By
Keyvan Nayyeri
A few minutes ago I published a post on my blog explaining my future plans for Waegis that will be added to the service during the next 1.5 years.
Based on my overall impressions in the past four months and different feedback and comments that I received, I defined a roadmap for the service that will be added smoothly.
Changes are different and target different areas. New spam rules to refine the quality, improving the usability and simplicity, moving to be come a completely free service in the next months (and reducing the limitations in the short time), OpenID implementation, and finally becoming an open source project are highlights of what I have declared for the future. I also have some plans to apply fundamental changes in the core application and use newer technologies that I’ll detail them later.
Feel free to read these notes and leave your comments, suggestions, and feedback for me whether as a blog comment or via email.
Feedback (0)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
One of the important aspects of our work on a spam filter service is, keep track of statistics of what is going on around the service and users. One point about the spammers that we’re all certain about is their country of origin because we have experienced that there are a few countries that stay at the top of the stack, and there are only those few countries that send most of the spams.
Unfortunately it’s not easy to calculate the real statistics for these countries based on the data that we receive because all spammers pretend their characteristics when they send spam content. However, from the words and languages that they use in their spam content as well as the origin of their domain names, it’s possible to elicit general statistics about these spammers, and we’ve been able to find these statistics on Waegis, too!
A part of the results (that come in a moment) would be predictable for everyone but a part of that would very interesting for you (as it was for us).
There are four countries that play the major role in spamming. The top spammer country, as you can guess, is the United States of America where over 70% of spam posts are coming, and the second country is Russia where something around 10-15% of items are originated. While these two countries would be known to you, the third and fourth places belong to China and Iran with 8-10% and 5% respectively.
I think that the results of the United States, Russia and China were predictable for many web users but you would be surprised by the results for Iran. Yes, that is a concealed fact about Iranian spammers that they send a huge number of spam items to emails, sites, blogs and forums.
Another interesting fact is that all the countries except Iran use their native language when they send spam items, and Iranian spammers are the only spammers that send their items in English language. This would be one of the reasons that other spam filter services have not been able to catch them in their statistics.
I personally was suspicious about Iranian spammers because I had seen the names and words that they were using in their items but I could be assured this fact when I found two other evidences. Firstly I was seeing a huge number of spams with Persian names and words in my email junk that had the same characteristics as those that were appearing on Waegis. Secondly I finally found the evidence that some Iranian Waegis spammers are using local Iranian domains to send their items.
Of course, knowing the origin of spammers can help us find better methods to defeat them, and also can help us move toward the goal of legislating better laws against spammers which is the most effective method to ban them.
In the end, I would say that because of abovementioned reasons these statistics are approximate and there would be a slight difference between the real data and what is presented here but the general order and role of the countries should be constant. We’ll keep aggregating the statistics to do a better examination on the origin of spammers in the future.
Feedback (0)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
Since the beginning of Waegis existence one of our main strategies has been to provide extensions, plug-ins and add-ons for all common .NET powered content providers and keep our client extensions up to date with their recent changes. Thankfully we’ve been able to provide high quality client extensions for various versions of Telligent Community Server, Telligent Graffiti CMS and BlogEngine.NET as well as a rich .NET library that can be used easily to integrate any .NET application with Waegis API.
Recently Telligent dropped a new major build of its popular Community Server engine known as Community Server 2008.5 or Fall 2008 release in Beta 1 stage. A few days after the public announcement a few Waegis clients contacted us reporting that our spam rule for original Community Server 2008 doesn’t work with the new build. We immediately started examining the problem and found that there is a fundamental change in Community Server spam blocker system, so we contacted Wyatt Preul at Telligent and he helped us to figure out how to rewrite our spam rule in order to work with the new version (a guide about developing spam rules for Community Server 2008.5 is written by myself).
Since last week this spam rule has been ready but a few clients were privately testing it to make sure there is no problem. Today we’re happy to announce the public availability of a new Waegis spam rule for Community Server 2008.5 that is accessible via download page or from the direct download link.
As Community Server 2008.5 is still in Beta 1 and this new spam blocking mechanism is not tested extensively, there is a high chance for future changes that break our spam rule, so keep an eye on Waegis blog to stay up to date with the most recent changes.
Feedback (5)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
Those who today came to Waegis to visit the site or used the service API to identify spams noticed that we had a short downtime. This downtime was an expected downtime for upgrading our server software to the most recent versions. However, I apologize for the short downtime although it was not avoidable.
The first and most important change on our servers is the installation of SQL Server 2008 and upgrading our previous SQL Server 2005 database to this new version that comes with many great features. Now our server is using SQL Server 2008 x64 edition that is 100% reliable and scalable. SQL Server 2008 was released last month but is not extensively offered by hosting providers yet. Waegis would be one of the first enterprise .NET solutions that applies SQL Server 2008.
