Freebies and free stuff

I’m still getting a few daily e-mails from people who are stuck seeing the September 24th version of the site (remember back when I broke HIF? Yeah, those were the days…)

Anyway, if you’re reading this here on HIF and have been seeing new posts recently, then you’re clearly not suffering from the glitch. This is more for Hiffers reading this on Twitter, Facebook, the newsletter, etc.

In case you missed the first post I made, here is how you fix the problem and start getting the new freebies to show up on the site!

1. Clear your browser’s cache. It takes 15 seconds and instructions for most browsers can be found at that link.
2. Close your browser.
3. Finally, reopen your browser, go to HIF, and press CTRL+R (for Windows) or CMND+R (for Mac).

That should do it! Sorry again for the hassle.

This is kind of important, so thanks for reading it.

The allusion to site updates wasn’t a farce, but I figured this piece of news deserved it’s own post to start with. Long story short, I broke the site last Friday and didn’t find out about it until yesterday. Apparently a ton of Hiffers haven’t been seeing any new posts since September 24. My bad!

To make matters worse, those of us who saw the new updates were still experiencing discrepancies across the site (comment counts were inaccurate, new posts would show up and then vanish, and I think my room’s haunted with a ghost…well, that last one really only applies to me).

I’ve fixed the code on my end, but it could take up to 72 hours to filter down to everyone. However, there are some quick and easy steps you can take to make sure you get the correct fix much sooner:

1. Clear your browser’s cache. It takes 15 seconds and instructions for most browsers can be found at that link.
2. Close your browser.
3. Finally, reopen your browser, go to HIF, and press CTRL+R (for Windows) or CMND+R (for Mac).

Those steps should take care of the problem. Again, apologizes for the trouble! I’m heading to bed, but feel free to leave any comments or questions and I’ll get to them in the morning.

EDIT: Just to be clear, this wasn’t a virus or anything malicious. I simply inadvertently put in code that told people’s browsers not to check for a new version of HIF until April 2010. For better or worse, I intend to make new posts between now and then, so I deleted that code!

I’ve gotten a few e-mails recently about links opening in a new window and so I thought I’d see what the general consensus was.

Currently, links to freebie sites open in the same window. They can be set to open in a new window / tab, but that setting would then take away the option from you.

As most webmasters see it, users should have almost total control over their own surfing habits. Site shouldn’t force a link to open in a new window, but instead let users have the option. For instance, I enjoy links opening in new tabs and I do this by using the scroll wheel on my mouse. Most people don’t realize that the scroll wheel is also a button and by using it to click a link in Firefox, it’ll automatically open the link in a new tab. I don’t know if this works with IE or Chrome, but I’d suspect that it does.

There is also another method, which is to right-click on any link and select “open link in a new tab/window.” This is clearly more ineffective, but research shows it’s the most popular. *insert picture of me scratching my head.*

However, the more I think about it, the more keen I am to opening freebie links in a new tab for HIF. Most sites don’t have nearly as many links as we do, thanks to the nature of posting freebies. Chime in by voting / commenting and letting me know how you feel about it!

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a headsup whenever HIF is going to be featured on a news broadcast, which is exactly why I’m writing this since HIF was featured on WTMJ in Milwaukee last night. With new viewers comes waves of people being introduced to the land of freebies (ed: sounds like a bad board game) and so I put together this quick “what the heck is going on here?” guide.

First off, freebies can be found below. Just start scrolling and you’ll see our latest posts. If you prefer, you can select a Category over on the sidebar and display only freebies pertaining to that subject.

In addition to the freebies, here are some of the most popular sections of the site:

Frequently Asked Questions – This short page might help answer some of your questions about freebies and how they work exactly.

Free Coupons – A roundup of all the websites where you can print out coupons for free.

Daily Newsletter – Every day at 3:00 EST, a newsletter goes out with every new post we made in the previous 24 hours.

Forums – Our community forums are a great place to hang out and learn about freebies from other people who are into free stuff.

Top Rated Freebies – Occasionally we put together massive lists of freebies that you can find. For instance, we have an ongoing list of stores and restaurants that give away free birthday food. Another good example is our wiki page of every museum in the country that offers free admission!

Stay In Touch – And last, but not least, we offer a gazillion different ways to follow our recent postings. Want to follow our RSS feed? Addicted to Twitter? Ignore basic hygiene by spending too much time to Facebook? We feel your pain.

• Our RSS Feed
• Follow us on Twitter
• Chat with us on Facebook
• Does anybody still use Myspace?

