Banner is down!

Xaheras is away for the weekend, and she has the photobucket account. I'm trying to get it up and running again quickly.

Sorry about that, guys!

Good News: Hm, seems like we are getting more hits than ever!
Bad News: Too much bandwidth.

It's not a big deal if it is down a few more days. The number of hits seems to be low this last week.

Xa just left me a message while I was walking the dog: she thinks her photobucket account has been hacked now, cuz she hasn't changed the password. If someone got into her email and neopets accounts, maybe they have stolen this as well.

I'll see what I can do in the morning.

These people.... don't they have babies to steal candy from?

These people are more likely to steal the babies than the candy.

Roby wrote:

These people are more likely to steal the babies than the candy.

lol too.

Geeze! Who has the time to do this stuff?

zoro wrote:

Who has the time to do this stuff?

Kids with no lives and/or (seemingly) no home training.

Yesterday I had 15 hits - none from my hut. Today I've had 7 hits, none from my hut - 2 from me. I did get 3 sales off 3 (presumably) shop wiz hits.

I was able to get into our photobucket account yesterday, so it looks like the problem is that our premium account has expired, and we've just hit our bandwidth limit.

I was happy to pay for one year to get unlimited bandwidth, and to avoid the problems we kept having with two accounts and running out of service in the last few days of every month. At this point, I'm not so sure I want to pay for another year ...

The banner will reset on April 1 I guess, and we'll be able to run with it again until we max out. Easter should be a busy time for sales, and spring brings more shoppers from now, right through to September.

Do we go with paid hosting, two (or more) photobucket accounts, each member hosts their own graphics, or even disband the mall?

I am happy with any option that the mall decides, although I would obviously prefer not to disband!

I'm a bit ambivalent. I'm happy to keep going but at the same time I'm feeling a little bit over neopets at the moment, mind you after a break I'll probably be interested again, however I don't want to be the straw that breaks the camels back.

I'd prefer to avoid paying, or disbanding. Perhaps the easiest option would be for each user to simply set up a photobucket account? I doubt we could run over our bandwidth individually.

What is the cost of hosting the graphics? I'm certainly willing to chip in. I would hate to see us fold. We are after all named Phoenix. We come back from hard times!

I've been thinking about our troubles. There seems to be a pattern to how we have been hacked. Was my zoro_kat account the first to go down? It may be useful for us to reconstruct the history of our accounts being hacked, especially if there really is a pattern to how it has happened. There is a possibility that we have been targeted because we are a strong and growing mall. If we feel that there is a pattern and that we have been targeted, we should let Emily know the entire story.

The other thing that might be useful to do is to post our story on neodaq forums and see if there are other malls having similar troubles.

I can host it for free on my websevers. I just need the image files, I can host the files. We just have to change the URL.

Zoro, with regard to us being targeted, I looked back in the forums briefly and I think this all started with Spunky being iced (for the first time), I then got CGed, you were then iced, followed by Spunky again and then Xaheras. Did I miss anyone?

That's wonderful, nstarz!!!

I'm hoping the banner kicks back in at midnight tonight. Do you know what to do to get the graphics??

Yay for nstarz!

I was wondering whether the hackers use the marketplace to look for targets...

Banner's working again.
*whew!*

Yikes
Sorry I've been a bit silent folks, been working my little behind off the past few months

Shall catch up on some reading here XD

Egg, if you can e-mail all the graphics to nstarz@gmail.com.
Since I remember neopets has coding limit, I will use the smallest domain I have: nstarz.com

sounds good, nstarz!

Xaheras will be here in a couple of hours - I'll see if she can help.

Good thinking on the domain name, too.

Also, remember to backup the original somewhere, just in case we have to make any changes to the images.

*happy dance*

Before we lose the banner again - and we're due! - we can start using the images that nstarz has already moved to his site. I've tested the ones I can use, in my shop, and it looks perfect.

If you are able to find what you need, feel free to make the switch on your own. I'll post the converted names in the Banner Codes part of the forum. Even getting some of us moved over will reduce the load on the photobucket account, and might just let us squeak through to the end of the month without any disasters.

When we get the whole works in place, I'll get the proper codes updated in a single post.

THANK YOU NSTARZ!!