The second change was upgrading our .NET Framework 3.5 version to Service Pack 1 that was released last month just a few days after the official release of SQL Server 2008. I also applied some changes in the software to use some new features in this service pack.
And finally the third and the last update was the installation of some security mechanisms that will improve our security level more and more. So far we’ve had several security attacks on our servers and we’ve been able to defend very well. These security changes will refine our security to be much better than the past.
I’m proud to say that at the moment we’re running on the most recent Microsoft server and development technologies including Windows Server 2008 x64, SQL Server 2008 x64 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. More interestingly our software is completely written and hosted on 64 bit platforms. I’m sure all these attempts have their own effects on our high quality, speed and reliability.
Here I would thank our hoster, MaximumASP, that is doubtlessly one of the top two ASP.NET hosting providers. MaximumASP SQL team have been in touch with me in order to upgrade our database to SQL Server 2008 with least downtime and side-effects. MaximumASP was one of the two hosters (along Orcsweb) that offered SQL Server 2008 installation as soon as Microsoft dropped the final version to the market. At that time I decided to upgrade our servers but we (MaximumASP and I) decided to do some further evaluations before the upgrade.
Feedback (0)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
I’m pleased to announce that today Waegis is finally releases to web. Since 9th July 2008 we started the public existence of Waegis as a Beta software that was available with some limitations to our clients.
We tried to fix bugs and issues, improve our spam filter quality by reducing its fault ratios and add new features to make our service more convenient for our users. Beside that we also tried to examine our service activity and enhance our client-side extensions.
Fortunately everything went very well. Our service got better smoothly and we noticed that in our statistics. We predict that this smooth progress follows in the future to let us meet our goals for Waegis.
Although we released our site and service to web and hit the first stable version but there aren’t many changes that you notice immediately. Many of these changes were applies during the Beta period. There are also some major changes that are being tested hidden from your eyes and will be available until next Monday.
You will see some changes such as ease of registration without requiring users to activate their accounts, faster APIs, new and improved features for Waegis site and blog, enrichment of some spam rules and also some basic statistical reports. We will add new and detailed statistical reports as long as Waegis gets older and we collect more information.
Albeit Waegis has hit a milestone in its lifecycle but doubtlessly the progress of changes is not stoppable. As a spam filter service, Waegis should adapt with the most recent changes by spammers and this requires us to apply new changes on a regular basis.
Here I would thank our Beta testers for their patience, help and support to make Waegis better. There were some hiccups in the early days that some users helped us to catch them and we’re very happy to have such great users!
Feedback (0)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
Last month on 9th July we launched the first public version of Waegis as a Beta. Since then we’ve been working to fix bugs and issues, apply new features and improve existing features.
Our initial plan was to move to a final stable version in 3-5 weeks and were going to launch the final version this week. But we thought that waiting for more week is worth it because there are some changes on a monthly basis on user accounts and sites that can be tested during this one week. On the other hand, we have some plans to improve the quality before the final launch.
So hopefully Waegis will be released to the web during the next week and if you want a fixed date, it’s 14th August 2008 so stay tuned!
And the last point is, don’t forget that our final launch discount offer ends with the launch so don’t miss this opportunity!
Feedback (0)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
Last week we announced our first user survey that let our clients decide for the future of Waegis and our services. Waegis Survey #1 targeted three areas:
- General community opinions about spam filtering methods
- Some statistical research about sites
- Commercial model of Waegis and how to define our accounting system and pricing
We believe that the future of Waegis is tight to our collaborations with our clients on Waegis community and have a serious passion to use such surveys in order to keep ourselves on the right track.
When announcing this first survey, we also promised to publish the final results to let everyone knows what people think about such questions. There is no doubt that these results have a huge impact on our future decisions and we also want to keep these results as an evidence of our future strategies.
So here come a short outline of the results of Waegis Survey #1.
Which Spam Filter Method Do You Prefer?
Our first question targeted a general question that can guide us about our clients. It’s very important to know the answer to this question.
- An effective online spam filter service: 66.7%
- A local spam filter tool: 16.7%
- CAPTCHA control: 0%
- A combination: 16.7%
- None: 0%
As you see, most of people do like to use an online spam filter service and no one likes to use a CAPTCHA control.
What's Your Opinion About CAPTCHA Controls?
Our second question was about CAPTHCA controls because we think that they can be a stop point for using our service by webmasters and site owners. We anticipated that there are many webmasters who choose the easiest way and simply use a CAPTCHA control and do not think about its downsides. We still have this opinion but your answers have changed it slightly.
