IndexU Support

This is just a friendly reminder to those users out there that have wordpress integrated with IndexU.

If you haven’t done so, you should update your wordpress installation as a new version was released within the last 24 hours due to a security issue.

I realize that some users may not be aware of these kinds of issues, but you should really keep on top of them or you could discover that your site is hacked one day.

The newest version is 2.3.3. I knw it’s a bitch to upgrade scripts every time a release comes out. Today I updated 10 installations of WordPress so I can feel your pain.

If you need assistance post a message in the Nicecoder forum and I will help you as much as I can. For a small fee of $10 I can do the upgrade and reintegration for you.

Do you run a directory for a geographical area? Do you want an Imagemap on your index? If you’re interested please contact me as I can probably accomodate your needs.

Single countries, states/provinces, counties or cities are possible. A world map however would be possible only if it was small enough so you would be limited to categories by continent.

The custom Imagemap can be made for a new category database or from your own geographic category database.

Imagemaps can also be made for many other types of sites and are not limited to geography. Almost any image could be used as an Imagemap.

Examples

• A picture of a car could be used for categories relating to autobody parts, engine parts, wheels/tires, exhaust etc.
• A picture of a person could be used for categories relating to medical specialists such as podiatrists or chiropractors.
• A picture of a furniture store could be used for categories relating to furniture such as tables, chairs, lights etc.
• A picture of a home entertainment unit oculd be used for categories relating to home electroics such as televisions, speakers, amplifiers and DVD players.

There is almost no limit to what you can do with an Imagemap and IndexU. It’s a great way to make your site look completely different from all the other directory sites out there even if you don’t change the theme!

Custom made Imagemaps start at $40 and up depending on complexity, installation is included. Paid members can receive a 15% discount.

With the integration of IndexU and wordpress many users will have found that their passwords have changed. I do apologize for this and you will need to request your password be sent to you.

Of course you can change your password once you log back in. I am pretty much done with the integration test so I should not need to reset the passwords again.

Integration is 90% complete, and once it’s done I’ll have it posted as the first addon/mod for paid members only.

UPDATE

I also found out tonight that I broke something else as well.  Apparently I set everyone’s role on the blog to blank. Which means that you weren’t allowed to do anything but look, even if you logged in you would have had issues viewing the content you could normally view. I apologize for this as well and that has been fixed.

It was with the best of intentions that I broke things.

I’ll try not to let it happen again!

I have decided to implement a subscription feature for Indexusupport.

Paid membership is priced at $50.00 per year and includes the following

• Free databases
• Three DMOZ slices per member per year
• Un-encoded mods and addons
• Tips for paid members only
• Live support
• Free themes
• Payment modules

Live support not available on weekends or holidays and is limited to 10 incidents per year. An incident is defined as a definite and separate occurrence of a single issue requiring no more than 30 minutes of time to complete. This issue will be worked on until it is fixed but will only include a singular issue. Custom programming is not included.

So how can you benefit from paid membership?

1. The live support should be more than enough to pay for itself over the twelve months of your subscription
2. Themes are currently for sale at a cost of approx $50 each. For the price of one theme you could have access a number of themes.
3. Un-encoded mods give you the ability to see exactly how they are written and modify them if you require.
4. Payment modules allow you to accept payments from more than one source.
5. Some of the databases are sold for almost as much as the membership for just one database. This is a huge cost savings.

Sign up for membership today!

I don’t know what happened, but directory-owners.com now redirects to Google.com

For those that haven’t been there before, directory-owners was a forum for, what else, directory owners. Almost all of the major scripts were represented there and it was a nice place to go to find discussions that relate to all types of directories.

I do know that the site was for sale recently, and that there were issues with a mod that I involved myself with, but I don’t think things were bad enough to close up shop.

So if the owner of D-O is reading this, and you would like a moderator that doesn’t play sides and isn’t afraid of banning people and who has mod and admin experience with VB, I’m willing to take it on.

Hopefully we’ll see it back again soon.

Update - The site is back now,  no mention of any downtime or redirect on the site.

