Fre-ecards.com blog

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
- John W. Gardner

Due to some issues my webhost is having, many of my websites are completely down, or not functioning properly. Although this blog seems to be working, the website fre-ecards.com seems to be functioning erratically, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes half an half! This is most unfortunate at this time of year when many of my visitors are sending cards for Halloween and Samhain. I apologize profusely, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

I have contacted my webhost, Dreamhost, and been told by customer support that although I have not changed a single thing on my sites, this is somehow all my fault. Thus, I cannot expect any assistance from them.

This has been a difficult decision for me. I have been offering free ecards for Pagans and others in one form or another for many years. The site often receives over 1000 visits per day on the holidays. However, at this time I am unable to guarentee the site will be functioning. No one could be more dismayed by this situation than I am.

Fre-ecards.com has not ever earned an income. At most, on the busiest months of the year, it earns under $1.00 a month. I have tried a number of different advertising platforms, always keeping in mind I want to keep the ecards free, and I don’t want to pummel you with obnoxious ads. None of them have ever created any significant income, nor does the website send a significant amount of traffic to my other websites.

My webhosting costs $20 a month. A new script to run the ecards - as the old one is outdated and doesn’t always work quite correctly, and the seller no longer offers support to fix it or install it - costs at least $150. Setting up on a new webhost would cost approximately $100.

I do not have this money. I just don’t. I can’t get it, without either dropping my phone and ISP service, and/or going further behind on my car payments. They would have repo-ed the car already, but they don’t know where to find it.

Although this is the busiest time of year for this ecards site, I do not feel it is fair to have people come here and set up ecards to be sent, when I cannot be sure if they will work properly or not.

I feel I really have little choice other than to close down fre-ecards.com at this time.

My deepest apologies to all of you who use and love this site. If you happen to have any brilliant ideas - or money - to put into keeping it up, feel free to contact me at this email. Please note that it is a different email than provided elsewhere - that email may be compromised by my webhost changes, so please use the gmail address.

If you wish to continue to follow my art and writing career, please feel free to friend, follow, whatever on these sites: my MySpace page, my Deviant Art page, my articles at Squidoo, my Plurk account, my Twitter account, my Zazzle store, and my eBay About Me page. None of those things are dependent upon Dreamhost. None of those cost me a dime either.

I do currently have an ACEO listed for sale on eBay by the way

Again, my deepest apologies.

Blessedbe

Summer Fey Foovay

I am sender #3000!  This is the message I got when I sent a test card to myself - having changed a wee bit of coding on the pickup card page.  Isn’t that cool?  3000 ecards sent!  And that’s just since I installed this “new” script (okay, so it’s about three years old now).  The cards sent from my first three years or so are not counted.  They weren’t quite as spiffy either - LOL.

I have added a little bit of advertising through Project Wonderful.  A small button on the index page, and now a large banner at the bottom index page and on the bottom of the page when you pick up an ecard.  Still no pop-ups, no malware, no membership, none of that crap.  We’ll see how the advertising goes.  I’d be really happy if it made me enough in a few months to purchase that new ecard script and then we’ll have even more bells and whistles available (and still no pop-ups, malware, etc.).  I will also be able to get support for the new script so the little odd things that don’t work now and then will be corrected, too.

Lughnasad coming up - and I “only” have four ecards for that holiday.  I just looked at them, and don’t even like any of them - ROFLMAO.  So over the next few days look for some new additions - skins, stamps, and some Lammas ecards.  I’ll see what I can find that everyone will like better.

Blessedbe

Summer Fey Foovay