With the future of XWord Info still uncertain, I need to make some changes to control costs. It’s an expensive site to run, which was fine while it was more active, but now that there’s no more commentary and updates are spotty, activity is way down and so is income from ads and subscriptions.
Rather than pull the plug completely, I’m making some changes to see if I can balance my budget.
I’m no longer offering $10 “Casual Level” accounts. These were mostly used by people wanting to solve Variety puzzles, and since it’s not clear if I can continue with that, most of those people have already requested and received refunds. If you have an existing Casual Level account, it’s still valid with the same capabilities and restrictions as before including access to old Variety puzzles, but if you renew it or want to create a new account, the minimum cost is $20. Sorry about that.
The first cost-cutting step is to move to a smaller web server. Azure is great because it offers many tools for debugging and analytics. I can use a staging server to test changes and then quickly incorporate them without the site going down for a couple of minutes each time. But it’s expensive. A smaller Azure server will be cheaper but if it’s still too expensive, I’ll move to a normal cheap web-hosting environment. Each step slows things down. I’m hoping most users most of the time won’t notice a difference.
The other step I’m considering is putting ads back on pages, even for Angel-level users. Clicking on ads is an effective way to support sites you care about at no cost to you. Each time you click, a few pennies flow my way. A small site like mine never makes a lot on ads but every bit helps.
What’s next?
More changes are coming, and they’ll be announced in this very blog. All the constructor tools will continue as before, and there will even be some improvements, so constructors with Angel accounts should still be happy.
Updates to the data depend on NYT’s willingness to continue providing access to some of their internal files, and my ability to carve out time to integrate them. I cannot guarantee any updates will happen after whatever date is mentioned on the home page.
Thank you!
I’m incredibly grateful to all the people who have supported XWord Info over the years, and I hope many of you will find the information useful enough to continue to support the site.
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