Mail Fail, This is Good AND Bad
Okay so the last game that got sent out has (I would guess) to have about an 80% chance it didn't make it to everyone. The problem lies in the fact that Google Apps does not allow me to send more than 500 emails per day. I knew this limit and never figured that it would make any difference. I never actually expected this site to have (almost) 500 members which would warrant me coming close to the 'quota' limit.
This is a good thing, but it also presents me with a unique and frustrating problem that I've been working on for several hours now. My problem is that I can no longer reliably send the games to everyone when I make them. So to solve this issue I've tried a couple different things and ideas, all of which have had some success and (one in particular) had none at all.
So I could really use your recommendations here. I need SOMETHING that can do what I need it to do. Here are some requirements:
- It must be able to send attachments.
- It must also have sending quota controls. Meaning I need to be able to tell it to only send a specific number of emails at a time. (With current quota limitations, there are 1440 minutes in one day, and I can only send 500 emails per day (from Google) so that's somewhere in the ballpark of 4 emails a minute. I really dont want to have software running on my computer 24x7 just for sending email though. That would suck. (Just FYI my webhost is NOT my computer.)
- Users must be able to unsubscribe from the mailings. Typically that means they just close their account here (or ask me to delete them). But according to my TOS for my webhosting I MUST have 'opt-in' mailings. (Which everyone who signs up for the website agrees to already.)
Also, if somebody can recommend a web service that can do emails to large groups that would be cool, but I'm not going to pay a ton of money for my small website. I'd like to keep the price to under $20 a year if possible. If not, maybe our users would be able to chip in and help reduce my operating costs!? (hint, hint)
Anyways, my third option that I've got sort of set-up and that's to use Drop Box. If you're not familiar with this, what it does is file sync across multiple computers. So if you've got family and friends that all want to have pictures shared no matter when/where they are they just all put Drop Box on thier computer and link em so when I put a new picture in my Drop Box folder it syncs to their computer too. So why am I telling you this? Because I can use dropbox (already in place actually) and just provide the Public Sharing links for you. This should allow you to download the games via the web quickly and without having to install anything on your work computers (or at home).
So if you've got any suggestions and/or help I would really appreciate it a whole lot. To throw an incentive out there, if someone suggests an idea that I wind up using on the site I will send you a free Spreadsheet Ninja T-Shirt!
Shattered Colony!
Okay so this game is pretty epic. It's your basic zombie defense game, in which, to be honest it is pretty easy to win. It comes with a complete tutorial so I'm not going to try to explain it here, just know there are LOTS of snipers and LOTS of zombies! The difficult part comes when you can DOWNLOAD and EDIT your own maps! Yeah, that's right you can edit your own maps and upload them for the community. What's even more awesome is that after you download and play a map you can rate it based upon difficulty and 'fun' factor. So if you think a map really sucks you can say so. When you search for a map to play you can search by the overall 'fun' factor and play only the best maps. If you're so inclined, try to find "The Shire" it's a map I made while I was, naturally, bored at work. Give it a go and let me know if you think it's any good!
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Soon to be “Open Upload” for all members!
So I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I have decided that I think the best course of action would be to allow all registered members the ability to upload their own games to the website. Some things in my life are coming up here pretty soon and I do not believe that I will have the time to personally update and maintain the site by myself.
To remedy this I am looking at various ways at how I can safely and easily allow all registered members to use the spreadsheet game template and upload any flash game to the site. I plan on making a video tutorial on how to do this. It's very easy to do and I think most anyone can do it. I've even done it on my work computers with great success!
But I'm also very interested in knowing what you think about this? Post your comments below!
Upcoming Server Move
I wanted to let you know that I will be shifting to a new server here in the next couple days. There *shouldn't* be any downtime or anything but things don't always go the way they should. So if you happen to drop by in the next week or so and notice something not working or functionality missing please let me know by sending an email to webmaster at spreadsheetninja dot com.
Thanks!