In regards to video ads and please post your complaints and suggestions

[OldVersion.com Admin]

Hey all,

I've received a complaint via email about the video ads on the site. I totally share everyone's sentiments. Don't fret, they'll be gone within 3 weeks tops.

The reason being - this site is becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. Before, the overhead was relatively low for a site that's popular to receive 30,000 unique visitors a day. I could run and maintain the site for $279 per month. Over time though, I witnessed how slow this site responded and considered an upgrade. The server is now on a Quad Core Xeon 2.0GHz with two 15K drives set up in RAID0. It costs over $800 per month. I also had to pay $700 to have this set up on FreeBSD without any control panels so that the site would be ever faster. I hope the investments have been worth it and you all are experiencing faster page refreshes than ever.

However, I also realize the inconvenience of these ads which are cluttering the program pages and forum threads. Well, I signed a contract in order to make a quick buck so that I could recover some losses on the programming deal, in which the programming company ran off with over $2,000 of OldVersion.com's money without giving us a finished product. Their company is called Front & Back and they filed for bankruptcy, but unfortunately our testimonial is still on their site. I was asked to write this while everything was going smoothly, but unfortunately I have no control over their site so I cannot edit and take it back now. Stay away from this company: http://frontandback.net/?p=test . Since they are located in the UK and I am in the US I have no real legal recourse to recover the money.

The contract of the video ads is for 1,000,000 video views and since the 18th of December I am happy to report we have already completed over 500,000 impressions .

This time around, I am going with an acquaintance that I met in person to do the programming for the new OldVersion.com system. I am going to keep lots of elements of it under wraps for now, but let's say in around late February you loyal visitors are going to be enjoying Mac programs, fast downloads, changelogs, system requirements, voting systems and an easier way than ever to contribute programs to the site. It will come a long way from how the site looked in 2001, when it first launched.

The new OldVersion.com will not neglect the core principles on which the foundation of this site was built. It's never been about money, but about providing quick easy access to older versions of programs. To have our community build a historical archive and send a strong message to the software industry that we don't like to be bullied around with newer versions of poor quality.

I hope our site loyalists don't abandon us for these temporary ads and better understand why they are here after reading this.

I would like to use this thread for people to give us feedback and advice. What would you like to see with the new OldVersion.com? What do you dislike about OldVersion.com in its present state? What do you like? What do you prefer: broccoli, eggplant, or just plain eggs?

-Alex Levine
Site Founder

[Pete]

What video adds ????

~~~~~~~~~~Time passes~~~~~~~~~
Ok, I temporarily turned off the noscipt Firefox plug-in.

I see "YOUR AD HERE" next to a blank space near the top of the page.....

I must be using an oldversion of whatever player the ad requires

[OldVersion.com Admin]

Actually, the ads have been removed for the time being due to a breach of contract.

So now if you have no idea what I am talking about, well ..that makes a lot of sense