I would offer to pay for help, but if you're anything like me you too are thankful for every paycheck you get!!

If you stopped by once or twice in the last month or so you'll have seen a failed attempt to integrate this site with Mochi games. If you guys are 'old school' then you'll remember that we used to have a pretty awesome arcade here. Unfortunately the old arcade ran under a different CMS (Content Management System) and does not work with WordPress.

I also don't have the time modify the site's theme heavily in order to get the mochi arcade working again. So that's another drag and all that jazz.

As I know that you all enjoy the games I will keep them up and working for you. I will also remove the requirement to be a member to download them. Seeing as how the only reason I wanted members is to have a 'community' that would actually give feed back and provide support. I am thankful to those few who have helped me tremendously (Note: Schappy, SGT Bundt). I only wish that out of the 400+ people who frequent the site a couple more would have wanted to help more. But, I want you to know that it's okay that you didn't. I created this site for you, for your enjoyment and I have accomplished that!!

Anyways, this is a site wide NOVEL now and I basically wanted to let those of you who poke in from time to time that I'm still here. Perhaps when things in my life settle down I'll be able to post more games for you.

Oh, and a word of note. Pretty soon Microsoft Excel will no longer support the latest version of flash, which will seriously hinder my ability to get more games. With the advent of HTML5 and Flash10+ and Microsoft's unwillingness to update Excel to support flash I dont know how much longer these games in spreadsheets will be of any value.

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:

1. It must be able to send attachments.
2. 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.)
3. 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!

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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!

Thanks!

Turns out that it didn't get embedded in the file. So rather than fill your inbox up with another file I'll just post this here and let you download it at your leisure.

Sorry about that. The game will work as expected now.

I hope you enjoy this game!

(I'll add a video later, I just wanted to get this to you as soon as I could.)

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There are some reasons for this:

1. Administrators can block this website and disallow access to it. What better way to get the games than through email.

2. I also use email to interact with the community we have. I do send out random emails asking people for their input. So far this has been VERY helpful in directing my choices in which games I post on the site.

3. I just don't have the time to play technical support when it comes to resetting your passwords. That's what the "forgot password" button is for. If you don't have a valid email address you're out of luck.

So here's my policy on valid emails, plainly put:

If I send email and receive a message back stating that your email is "unknown user, disabled or invalid" I will delete your account.

Here's why:

I have transfer limits on the amount of traffic that I can use each month. I don't feel it's fair to the rest of us for me to spend money on email that never arrives at it's destination. Once it leaves my outbox I'm charged for it. So I would much rather make better use of my resources for those who have valid accounts. (Note: If you've read this far, the first 3 people to post a comment on this get a free Spreadsheet Ninja button.) There is ONE exception to this rule, and it is this: United States Military are EXEMPT from this. Their email changes very often and I support them 100%. So if I get a 'postmaster' email stating that your email isnt working anymore, that's fine. I only ask that you update your email address when you get to your next place of duty.

So, if you can't tell already... I suck at pacman! But it's still a lot of fun to play and waste time with. I can't get past level 3... how well do you do?

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