Some time ago the domain name indexu.com was dropped. It has since been in the hands of a domain name speculator who used it for domain parking.

Tdomain IndexU.com domain was recently dropped and today it went to auction. I have been monitoring the name for a while and once that I saw it drop I purchased backorders from a number of companies.

It was snapnames that picked the domain up and after a two day auction I am happy to announce that the domain IndexU.com is back in the hands of the owners of the IndexU script.

It was a good auction, and the name was acquired for a decent price. You shall soon be able to visit the nicecoder website by using the domain name of IndexU.com

Congrats to Nicecoder for this wonderful catch.

I am currently in the process of testing out a third party application on the server called amember.

Since it’s new to me I’m not too familiar and I’ve already broken a few things (like the admin login, fixed now).

So the reason for this post is just a note saying that there may be login issues while I’m getting it to work with both wordpress and indexu. For now simply log in normally and it should work. If it doesn’t please send me a message on the nicecoder forum.

Once the integration has been figured out I’ll make the rest of the changes needed and then i’ll post a “how to” on using amember and IndexU.

Just as a note I would like to mention that I have moved a few pages, changes the tutorial pages to actually look nice and moved a few files around.

The tutorial pages require users to login now, as they should have when I first posted them. They also use part of the default theme for the site so they are no longer bland and boring.

The directory now requires users to log into the blog to view. This is causing a minor issue with a javascript error but for now I will leave it as it is simply because it’s not causing an issue.

And for those wondering, I’m not going to spill the news about how to make users login to the blog so they can view non blog pages. That one is my own secret for now.

The tutorial pages, all manuals and the script comparison page have all moved. I did my best to update every post on this site and on the Nicecoder site to reflect the new locations.

However, if you notice a broken link please let me know about it. I moved the pages to better organize the site, to make it easier for me keep track of where things are, and to make it easier when I need to update some of those items. Sorry for any inconvenience as I realize this may break some bookmarks you had.

I do apologize for the issues users may have encountered over the last few days with support from Nicecoder. I have experienced this issue with my own server.

What happens is that somehow mail gets “stuck” in queue but yet the mailserver still allows a few emails through. It’s quite strange because for a few days you think things are still normal until you notice that only a very limited amount of people are actually responding to you.

I’d like to thank users again for their patience and say that I wish I could have spent more time on some issues but I needed to be blunt and to the point on many responses simply due to the volume of replies that I needed to make.

Perhaps incidents like this are a good thing. I believe in being as open as possible with business and telling users what is going on when something happens and keeping communication going with the customers.

I believe this is what IndexU users want and it’s what I try to give them to the best of my abilities. I think I did a good job of that today and will perhaps show John and Dody that I need another raise ;)

So to all the people who wished Dody, John and myself a happy new year and that I didn’t respond to, Happy New Year to you as well. I hope that like is kind to you all and business is even better.

I’m just waiting for confirmation, but the last time I spoke with John and Dody they agreed that we could start a rewards program on the forum.

I had two ideas, the first would be a “post of the month” which would be the post that made the greatest impact on the forum. It could be in the form of a new mod, or some support, or a fix for an issue but it must be significan’t and affect multiple users.

The second idea was for a “mod of the month” type of deal where only a new mod is considered and the mod writer that wins receives the reward.

We could try to have both, which would reward more people in the end, but the rewards would be lower. Personally I feel that we should have a mod of the month reward to get those mod writers to start spitting out mods.

I won’t say what the reward is, in case they decide to change it, but it is significant.

Also, did you miss out on the lower price for licenses? No you didn’t because licenses are STILL priced at $60 for now. Honestly I’m trying to convince the powers that be that a quality product combined with a low price will get them more customers in the long run. So tell your friends, or use my referral link (not so subtle hint) and get yourself a new license.

Also, watch for the Nicecoder newsletter coming to an inbox near you. Hopefully by the time that is out I will be able to bust out the big secret that I’ve been holding back on. I can’t promise you anything, but I can at least put you on the edge of your seat!