As my avid readers will be aware, for many months, I’ve been battling to trace the cause of some random performance issues and to iron out the membership glitches which require me to manually activate some sign-ups. CodingFutures have failed to sort out the interface with Zombaio, my payment providers, and their YourMembers plugin. I have waited patiently for around four months now and their responses are getting fewer and further between. Their support forum closed down some six weeks ago due to some alleged database corruptions and security issues. However, if they can’t get their own forum up and running again in six weeks, it makes one wonder if organising a piss-up in a brewery might be beyond their capabilities. This added to the fact that some (all?) of the support staff except one have left doesn’t inspire confidence. I smell a company that has exceeded its Best Before date. Even if everything is hunky dory, I can’t base a growing web site on dodgy foundations.
I suspect the occasional slow site performance is due to the inefficiencies of running multiple plugins and there being ‘too many cooks’ what with different folk supporting each plugin and each aspect of the installation. This leaves too many opportunities for SEP fields. This is a concept from Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy where something is rendered invisible by designating it as ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’. For example, Zombaio regard the YourMembers issue as CodingFutures’ problem and CodingFutures say it is Zombaio’s. Thus both are using SEP’s to make it go away. I don’t have that luxury as CodingFutures and Zombaio can’t see the problem due to their respective SEP fields and so don’t acknowledge it.
Work is going on at this very moment to create a new site, which is hosted and supplied by a single company, PKS Consulting. I decided that a tried and tested industry solution was the way forward, even though this site is somewhat different from the usual adult format. After much deliberation,my choice was between Elevated-X and PornCMS, who seemed to be affordable industry leaders. The former seemed a little too specific and priced for the larger more mainstream sites. PornCMS, on the other hand, looked a lot more familiar and offered a free trial. It also has a very attractive pricing schedule, especially for an annual licence. After wondering if it all sounded too good to be true, I combed the boards to see what the word was on the street to find almost nothing but glowing praise. Hopefully, it will be the no-brainer it appears.
Over the next few weeks, I will be transferring content. Meanwhile, Ryan from PKS, who seems a very helpful fellow, will be tweaking it to be closer to the existing look and feel. Shortly, it will be opened as a ‘VIP Area’ and new member content will new added there rather than the existing site. Full members will have automatic access to premium content and will be able to get there via a link from the main navigation bar. I’ll let you take a look as soon as initial customisation has been completed. At the moment, it all looks a bit utilitarian but the decorators are hard at work. With any luck, it won’t be long before it is fit for visitors although they might need to wear construction helmets and boots for a little while.