Website Voting Now Open

[HelioHost]

Greetings early birds. Today marks the beginning of the voting process for the website competition, currently there are 65 complete entries, thus, you lucky folk and any of your users you send to the voting booth will have to sort through 65 ballots.

 

This is a nice jump in entries since last time, but we're likely to be seeing some pruning as the month goes on. We ask that you take the time to pay your colleagues' sites a little visit, maybe after the voting concludes you could even ask how they got such smooth layouts or what scripts they're running.

 

Simply put, winners will be decided based on the highest average cummulative points; you get graded on a scale of 1 to 5 on 3 categories, this gets summed and divided by the amount of votes you get. This prevents abuse by a larger userbase swarming to give their webmaster a huge score relative to a small, but loyal, userbase only capable of voting a few times for their webmaster.

 

While you go through your colleagues' work we ask that you keep an eye out for and report rulebreakers and sites with malicious content. To maximize voting we also ask that you place a notice of some sort on your site linking to http://heliohost.org/home/website-contest, the more people that you get voting the better your odds are at winning. Report bad contestants on this thread or PM Shinryuu if you wish to remain anonymous.

 

There is no key required to take this survey so anyone and everyone is welcome to participate. Good luck goes out to the 65 contestants. - HelioHost Staff

[ExtremeGaming]

There's a Database Connection error each time I try to use it. Whenever the error does go away, (I assume server load is the issue) the security question will never work.

[Shinryuu]

Is this still happening for you? I just tried and the captcha worked. The database error is most likely high load or MySQL being temporarily down, I'll check for error logs.

 

EDIT: I don't see an error log,so if someone gets an error please describe it, as far as the security question goes, I'm not sure what caused it to break for you, I could remove it if it remains troublesome but I feel better with it on for bots.

[wolstech]

I was having similar issues with database errors earlier. The security question worked fine for me, but I got "Too many connections" trying to get past the screen after it.

 

It's working for me now, but it seems to be running slowly.

 

EDIT: Also, since I'm now going through this survey...

* seoz.heliohost.org is suspended.

* cloverchan.org doesn't exist (DNS claims domain doesn't exist):

&--#62; cloverchan.org 75.75.75.75

Server: [75.75.75.75]

Address: 75.75.75.75

 

*** 75.75.75.75 can't find cloverchan.org: Non-existent domain

 

&--#62; cloverchan.org 8.8.4.4

Server: [8.8.4.4]

Address: 8.8.4.4

 

*** 8.8.4.4 can't find cloverchan.org: Non-existent domain

[Shinryuu]

Thanks, I've got list of domains that need pruning, but I'm waiting till tonight to remove them. It requires deactivating the survey temporarily which may cause problems while someone is using it. I noticed the slow response time from the db while checking responses, but it's not something I can control unfortunately.

[wolstech]

Thanks, I've got list of domains that need pruning, but I'm waiting till tonight to remove them. It requires deactivating the survey temporarily which may cause problems while someone is using it. I noticed the slow response time from the db while checking responses, but it's not something I can control unfortunately.

OK. :)/&--#62; I've seen a lot of duff sites in the list and suspected something like that was going to be done.

 

I've seen mostly Under Construction pages, although I've also seen two suspended (seoz.heliohost.org, pzbeinghacker.tk), two "Index of /" dir listings and one that's corrupt.

 

Also found more non-existent domains: yashsodha.com, facsnap.com, bryanseahisawesome.com, and fleksan.net (not to be confused with fleksan.com)

[GLaDOS]

You know it's funny, not many people seem to understand that this contest requires your site "to be active"

[wolstech]

You know it's funny, not many people seem to understand that this contest requires your site "to be active"

Apparently...

 

I've seen more under construction messages today than I have in a year, and that's if there's anything at all...

[Shinryuu]

I'll try getting some system setup to automate the site checks for next year, I seriously got more homework this semester than the last two combined, and my db class last semester gave a lot each week, so while I looked in now and then I wasn't going to catch everything. That's my fault.

 

The under construction sites aren't too bad though, if the users want they can remove that page and open up their site to be judged fairly as long as it's before the end of the month.

[GLaDOS]

don't blame yourself shinyuu, it isn't your fault. We should all be grateful that we even have a contest.

 

Also good luck to you wolstech.

[wolstech]

I'll try getting some system setup to automate the site checks for next year, I seriously got more homework this semester than the last two combined, and my db class last semester gave a lot each week, so while I looked in now and then I wasn't going to catch everything. That's my fault.

I know what DB courses are like...had to take one myself 2 years ago. Insane amount of homework. On the upside, I use a lot of what I learned all the time when working on various PHP projects.

 

The under construction sites aren't too bad though, if the users want they can remove that page and open up their site to be judged fairly as long as it's before the end of the month.

A few of them were actually quite decent looking.

[GLaDOS]

You know whats odd. The under construction pages look congruent

[Shinryuu]

Ok, the survey has been deactivated, suspended and unregistered domains have been removed from the contest, leaving 56 entries to judge.

[GLaDOS]

Thanks Shinyuu

[ExtremeGaming]

as far as the security question goes, I'm not sure what caused it to break for you

 

At the time I was using Safari for CSS testing. Once I switched to Firefox, it worked. I assume whatever Limesurvey uses to generate their captcha isn't compatible with Safari.

 

It's amazing how many people stole layout pieces from Facebook...