Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinWhere legends live since 1969

I do eventually start talking about comics.

§ October 29th, 2018 § Filed under blogging about blogging is a sin, retailing § 1 Comment

So…feeling a little more…secure while visiting my site? Well, I certainly hope so, after the trouble I had Saturday trying to get my SSl certificate in order here. Anyway, if you are on my site, and not just reading through a feed reader of some sort, if you look up to the address bar in the browser of your choice you’ll see Progressive Ruin Dot Something or Other now has a little padlock symbol on display. No more “this website isn’t secure” warnings when you visit or try to leave a comment! Your personal information is no longer captured by me and sold to Rufus T. Firefly in the distant land of Freedonia!

A few days ago I installed one of those SSL thingies on my store site with no hitch whatsoever, so I decided, during a brief lunch break on Saturday, to do the same for ol’ ProgRuin. And of course, instead of being a quick install, my images broke, then my page wouldn’t load right, then I somehow managed to lock myself out of my site with no way back in, blah blah, other dumb stuff. “You know just enough about computers to be dangerous” a programmer friend once told me years ago…and while I’ve learned my way around the computatrons a little more since then, I certainly proved her right that Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, if you tried to access my site that day, you may have had a problem or two getting in, but it’s all fixed now, and I’m sure no other problems will crop up ever again. ‘Course, part of the issue I was having is that my site is nearly 15 years old, and there’s a whole lotta patchwork in the backend of things…don’t look at my FTP directory, it’s hideous. Plus, my htaccess file, that bit of programming where I try to block out hotlinkers and junk traffic, is a mile long and cobbled together from my own typed-in additions and whatever things my WordPress plug-ins put in there. (Part of the problem with the images is that while I allowed my progressiveruin.com domain access to my image files, I forgot to allow access to the “https://” version of the site. Oops.)

Anyway, it’s done, and my site is more or less secure. If you’ve bookmarked the “http://” version of the site, it should automatically forward to the secure version. I have a couple of straggling HTML pages separate from the main blog that need some adjusting (not this one, which is now secure as well as perfect), but otherwise you should see that little padlock wherever you go the site, reminding you that your credit cards are all safe with me, so just send in those numbers whenever you’d like.

So the other thing I did on Saturday, aside from thinking “well, maybe I can move my blog over to pogressiveruin.com,” was the Halloween ComicFest, one of the various special comic days during the year trying to expand the success of Free Comic Book Day to other parts of the year. And I did manage to have a pretty good turnout…had a line of folks waiting outside the front door when I opened, which is always a good sign, followed by periodic waves of business throughout the day.

In general, I don’t order huge numbers of the Halloween books, since the turnouts for this event aren’t really a patch on FCBD. But I do, and did, get quite a few people in, Saturday (the official day of the event) and Sunday, so I try to have enough on hand. In some cases, like for this year’s Ms. Marvel book, I ordered a lot extra just to have ’em around as giveaways in the future.

As it turned out, I burned through the majority of the books I had this weekend, with only relative handfuls left over. Even that Ms. Marvel issue was nearly wiped out. You may have noticed above that I gave away these comics on Saturday as well as Sunday, and that’s because the timing of the Halloween ComicFest is always so…peculiar. I mean, “Halloween” is in the name, so it always takes some explaining to establish that, no, the event isn’t necessarily on Halloween, but on the Saturday just prior to it. Yes, it says the actual date on the promo materials, but it also clearly says “1ST SATURDAY IN MAY” on the Free Comic Book Day info, and I’ll still get folks coming in on May 1st looking for the freebies.

What I end up trying to do is, while not overloading on the giveaway comics, try to order enough to actually carry me through to the Halloween day itself. This time around I could be a tad short…but then, Monday and Tuesday usually aren’t blockbuster days, so the supply I have now will likely be little changed by the time Wednesday rolls around and business picks up again.

In the end, it was a lot of fun, and I gave away plenty of comics, and made some good sales, too. Like Free Comic Book Days have been for me since the beginning, the event paid for itself. Even had a few folks show up in costume…at least one Squirrel Girl made it in that day!

So, that was my Saturday. Lots of customer traffic and folks happy with their free goodies, and computer travails. I know which I prefer on any given business day.