Update on premium?

[sannyl 4]

Just wondering if there's been any update on a premium membership for Icy Veins that would remove ads. I currently have one for Wowhead that has been worth every penny; but some days the ads here are so bad I can't even use the site. They play continuously, can't be shut off, or cause the site to spontaneously reload over and over, to the point that I can't even scroll or type in a text box. What's worse, even after you report the ad, close/reload you still end up with the same buggy ad. (FWIW, no I don't have a virus, and it's *only* this site, latest version of Chrome.)

I've not wanted to resort to using an adblocker because I understand that the revenue is important but this is getting frustrating :(.  The original thread saying premium was something they wanted to do was 4 years ago?? Latest comment I could find was a 'coming Soon(TM)' in Feb 2016 and even that was over a year ago.

Is there any update on this? I might have to go ahead with the adblocker at this point :((.

[Damien 1,514]

Hello Sanny,

Sorry to hear about your problem with the ads. I don't know what to say :( We're working with what is probably one of the cleanest ad agencies around when it comes to bad ads (and this fact weighed in heavily in our decision to change ad agency last year). Bad ad reports are at an all time low. I encountered only 1 bad ad on the site since the beginning of the year, but things can vary depending on where you are browsing from.

I know the original thread from August 2013 mentioned premium, but it also said that this would require us to hire someone to do it for us. 4 years later, we're finally in a financial position where we can hire a proper dev agency to do create a premium account solution for our website (using the forums login system in the entire site, which is just a collection of static pages). We could have hired a freelance much earlier, but we found it hard to find someone suitable, and we realized that it is easier to work with a dev agency in the long run (better support + several people are working on our projects, making it easy to get things done even when someone is missing/busy).

Anyway, we made initial contact with the agency in January this year and work started in February. We're now at the part where we set up a staging server (so a copy of the forums and the website) to prepare for the deployment on the live server. We still have to iron out a few things, but I'm hopeful that we'll have everything ready in June (and if not, then certainly in July).

We also had to do some changes on the site to prepare for premium, mainly to switch the website to https (so that no session information transits unencrypted), something that happened a few weeks ago. This was a long process, as any mistake can have dramatic consequences for a high-traffic website like Icy Veins (it's possible to kill your rankings on Google if you do things the wrong way :p).

 

[sannyl 4]

Hi Damien, 

Thanks for your response! I definitely can appreciate that things take time, especially growing your company to the point that you can afford the dev agency. It's absolutely important to take the time to make sure it's done correctly and without damaging things like your Google rankings. 

I'm happy to hear we're almost there though :)! (Need beta testers? I'm available! haha)

Thanks again for all the hard work and amazing content you put into making Icy Veins. I'm an altoholic in WoW personally, and am in the WoW class guides all the time. (Special thanks to Wordup, you have my DH rocking the top of the dps charts!)

[Damien 1,514]

Here's a quick update. I was supposed to spend the day with the dev agency last Wednesday to finish the work on premium, but I fell ill the night before and had to be admitted to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. I got discharged on Sunday and am doing much better, but this means that Premium plans were delayed a bit. I've arranged to reschedule the meeting with the dev agency next Monday (the 3rd of July), so my goal is to finish the premium accounts at the end of next week.

[sannyl 4]

Wow!! I'm so sorry to hear about your appendicitis, that must have felt horrible :(. Glad you're doing better though, I hope you'll recover quickly. Abdominal surgery is no joke, please rest and take it easy on yourself! 

It's very kind of you to provide an update even when you aren't feeling well. Thank you and get well soon!

 

[Damien 1,514]

Some more updates! Last week, when we worked to finalize the premium system, we realized that a recent update to the forum software (whose login system we are using) had broken stuff we had done. So, we spent last week fixing it and now we're back to finalizing :P

[sannyl 4]

Sorry for the late response, been dealing with my own health and life issues -- but I'm glad to hear it's still in the works :). 

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology - "There's always one more bug." 

Best of luck!

 

[Valks 2,375]

7 hours ago, sannyl said:

Sorry for the late response, been dealing with my own health and life issues -- but I'm glad to hear it's still in the works :). 

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology - "There's always one more bug." 

Best of luck!

 

We wish you the best of luck with everything, from all of us here at Icy Veins :)

[Damien 1,514]

17 hours ago, Blainie said:

We wish you the best of luck with everything, from all of us here at Icy Veins :)

Likewise. I'm almost done with Premium and wanted to have it ready on Friday, but then I updated the forums from 4.1 to 4.2 and it broke some stuff in the Premium code, so I asked the agency to fix it and I'm hoping to be able to release next week (barring any other surprise).

[sannyl 4]

22 hours ago, Blainie said:

We wish you the best of luck with everything, from all of us here at Icy Veins :)

Thanks very much to all of you :D It's much appreciated!

Looking forward to checking it out once it's released, and crossing my fingers for you that it goes smoothly without any nasty surprises :)

Edited July 30, 2017 by sannyl

[KingMe 289]

On 7/30/2017 at 0:43 PM, Damien said:

Likewise. I'm almost done with Premium and wanted to have it ready on Friday, but then I updated the forums from 4.1 to 4.2 and it broke some stuff in the Premium code, so I asked the agency to fix it and I'm hoping to be able to release next week (barring any other surprise).

Did you try turning off and back on again? 

[Valks 2,375]

15 hours ago, KingMe said:

Did you try turning off and back on again? 

You need to unplug it at least once, that's the rule of computers, no?

[Damien 1,514]

We've had some additional delays due to people at the dev agency going on vacation and me being busy with my house, but I'm now writing the FAQ and hoping to release later this week, after the dev people come back from vacation on Wednesday.

[sannyl 4]

On 8/14/2017 at 4:06 AM, Damien said:

We've had some additional delays due to people at the dev agency going on vacation and me being busy with my house, but I'm now writing the FAQ and hoping to release later this week, after the dev people come back from vacation on Wednesday.

Real life happens!  Thanks for keeping us updated though :D. It's nice to be able to have the perspective into how things work and what's happening.

[Damien 1,514]

We've now installed everything on the live server (you can't see it because it's still hidden). We need to wait for up to 48 hours for Paypal (one of the possible payment solutions) to validate our privacy policy and our terms of usage. In the meantime, we'll make sure everything works properly so that we can release on Wednesday.

For now, you can read the premium FAQ :p 

 

[Damien 1,514]

We're releasing tomorrow ;)