Web site news

Firstly, apologies for being so quiet and lack of blogging recently - I must get back into a routine. I've been busy catching up with orders since my week 'off' - the office re-organisation went very well though, I am much more organised now and have just about completely memorised the new layout.

My hosting company is doing some routine maintenance tonight and moving the server on which Foil Play is hosted, so there is likely to be a brief period of downtime between 00:30 & 02:30 tomorrow morning. The downtime experienced should be less than 30 minutes in total, with the aim to be less than half of that. I do apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

My webmaster has set up an RSS feed for new products listed on the website, so if you'd like to see all the new items as they are listed, you can subscribe to it. I've also set up a dedicated twitter account @foilplayproduct to tweet the new product details.

Gallery updated and revamped

I have revamped and updated the gallery at Foil Play, a task that was long overdue! I've included pictures of all the projects that I've blogged and organised them into sections, so browsing for a little inspiration should be much easier now.

I'd love to display your projects in the gallery too - just email a picture to sales@foilplay.co.uk or leave me a link to your blog post in the comments.
Blogging is another task that has fallen by the wayside in September - more posts coming soon!

Amazon - time for a break

Foil Play has been trading on Amazon for just over three years now. Amazon helped me to grow my business and has always been a fairly fuss free trading platform (something which can't be said of eBay!).

However, as there are only so many hours in the day, I've decided to take a complete break from Amazon, at least for the foreseeable future, to concentrate solely on the Foil Play website.

A big thank you to all of my Amazon customers over the past three years, it would be great to see you in future at Foil Play!

Foil Play website upgrade

Good news to report on the website front, last night we moved Foil Play to a new server (I say we, actually webmaster Steve did all the hard work!).

The previous web server was shared with other websites, so high demand for server resources from other sites could occasionally slow Foil Play down. We've addressed that by moving Foil Play to its own brand new, dedicated server which should provide a much improved browsing and shopping experience for you. It also allows more scope for future development of the site.

We have done lots of testing before the move, so you shouldn't notice any major differences, other than hopefully improved speed. Please bear with us though if there are any small glitches - we will do our best to get them sorted asap!

Guest post on Tamebay: Life after eBay

As you may well already know, Tamebay is the blog to keep an eye on for all eBay related news. I'm a guest poster this month with an article about moving on from eBay.

eBay - time for a break

I have been trading on eBay as Foil Play for almost five years now and eBay has been a great help in building my business. However, it can also be a very time consuming sales channel, particularly with the large number of policy changes implemented over the last couple of years.

There are only so many hours in the day and I have reached the stage where I want to concentrate on developing and growing the Foil Play website.

I've decided therefore to take a complete break from eBay, at least for a while, when my remaining listings end later this month. In the meantime, I will of course continue to despatch all eBay orders as promptly as usual.

A big thank you to all my eBay customers over the past five years, it would be great to see you in future at Foil Play!

Web site changes - links

The Foil Play webmaster has been busy making some exciting changes to the website (more of which in a couple of days!).

Due to the new features, the category links in the main window of the site are currently not working. Please use the links over on the left hand menu in the meantime. This also means that links contained in this blog will not work at present either.

Apologies for the inconvenience - the links will be fixed asap (with the site being the first priority), and I will update this post as progress is made.

Update: Links have been fixed on the website now, I will post again when I have fixed links on the blog.

Update: All links on the blog now fixed.