- They are the best anti-spam tool: 0%
- They are not user friendly: %100
- They can be broken: 0%
- What is CAPTCHA?: 0%
Now at least we know that no one disagrees with the accessibility issues of CAPTCHA controls.
Have You Had Any Experience With Online Spam Filter Services?
It was important for us to know if our clients know the workflow of an online service and if they know about its quality effect to be able to compare our quality with our competitors?
- Yes: 66.7%
- No: 33.3%
- What is that?: 0%
Generally that is good to know that most of users have had some experience with online services but numbers prove that we need to simplify everything as much as possible and provide enough documentation and help information for clients.
Which Type of Site Do You Have?
Your answers to this question could help us in two ways. Firstly it could help us with development and configuration of our spam rules because they can vary based on content type. Secondly it could help us with our accounting system because we can find out what’s the regular content type of our clients.
- Blog: 100%
- Forum: 33.3%
- Wiki: 0%
- Photo gallery: 0%
- Email Service: 0%
- Others: 16.7%
The interesting point of our results was that all of our clients have a blog and it shows the importance of our quality for blogs.
How Many Items Do You Get Per Month (Spam & Legitimate)?
This was just a question related to our accounting system concerns. We needed an initial understanding of the main parameter that plays a role in our account types.
- Less than 1000: 66.7%
- 1000-5000: 16.7%
- 5000-20000: 16.7%
- 20000-50000: 0%
- Over 50000: 0%
As you see, most of users need less than 1000 API calls per months.
How Many Spams Do You Get Per Month?
We asked this in order to find out some facts about our spam rules development and configuration.
- Less than 1000: 50.0%
- 1000-5000: 33.3%
- 5000-20000: 16.7%
- 20000-50000: 0%
- Over 50000: 0%
Half of users receive less than 1000 spams per months and most of them receive less than 5000 spams.
Are You Interested to Pay For an Effective Online Service?
This is a simple but important question to know if we have any market or not?
- Yes: 16.7%
- No: 33.3%
- Depends on prices: 50%
And here is the point! Our pricing can bring more commercial users to our service!
How Much of Money Can You Pay For Such an Online Service Monthly?
It was also important to know the answer to this question because it could help us define a more flexible pricing.
- Less than $5: 66.7%
- $5-$20: 33.3%
- $20-$50: 0%
- $50-$100": 0%
- Over $100: 0%
Yes! Most of users would like to pay less than $5 per month. We heard your voice!
How Many Site Instances Do You Have?
The number of sites instances it the second parameter that we use to differentiate our account types. We had to know about your requirements and this question was designed to accomplish this goal.
There were different answers to this question but the average number was 11.
Which Pricing Strategy Do You Prefer?
The last question was deigned to let you put yourself in charge of us and decide on your own!
- Cheaper prices with more limitations: 16.7%
- Regular prices with regular limitations: 83.3%
- Higher prices with less limitations: 0%
Your answers do not need any explanation because they’re speaking for their own!
Conclusion
So what’s our final understanding of your answers? We think that:
- Our users have an open position for an effective online service in their anti-spam strategies.
- They are aware of downsides of CAPTCHA controls.
- Most of them have a blog or forum or a combination of them.
- Most of them receive less than 1000 items and less than 1000 spams per months.
- At the moment most of them have a small site with a few site instances.
- Users are ready to pay for a good online service but it depends on pricing strategy. They prefer cheaper prices and a pricing that targets regular limitations with regular prices.
We consider these points in our initial pricing system that will be announced very soon. Of course, we are also aware of the fact that current answers may be different in the future so we’ll ask you about them on a regular basis every a few months.
At the end we would thank everyone who participated in our first survey and shared his or her opinions with us.
Feedback (0)
By
Keyvan Nayyeri
Nowadays SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has gotten more important than ever and it has a big market and business for its own! Every professional internet site needs to achieve to a good position in search engines in order to guarantee its success.
Waegis was not an exception and from the early days we tried to improve its position and rank on search engines and provided some features to help this. Some SEO properties in all pages as well 100% SEO-friendly URLs on the site are all some signs of our attempts to have a better SEO quality.
However, we didn’t put much effort to improve our rank with money and didn’t have much time to work on SEO as well. Waegis is less than 2.5 weeks old but today we believed that Google has assigned a 4 page rank to our site.
Most likely this is a result of early reactions for Waegis from the community and our users so we should thank you all for this. Usually it takes a longer time for Google to assign the first page rank to a site but it didn’t take long for Waegis and we’re happy for this!
We consider this as one of signs of quick expansion of our service and we will try to improve it as much as we can but we’re sure that this is impossible without your help and support!
Feedback (0)