February of 2012 was the first month I missed posting some sort of update to in nearly three years.

I thought about this a bit, and came to the conclusion that part of the problem is that my developer blog was tightly integrated into the Pennswoods Classifieds. At times when I was in the middle of some heavy changes that weren’t ready to be released yet, or when I was having technical problems, updating the blog without causing myself additional headaches was difficult.

February 2012 saw a couple of database problems, and some webserver front ends crashing and burning, and I had to choose between fixing the issues, or spending a fair bit of time updating the blog without touch the rest of the site.

While originally it made a lot of sense to have it that way, as the site became larger and spread across more machines, it is becoming difficult to have it work the way it has the last several years.

Thus the changes you see here, with the blog and updates moved into a separate piece of software that can be updated even when I am working on a problem with the Pennswoods Classifieds.

Chris

So, no bites on my April Fool’s joke? I’ll have to try harder next year.

I’ve changed the image server that handles the pictures for the Pennswoods.net Classifieds. This change actually happened a little over a month ago, but I’ve gotten a handful of complaints about blurry thumbnails.

When reposting an ad, the same image from the previous incarnation gets used again. This means that an image could possibly be in constant use for months. When the image was first handed to us, chances are it was compressed and stored in the old picture server. Now when I moved over to the new one, it was handed off from the old server to the new server, and the picture may have been compressed a second time, and the thumbnail regenerated from the twice compressed image, resulting in a somewhat blurry thumbnail.

To fix this, simply edit the ad and update the image again. You should only need to do this once.

–Chris–

I’m pleased to announce that the Pennswoods.net Classifieds division has been sold off to a fellow by the name of Craig Newmark. I understand he has a lot of experience running online classified. I’m sure you’ll be excited to see the new features he is sure to bring, such as the ability for random, anonymous web trolls to flag ads, adult oriented personals, and his endorsement of liberty destroying, socialist political candidates!

I wish you all a Happy April Fool’s Day! Now go get your prank on!

Chris

So recently it was brought to my attention that I haven’t updated the developer blog here since January. Thanks for the reminder, Amanda!

There have been a few things going on, not the least of which is the website having some trouble over the last couple of weeks. Many thanks to those of you who have written me with error messages, I always appreciate that. It helps me focus on where things are going wrong.
Tonight I’ve finished replacing a couple more machines, and so I hope that we’re going to be running stable for some time now.

Just before the website headaches I launched a brand new website, Blue Heron Classifieds. It is the first time I’ve built a site with a facebook login, but for those who prefer not to use facebook, Blue Heron is also built on top of PW Classifieds code, and you’re PW login will work there as well. You just log in here.

Early signins get a $40 credit, so if you think you might have something to advertise in the Chesapeake Bay region, you might stop in and check it out.

–Chris–

I don’t know how many people saw the blackouts on Wikipedia, Google, and other sites yesterday. I only became aware of the impeding blackout about 10 hours ahead of time, and it wasn’t enough time to prepare anything here. I suspect most of you preferred not to have the site interrupted anyway. The essence of it is that congress has been considering several proposals to alter the way the internet currently works.

Right now if someone posts an ad on Pennswoods.net offering to sell illegal drugs, pornography, etc any law enforcement agency interested in prosecuting can enlist my help in tracking down the lowlife.

Under several of the proposals, in particular the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), would put the burden of enforcement on the web sites. Under the proposed law if someone posted an ad stating they were willing to pirate music, software, sell drugs Pennswoods.net would be responsible as if we posted the ad. Every day I remove ads for that sort of crap, as well as ads from scammers all around the world. I don’t have the budget for that sort of continuous legal defense under the new proposed laws.

To read more about it, visit Wikipedia.

–Chris–

Tonight starting a little after midnight I’ll be doing the last of the end of year maintenance on the databases that power the PW Classifieds. I’ll take the website down shortly after midnight, and I’ll bring it back up as soon as I am have it finished. Unless you happen to be using the site during that time frame, you are unlikely to see anything different.

–Chris–

Tonight I’m going to be working on bringing our databases up to date again. The website will be occasionally unavailable between 1am and 5am tonight. Thank you for your patience.

–Chris–

I hope everyone is having a splendid new year, may it bring you all the best in life.

This week I’m doing some house cleaning on the databases. I’ve had the databases (and thus the website) down intermittently between 2am and 4am. Thursday (5th) and Friday (6th) mornings I’ll have the databases and website down intermittently between 1:30 am and 5am. I realize that there are some people accessing the site during that time, and I apologize for the inconvenience. I always do my best to minimize down time, but in this case it is unavoidable.

–Chris–

Merry Christmas everyone! It’s been another grand year here at Pennswoods.net, thanks to all of you loyal fans who come here to buy, trade, and sell! I hope that you have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

–Chris–