for registration on startup like many other free software...
Just 'cause I link to a page and say little else doesn't mean I am not being nice.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-08-04 15:42

mattg, sure, but the numbers are pretty consistent. I added it to the menu again and the numbers went directly back to 'normal' again. Of course it's not the number of page views which counts, but if twice as many people clicks the link I suspect the turnout should be better.

If you look on this graph, the first arrow shows the lower area where I just had the green donate link in the corner. The second area points at the higher area when the link is back in the normal menu again. (The white area is where I was adding it so the numbers aren't reliable (they spiked because I was visiting the page 200 times or something..:))
donate_page.png
donate_page.png (10.94 KiB) Viewed 74783 times
The Y-axis goes from zero to 100 so even if it's a short time interval, a drop from like >50 views to ~5 and then back up to >50 should be a pretty safe indication. But what do I know, I don't know how statistics works. :)

I won't implement any nag-ware-reminder, those are so annoying. :) Maybe something after download has started.

Either way, this is not something I'll get rich on. But it's fun (and scary) being back coding php a bit....

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by SorenR » 2014-08-04 15:52

martin wrote:mattg, sure, but the numbers are pretty consistent. I added it to the menu again and the numbers went directly back to 'normal' again. Of course it's not the number of page views which counts, but if twice as many people clicks the link I suspect the turnout should be better.

If you look on this graph, the first arrow shows the lower area where I just had the green donate link in the corner. The second area points at the higher area when the link is back in the normal menu again. (The white area is where I was adding it so the numbers aren't reliable (they spiked because I was visiting the page 200 times or something..:))
donate_page.png
The Y-axis goes from zero to 100 so even if it's a short time interval, a drop from like >50 views to ~5 and then back up to >50 should be a pretty safe indication. But what do I know, I don't know how statistics works. :)

I won't implement any nag-ware-reminder, those are so annoying. :) Maybe something after download has started.

Either way, this is not something I'll get rich on. But it's fun (and scary) being back coding php a bit....
Web crawlers ??

I used to have a hidden link on my homepage only "visible" to web crawlers... It turned out that I did not have nearly as many "human" visitors as I thought :mrgreen:
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-08-05 13:57

I think Google Analytics is pretty good at excluding web crawlers so I suspect it's not that. But sure, could be.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-05 14:17

what is that a chart of, clicks or impressions? And of what, a specific page or what ?

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-08-05 14:26

page views, donation page.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-05 14:34

I suspect the drop was due to people not realising the donate button, at an angle so it looked like part of the web design graphic, was a link.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-08-06 20:11

Now all the access to the site should be https. If you try to access using http, you should be automatically redirected to the https version.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by mattg » 2014-08-07 01:10

Having intermittent certificate errors.
This post page is fine, but thread page said that no identity info was supplied.

Had a similar 'we can't validate the issuer' type error with my hmailserver.com email address this morning

I'll email you some screen shots
Just 'cause I link to a page and say little else doesn't mean I am not being nice.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by SorenR » 2014-08-07 01:35

mattg wrote:Having intermittent certificate errors.
This post page is fine, but thread page said that no identity info was supplied.

Had a similar 'we can't validate the issuer' type error with my hmailserver.com email address this morning

I'll email you some screen shots
Try change the URL in your signature...
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by mattg » 2014-08-07 01:44

see what you mean...

Now it's not a link
Just 'cause I link to a page and say little else doesn't mean I am not being nice.
https://www.hmailserver.com/documentation

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by SorenR » 2014-08-07 01:59

mattg wrote:see what you mean...

Now it's not a link
I think it OK for it to be a link, if you use https..

My Chrome is bugging me about element on the page not being "safe" - but not every page.. And the Board Index is fine here..
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-07 02:55

its working OK for me on IE11

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-07 21:20

It's my Avatar that's causing issues.

Code: Select all

The page at 'https://www.hmailserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26720' was loaded over HTTPS, but displayed insecure content from 'http://damnation.org.uk/80x80.jpg': this content should also be loaded over HTTPS.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by mattg » 2014-08-08 01:14

SorenR wrote:
mattg wrote:see what you mean...

Now it's not a link
I think it OK for it to be a link, if you use https..
I get this when I try to add a ... to my signature
You cannot use certain BBCodes: [url].
Just 'cause I link to a page and say little else doesn't mean I am not being nice.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-08 01:20

That's true for signatures i believe. test

I re-added my avatar as https:// and i don't get issues any more ;)
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-08 11:56

^DooM^ wrote:That's true for signatures i believe. test

I re-added my avatar as https:// and i don't get issues any more ;)
You have and now I can't see it. When it was just http I could

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by SorenR » 2014-08-08 12:42

^DooM^ wrote:That's true for signatures i believe. test

I re-added my avatar as https:// and i don't get issues any more ;)
Certificate issued to fatcow.com...
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-08 20:06

So you still get issues? Fatcow.com is a hosting provider.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-08 20:09

Now I see no avatar and no place holder.

Code: Select all

			<td valign="top" class="profile">
				<table cellspacing="4" align="center" width="150">
			
				<tr>
					<td class="postdetails">Site Admin</td>
				</tr>
			
				</table>

				<span class="postdetails">
					<br /><b>Joined:</b> 2005-07-29 15:18<br /><b>Posts:</b> 13836<br /><b>Location:</b> UK
				</span>

			</td>

Wouldn't it make life easier if you just uploaded your avatar instead of hotlinking it :wink:

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-08 20:31

It would and that's what i tried to do last night but i see no way to upload it :(
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-08 20:38

maybe you have to remove hotlink and save before it becomes available unless its a "site admin" setting you've disabled.

Just checked, there is an admin option to enable avatar uploading. Is it ON

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-08 20:54

Ok I see why I can't upload.

Warning. The entered path “images/avatars/upload” is not writable.

I don't have access to the server hmail is hosted on now it's moved since i last logged in, so this is something Martin will have to fix.
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by percepts » 2014-08-08 21:07

I could see your avatar when it was http so I don't know why you needed to change it.

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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-09 01:07

Was nothing to do with seeing it, was showing an https error because it was being sent in the clear instead of being encrypted. Doesn't really matter just more of a want than a need :)
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by SorenR » 2014-08-09 01:16

^DooM^ wrote:So you still get issues? Fatcow.com is a hosting provider.
It showed a broken image and when trying to open the image in a new window it said the certificate for fatcow.com did not cover damnation.org.uk...
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by ^DooM^ » 2014-08-09 01:44

yeah i never bothered with a cert for that domain, don't need one. When write perms are sorted will put it back!
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Re: Website experimentation

Post by martin » 2014-08-14 12:24

Builds have now been moved to https://build.hmailserver.com/ as well (from http to https, that is). Guess it's good to have encryption when downloading these files.

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