And that should do it! Of course, if you still have no idea what’s going on here, feel free to contact me and ask away with your questions.

Recently I’ve gotten an increase in the number of emails that more or less say “Hey, why didn’t you post X?” and thus I thought I’d take a moment to address this.

The freebie isn’t free. There’s shipping. Or a minimum purchase. Or an “identification check” via your credit card. Or any number of other strings that are attached to freebies which make them not worth our while. This doesn’t mean I won’t post something that isn’t 100% free, but it is the first bar that an offer generally has to cross in order for me to even consider it on the site.

The freebie stinks. Seriously, who wants a DVD for vacationing in Montana just because it’s free? Anybody even remotely interested in that would have already Googled for it instead of waiting for a freebie site to post it.

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I’ve updated the heck out of our free birthday food list this morning. In addition to adding a half dozen or so offers, I removed any offer that I had yet to be able to confirm, so the list is a bit leaner and more accurate now.

If you happen to know of an offer that I missed though, please feel free to comment on that post and fill me in! It’s been a few months since I’ve gone through those comments, so I’ll be doing that later this afternoon.

Adam and I have been kicking around the idea to do a freebie-related radio show at Blog Talk Radio for a while now, but we never could get a good time to do it regularly. So for now, I’m going to go at it alone and will host the first episode sometime next week.

Seeing as how I get dozens of the same e-mails every day with pretty much the same questions, I’ve decided to answer as many of them as possible during the first show. So if you have any particular questions you’d like answered, send them in and chances are I’ll probably cover them.

And we’re back! … kinda. The forums and wiki are still being worked on, but they should be back up tonight. I was focused mainly on getting the blog up and running over the past 12ish hours, so thankfully it appears to be working. If you’re having trouble leaving a comment or clicking on a link, let me know and I’ll have a look into it.

We might go down intermittently throughout the rest of the day as I try and squash any new bugs that are found. If that happens, you can find all of today’s posts over on our backup blog that I created last night. Or was it technically this morning? Whatever, it’s nap time!

I bought a dedicated server for HIF this week and will be transferring the site / tweaking the settings on it all weekend long, so apologies in advance for any kinks you may experience. If you’re experiencing any significant problems, however, feel free to contact me so that I can look into it.

The good news is that with the new server, the site should experience fewer downtimes and load a bit faster. So…woohoo!

HIF is undergoing some super awesome changes this week, (new server! new writers! and more!) and so I thought I’d take a minute to explain them. Oh, and maybe you’d be interested in learning that I’m giving away over $400 in prizes as well? Yeah, that’s what I thought!

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HIF is undergoing some super awesome changes this week, (new server! new writers! and more!) and so I thought I’d take a minute to explain them. Oh, and maybe you’d be interested in learning that I’m giving away over $400 in prizes as well? Yeah, that’s what I thought!

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Please ignore that Inauguration Day freebie post you may have seen here on the site or in your RSS reader earlier tonight. It’s clearly a work in progress and was accidentally published to the main site for a while. That’s what I get for trying to drink wine and eat dinner while I work!

It’s been almost two years since I first brought on some additional writers and I think it’s about time to expand once again. Adam and I have the (legit) freebie scene pretty much nailed down and Shaynon dominates the reviews, but there’s one major area of being frugal and getting things for free that we stink at: coupons and deals!

Thus, I’m looking for one, maybe two, new writers for the following positions with horrible names that I just came up with.

Coupon Hunter: Basically you’d be in charge of something similar to my Weekly Coupon Posts, only with more coupons and the ability to make good on the namesake by posting a batch at least once a week.

Deal Master: What I’m looking for here is somebody who is really into the buyer rewards programs that Walgreens, CVS, and other stores make available. Many of them have weekly specials that, when paired with free coupons, make it easy to get stuff for pennies on the dollar if not for free. Check out this post from Deal Seeking Mom for an example of what I’m talking about.

Think you might be interested? Click below for the few basic requirements, benefits, and more info!

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I’ve got a barrage of updates planned for the site over the next month, the smallest of which being that you can now befriend HIF on all of your favorite social network sites. (does that sound kind of dirty to anybody else?)

Now you can easily follow along with the updates here on HIF while you pretend to work or procrastinate in school! I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few popular sites though, so if you use one in particular and think HIF should have a presence, let me know.

I haven’t the slightest where all the new readers are coming from today, but I do know the site is being a bit sluggish. I’m tweaking the backend and cutting some of the images that load, so hopefully that’ll speed things up soon. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to vote and then enjoy a ton of election day freebies!