If you have ever visited the site in the past 18 days using mobile data only (not wifi) and couldn’t connect, it’s now fixed.
The site was fine with a desktop PC and over wifi. I estimate less than 5% of customers had this issue.
It turns out that I misconfigured the web server slightly due to poor documentation. It’s some strange issue on devices that only connect over IPV6 and don’t have IPV4 fallback (like my cell phone).
I’ve also created some new previews that are better for mobile devices for all the July 2024 updates. Now they will be in a single column instead of 3-5. I also had a great idea to put the previews into a gallery along with the covers too. I make these to try to save people the hassle of clicking dozens of images. You can view the July 2024 gallery. You can’t buy them from that page, but just keep a list of catalog numbers you want and search for them later (or keep the updates page up).
July 2024 is still an extremely tough month, but i’m trying everything I can to keep the site going for months and months. Right now i’m still at the point of getting a part time job on Monday if a miracle doesn’t happen. It’s only to help the site out and keep the bills paid. There is only a 1 in a million chance of the site every closing. Sales in May and June were about 75% of what they are on a normal month. Basically that puts me into panic mode daily.
I keep hoping that it’s some weird technical issue causing problems that is now fixed, but this is not likely.
Since 2002 i’ve had some difficult times running the site and got past them. This latest one is the worst by far. It’s like everything i’ve done to recover from poor sales hasn’t helped. 9 out of 10 times it’s a random Google algorithm update that causes the poor sales and eventually whatever they did is fixed. I hope this is the cause. It is also very strange considering we added a record number of new DVDs in May and June, yet terrible sales. Prices are also great IMO. I also think the site is easy to use and looks good (IMO).
If customers give me a second chance for the site and I don’t need to get a part time job, i’ve set some goals for the site. My plan is to turn the site around completely. Make sure orders get out super fast and work up to 16 hours a day if needed. I want to keep running the site full time for years! One reason for poor sales is due to me often not getting out orders fast enough. If I can get out orders lightning fast then i’d get more orders. The biggest problem the site faces really is it being run by one person. It’s incredibly difficult.
One fault of mine too is never planning for having to deal with 15,000+ DVDs. It was never a problem when I had 10,000. It’s very very hard to find discs in a collection of 18,000. I’ve been sorting them out slowly and organzing them, but it takes time.
The absolute biggest time sink when processing orders is finding discs. 75% of the time spent on order processing goes into that. This is probably hard to believe. Once I get all those discs sorted, this part is solved once and for all and i’ve getting back to normal FAST I think.
I’ve got a strategy in place to find single discs now in minutes instead of it taking an eternity. I just never imagined that one of the sites biggest challenges was finding single discs quickly!
What am I doing about that?
I put them all in long cardboard boxes and put those on a shelf. They store about 500 discs each.
Each disc is in a paper sleeve and gets a single number. Example A1, A2046, A5678.
The discs are put in numerical order so I can easily flip to the right disc.
I make a printed index and write the catalog numbers down and give each one a number.
I can now scan through a list of thousands of discs and find what I need super fast!
Eventually I will enter these index lists into my computer and search even faster.
I also upgraded the site with a new server. I’ve switched from Nginx/Apache to OpenLiteSpeed. One thing I have to say is that it’s a major pain in the butt to configure. The documentation is incredibly poor. The control panel they give you is also not user friendly at all. One reason I switched to a new server is that Plesk was going to no longer be free (it’s a web server admin control panel). Plesk is a super great software, but it is nowhere near worth the $25/month price they were asking. Especially not for one domain.
I used to never use a control panel for a web server. When I got older I just loved the convenience of using Plesk and not having to deal with using the Linux command line for everything.
The site runs on a dual core CPU with 4gb of ram and an NVME drive. I don’t think i’ve ever seen the server hit more than 10% CPU usage ever. It’s a VPS and not a shared or dedicated server.
BTW it’s possible the lack of sales lately is due to less people using physical media. I don’t believe this to be the case in my situation. Why? Sales were amazing in February! There are always going to be those like me that love and prefer physical media. I even refuse to buy video game systems that are digital only.