Ongoing Tribulations With SENukeX

June 4, 2011

More Problems With SENukeX

Following my last post on using SENukeX, I had hoped to have some preliminary results on the three sites I selected to promote using this tool. However, SENukeX refused to play ball. It continually crashes on my system (I run it on a VMWare virtual server running Win XP Home SP3 and IE8).

The latest problem is that while it restarts after a crash, it doesn’t pick up where it left off to start building links again. When it crashes, it’s supposed to skip the sites it had open in the browser at the time (it assumes something on one of those sites caused the crash) and then submit to the remaining sites automatically. Now it’s just sitting there following a crash. Re-starting a project that’s crashed should force it to start submitting to new sites but now it starts from the beginning again, submitting to sites it’s already submitted to. You guessed it – it eventually encounters the site that causes it crash and we’re back to square one.

I posted a query on the SENukeX forum about this and provided the log files to help the developers isolate the problem. The result?

I was directed to two standard “try this if SENukeX crashes” type threads that I’d been directed to before, one of which suggests upgrading to IE9. That’s not an option on Win XP. And I made it clear in my query what operating system I was on and that upgrading to IE9 was not an option. I can only assume the SENukeX guys who responded (one being the developer of the software) glossed over my query and didn’t actually read it properly. Not very professional. When I took them to task about their response – silence. That was 2 days ago and there still hasn’t been a response. Not very encouraging.

So several days were lost to-ing and fro-ing with the support people on the forum trying to get the crash issue sorted out.

Throwing In The Towel On XP

So I’ve thrown in the towel on running SENukeX on XP. Some users are able to run it on XP without problems. I’m not one of them. This software seems primarily to be designed for the later versions of Windows.

I decided to bite the bullet and get a Windows VPS to run SENukeX. This runs Windows Server 2008 R2 and IE9. Because my run on XP got buggered up, I had to rebuild the campaign to promote the Classic Comic Book site on the server, so that was another hour or so gone.

But last night I set it off. It seemed to be working when I left it but this morning it looked like it had crashed overnight and not resumed. This may be down to me not setting up the campaign correctly. I kicked it off this morning from the point where it stopped and it’s running again now. It’s a week-long campaign so I won’t know if it’s done it’s thing fully and correctly till this time next week.

Pros And Cons Of A VPS Server

Pros:

It’s a computer dedicated to running SENukeX.
SENukeX runs properly on it (though I’ve yet to fully establish if this is actually the case).
SENukeX does not take up valuable RAM on my PC.
There is no danger of my PC possibly becoming infected with malware from sites that SENukeX works with. Running SENukeX on a virtual PC similarly protects the main PC.
My PC doesn’t have to be on 24/7, saving on the electricity bill. I reckon having the PC on full time would cost an extra ?15-20 (approx. $21-$28) per month. The VPS costs $19.95 per month so the costs equate but I have a dedicated computer to use.
My internet connection isn’t being used (my ISP has a 30Gb/month traffic limit which I currently come close to anyway so not having SENukeX add to that is a plus).
Because the VPS Server is more powerful than the virtual PC I was using, I can run more campaigns more quickly on it.

Cons:

The VPS server is an additional cost (yes, it’s yet another hidden cost to using SENukeX). At $19.95 per month though, the cost is about the same as if I ran my own PC 24/7.
The server has to be manually set up to run SENukeX but this is a one-time thing.

Anyway, here are today’s site stats (click for larger view):

SEnukeX did do some promotion on the Facts About Pregnancy blog during the week, which accounts for it’s slightly higher figures. Classic Comic Book had a few submissions to sites before SENukeX locked up but I think the rise in the Alexa figure is more down to the rebuilt sitemap and SEO changes made to the site last week. I didn’t get time to promote Cheap Electricity Options at all.

Plan For Next Week

I’ll build and run Shock & Awe campaigns for Facts About Pregnancy and Cheap Electricity Options over the weekend and see how things go over the week. If all goes well, then next weekend I’ll kick off the second part of the Shock & Awe campaigns for the three sites. If this type of campaign works the way it’s supposed to, I should start seeing some real results a week or two after that.