Hi Fusioneers! Edward here with another 101 update (or ramble – excuse me – I rattle these off unedited so may be a little incoherent).
On a precipice…
Is sounds dramatic but I’m not exaggerating when I say Fusion101 has been on the brink of closure for several months, for some of the reasons I mention below. Having managed to dig it out of a large hole over the last 5 years and made good progress towards making a new site (it’s almost done:) I was suddenly plunged into a series of unexpected issues with the existing www.fusion101.com site (which I must keep running while I get the new site up). So it’s been an incredibly difficult year since many of the long-standing and underlying problems of the site and infrastructure that have never been addressed (not through lack of asking my developers) have converged at once point in time along with a sudden and giant drop in fusion search rankings (when you search say ‘free Christian dating’ on Google).
At the same time my ad income (the site generates revenue from ads and a small number of donations by some very kind folks) have dropped massively making things more tricky. In simple-speak I spend 90% of my time fighting fire (many tech issues that should never exist had each one been fixed as they happened) hence the fusion member’s support phone number is temporarily switched off so I can cope). I’m mostly updating stuff you don’t see on the front-end so you won’t notice many changes user-wise. Regarding Google – I am not sure why they dropped fusion other than they tightened up (as they always do) on what’s allowed and not allowed in their results and ‘bedroom-created’ sites like mine suffer, having to jump through all the new hoops Google add to stop the bad guys on the web. Meanwhile I have not been able to address these updates having been preoccupied with site issues already mentioned.
A problem for small sites like mine is – that as the big-tech companies and Internet gets bigger and after all the recent hoohas about security and privacy (ironically after the big tech companies already took and sold all our data) we little sites have to jump through more and more (often unnecessary) hoops, which only the big Amazon-esque sites can afford or have man-power to deal with. A bit like the high-street has been steam-rollered by the superstores. Eeither way I am trying to see this as a positive – a chance to learn more and refuse to give up making my site better for members and of course keep it scammer free (as I see in most other dating sites).
Music to other ‘Christian’ dating sites ears
Our dropping out of the search results will be music to 101’s ‘competition’s’ ears – most of which are not Christian owned sites and chock-full of scammers (I see this when I test them frequently). The ‘best’ – or worst of these ‘Christian’ dating sites is a beautifully crafted Russian ‘Christian’ dating site – functionally the best online dating service I have ever seen – yet it’s literally 100% comprised of fake profiles (photos of Russian models complete with a computer/bot pretending to be a human interacting (chatting) with you! The irony is – though fusion101 leaves more to be desired technically than most dating sites, it’s one great thing is that it has the ‘cleanest’ membership (real and genuine Christians looking for marriage) of any sites out there. This is because I have worked relentlessly on weeding out the scammers – most before they get on the site from the start. I know this as I monitor other sites and recognise many of the fake accounts/photos I have blocked from fusion! Even with this vigilance, some get past me and our members who I thank for alerting me when they run into them – that’s the greatest help as far as I am concerned apart from donations that help pay running costs.
What have I been doing on 101 and elsewhere?
I spent the last five years moving all my small sites to a manageable platform with the view to giving me a clear run to concentrate full-time on the Christian singles (fusion101.com) and Christian social networking sites (101christiansocialnetwork.com). I am getting there but it’s REALLY hard. I just spent nearly 2 weeks in and out of bed with migraines (too much PC screen-time). But I’m better again and working on making all the profiles on fusion101.com available for members to search (yes 98%of over 300,000 profiles are hidden – long story). I also learned a lot of tech stuff long overdue that I avoided having to know as I had too many other tech issues to tend to – I know how to build servers and other tech-tasks as I have decided sometimes you just have to just do it yourself right?
Running a website like fusion normally requires a group of people on each aspect – marketing – admin, coding etc etc. It’s like building a house – only when you work on your own you have to be the architect, plumber, plasterer, brick-layer, electrician, estate agent gardener all at once, and I am in no way naturally good at tech stuff (I’m an artist by nature). As mentioned before – 90% of the tech problems I have in the quantity I have them should have ever happened.
At the start in 2000 the site was easy to manage and I simply fixed each problem as it occurred. However the site would get so busy the server would crash – and in desperation I let a few foxes (private developers) into the hen-houses to move the site onto bigger servers, but effectively lost access to my own site (don’t ask how). I did this all in the name of not spending what I saw as an extortionate amount on developers accountable to companies – but ended up spending 10x digging myself out of that mess and getting my site back. These 2 bad decisions cost 90% of the site’s income spent on several attempts at replacement platforms for fusion (since I had handed control of the main site) that came to nothing and were discarded, my health is now hit and miss. I’m far from perfect – but the term wearing out the saints has taken on new meaning. Despite this – having worked my backside off for the last 5 years to put this mess right I’m very hopeful for the future of fusion and ‘101’ and feeling better for longer periods (ie less migraines) and even getting some time in the sun for the first time in years.
What’s next for 101?
I must find out how I comply with the new Google search ‘hoops’ – but more importantly move fusion to a faster – cheaper server asap. I must find more ways to generate more revenue (something I never have time to think about). But mainly as mentioned I have been working on making all the profiles searchable and almost there. So to summarise it’s the usual 3 steps forward and 2 back – but overall (in the last 5 years) a great move forward and I am hopeful I will finally resolve all these issues and make Fusion101 site better and simpler for members and much more manageable as it used to be!
God bless – Edward.