Call it a jigsaw puzzle, or the domino effect, or karma, whatever you like. We just want to let those of you who aren’t running a website know how much fun (and how complicated) it can be.

We buy a fixed amount of space on the host server, and pay annually. You might think we could control how we use the space, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. “Space” means structure, the card images, and new text. When cards sell, and we delete them, that should free up some space for more cards, right? Ah, not really. For some reason, residual images stay in there. That’s one problem.

Another problem comes from robotic search engine programmes that troll around looking for new information for … search engines. We can hardly complain about that! But when they do this, they leave electronic footprints in a section the site calls “Statistics,” and these footprints–like temp files in your computer–take up space. The statistics can be useful to let us know which cards are being searched, but unless we go in and delete these footprints regularly, they alert the host to alert us that they want more money because we are using more space.

So far, so good, right? No. Part of website security involves backing up the site from time to time, so all is not lost if there’s a catastrophe with the server or some other problem. Just like you should be backing up your own computer, this is common sense. But (a big BUT), once in awhile the backup fails or is incomplete and we need to start over. Absolutely do not ask us how this happens, but it can result in images being duplicated without our knowing it. Guess what? Yes, this also takes up space.

We want to use the space we have, not keep buying more for things we never wanted. Webmaster Triyanto is working on a programme to identify images that are “active” so we can sweep in and delete the others. That should be a fix, at least temporarily. Or, if someone just wants to buy a ton of cards, that will help, too. …

OK then, on another topic, we got the card that illustrates this Blog entry. If you had the card in your hand, you might be amazed by the splendor of the scene. We sure were. We cut off identifying information at the bottom, and welcome your guess about where this location is. (It’s not in the site yet, so no clues there.) Depending on whether or not anyone guesses, we’ll let you know later.

Bye for now.