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Category: Website Changes

Thanks to All Who Donated During 2023

When I first thought about how to pay for the not inconsequential overhead costs of running a 5000 page website I was kind of skeptical about supporting the cost with ‘donations’. Certainly some websites operate on donations, but we are fairly specialized here on Innovation Income Investor which means that our appeal is more limited than a website with broadly based security coverage.

I was wrong about doubting the generosity of people supporting our website. Kind of like some of my interest rate predictions folks have proven me wrong. Since December 2022 (when the donation page was launched) we have had donations of all sorts – from just a few dollars to $100’s of dollars and everyone of them is appreciated. We even have some folks who send a check every month to our P.O. Box. Some of the ‘paper checks’ we receive in the mail even have nice notes in them – I really appreciate that we have folks that do not participate in commenting etc., but who are newer to preferreds and baby bonds and who find value in the comments that all our ‘experts’ (not me) post.

The donations received come in very handy–in fact December is when the tech folks start sending the bills for basic operations for 2024–$1,400 which is just to keep operating online. Everyone wants a little ‘taste’ nowadays–I even have to pay for the ‘like/dislike’ button (not much fortunately). A couple weeks ago I received a note from my tech folks for their ‘retainer sale’–so I will invest some money there since security issues are kind of an ongoing thing and believe me no one does anything for less than a couple hours of billable time–when I call them I know that $200-$500 is gone in a flash. I currently pay $115/hour for the tech support.

Just to let everyone know I do not even know who gives what in support of the website. My wife takes care of that stuff and of course everyone comments on the website with ‘screen names’ so we have ‘screen names’, ‘real names’, ’email addresses’, etc. – there is no one here trying to match donations with ‘screen names’.

So THANK YOU TO ALL–to donors, commentors and even lurkers. The most important part of the website is YOU–without you all it wouldn’t be worth the effort operating this website. After 17 years of publishing this (or predecessor sites) kind words and comments make it all worthwhile!!

Sortable Spreadsheet Access Fixed

My apologies to those that have tried to access the sortable spreadsheet. After a security incident a week ago I had to go to my back up copy of the sortable sheet and in the process did not get the setting right—i.e. folks didn’t have easy access.

I hopefully have fixed the setting and those that follow the instructions here should now have easy access once again.

Working on Commenting Speed

Many have noticed that once a comment is made the comment takes too long to post – just spins for 5-30 seconds before posting. Some time ago in an effort to ‘retain history’ I set things up so that comments would never be eliminated–some folks like to look back for comments. I am guessing that we are maxing out the ability of WordPress to process so much history. Some of the most popular pages (i.e. sandbox) have over 15 months of history and 1000’s of comments. I will need to trim this hisory somewhat–how much I am not certain, but to the point where the site speeds up.

Tweaking the reCaptha Security

We’ve had a couple folks note that the reCaptha security can sometimes be difficult for them.

I want to make everything as easy as possible for folks, but I have to try balancing easiness with the need to keep the ‘bots’ off our site. So far (in 6 years) I have been quite amazed to find very little bot action getting through–and believe me they are trying every hour of every day–I have the stats and they are crazy numbers hitting the site daily.

I have made a tweak to the security and we will see where we go from here. I will observe the spam and bots and see if it increases–if I see a bunch of bots getting through then I will have to re-tweak, but if not we will leave it with new settings. I do not want to be specific with the changes I have made (or will make) because I don’t want to attract spammers.

“Reply Link” Not Adequate

There have been some comments about the ‘Reply Link’ disappearing in the comments sections.

My research has found that the current website setup allows for only 10 comments in reply to an initial comment before the ‘reply’ link disappears. I don’t remember this being an issue before–or maybe it was and I missed it.

Regardless the setting only allows 10 at a max–this can be changed but it will require a bit of coding to fix–and while there is a chance I could do it myself I will get it on the list for a ‘pro’ to do. I don’t want a 69 year old doofus (me) messing with the website code.

So for the moment please bear with me until we can get it adjusted.

Commenting Page Length Changed

In the past folks have had to wait way too long for the comments page to load because we had so many comments on some pages – i.e. Sandbox and Reader Alerts.

Finally I figured out how to make this change and now I have it set up to load a limited number of comments on page 1. If one wants to see older comments you will have to click ‘older comments’. I currently have it set for 50 per page (versus over 1000 before)–but I can tweak to 75 or 100 if that looks advantageous. The key is to get the page loaded quickly so you don’t have to wait–but yet maintaining the history of comments.

Input Needed

I have a new person working on making some changes to the website and below is 1 idea I had—but I don’t know if it is a good or bad idea.

I could put in a ‘registration’ page so that commenters could set up their registration and then would no longer have a need to continually enter ‘name’ and email addresses—once you are logged in no further actions are required.

To me this seems pretty logical–that it would be preferred to the current method. Currently I think I am the only person to have to log in—but it makes everything easier.

As I understand it I could set it up so that the registration would be ‘username’ and email address. The email address would have to be ‘real’ as the registration would kick out an activation link for the registration.

Additionally the addition of the registration would further reduce spam–which I see, but thus far we have kept it out of the comments as far as I know.

Having a registration would also set up other opportunities–i.e. get notifications of a reply to a comment etc.

What am I missing? Opinions of this idea.

‘Like Button’ Off – Update Back On

As I suspected a little moola fixed the problem. Buttons are back on.

The ‘like button’ for commenting is off temporarily. Thanks Bur for the heads up.

It looks like someone didn’t pay for the upgrade to keep the button on–so the free version is running (which is limited).

I should get it corrected in the next day or two. In the past Chad would always take care of these things, but for the moment (the last year or so) I am the ‘tech person’.