Author name: Webmaster

Sorry if you had visited yesterday and saw a bunch of weird errors on the site. It was down for a few hours.

An automated backup tool ate up all the hard drive space on the server and in the process corrupted the main WordPress config file!

It made it 0 bytes and luckily I had a backup of this. Took me a long time to get things working again.

The worst part of all is my payment gateway plugin was deactivated on accident.

So the entire time I was asleep the site wasn’t accepting payments. Not good, especially after I did a pretty great update.

It’s FIXED and we are back at 100%!

PS if you are considering placing an order, we would sure appreciate it.

We need your orders now more than ever before. The hardest month by far in 20 years EASILY.

WOW! I have no idea how that happened. Somehow i’ve visited the mobile version of my site many many times and never realized the site search box was totally missing! Not even an option for it on the menu (was ok on desktops).

It’s back and fixed! I’m afraid to know how long it was actually missing! Hopefully not MONTHS.

I had the search “widget” in my theme set to be invisible on mobile devices! I must have accidentally clicked that some day.

BTW in case you didn’t notice, the site is responsive. This means it will adapt to tablets, cell phones and desktop users automatically.

On my 24″ desktop display I get 3 columns of products. On a cell phone in portrait mode I get 1. A table might get a few more.

I’ve considered adding 4 columns of DVD covers on desktop but they looked too small.

The site now is using a fully dedicated CPU! This means all the resources are going just to the site and not shared with other web hosting customers. Will it matter? Not sure, but the site is now running super fast. The CPU is an AMD EPYC processor at around 3.2ghz I think. First time I’ve ever used an AMD processor for a web server. While the site was up last night it was sort of funny seeing the CPU only using 1% of it’s power!

Here’s a tip you might not realize about how the site works.

1. Load up the cart with some products while logged off.
2. When you login to your account it will add all of those to your existing “logged in” cart.
3. When you logoff, the logged off cart will be empty (this is a “feature” they say).
4. When you log back in, the cart will be just how you left it! It should remember the cart contents.

It sure is nice having a shopping cart that works great!

I noticed when adding lots of titles to the cart on a cell phone you could click “View Cart”and then it would say the cart was empty!

The cart really wasn’t empty though. The problem is now fixed.

It was caused by my caching software caching the cart page (which you NEVER want to have happen!).

BTW if you ever browse the site while logged in and add DVDs to the cart, it will save these to your logged in account only.

When you logoff, the cart will be empty until you login again It’s a “feature” I guess.

I also added back some Full Cover Galleries for every update this year.

It lets you see all the full covers with one click instead of dozens.

Here they are:

July 2024

June 2024

May 2024

April 2024

March 2024

February 2024

January 2024

Over 82 very recent releases were just added to the site on July 8th 2024.

This is possibly one of the best updates i’ve done in months.

Most of them came out in Japan in the past week or two. Lots of variety and something for everyone.

Please check them out when you have time.

I really really really need this update to be a huge success. If it’s not, I might not be able to do updates for at least another few months. It’s one of my “last-ditch” efforts before I possibly need to go get a part time job to help the site keep going.

You might not realize how much I love what I do and want to keep doing this full time (without a part time job).

Remember how I was saying that search traffic and sales were at their all time lowest point? I’ve been doing some investigating.

It turns out that ALL my meta descriptions for 1000+ titles were set all wrong. Due to an error on my part.

This caused all of those products to have really spammy (looking) descriptions in google search! That’s now fixed!

When searchers see that garbage they are not going to click it!

So what I did was accidentally enter my review and put a link to a picture gallery in the wrong area.

I put it under “Product Description”. I wasn’t aware that my Ecommerce software automatically used that for a product description!

This issue could have caused Google to flag my site or some of it’s pages as spammy or low quality.

I’m hoping for a miracle and they will pick up the changes quickly and this is the reason for poor traffic from Google search etc.

I really need a full recovery. Sales should not have magically fallen 75% in just the span of two months.

I’m hopefully I can get things back to normal soon. It’s going to happen!

PS I’ve also got the site running super fast now with page caching!

I don’t know if anyone will notice the speed difference, but I hope so.

Most pages won’t take more than a half  a second to load.

We are using Litespeedcache on an actual Openlitespeed server!

If you have ever visited the site in the past 18 days using mobile data only (not wifi) and couldn’t connect, it’s now fixed.

The site was fine with a desktop PC and over wifi. I estimate less than 5% of customers had this issue.

It turns out that I misconfigured the web server slightly due to poor documentation. It’s some strange issue on devices that only connect over IPV6 and don’t have IPV4 fallback (like my cell phone).

I’ve also created some new previews that are better for mobile devices for all the July 2024 updates. Now they will be in a single column instead of 3-5. I also had a great idea to put the previews into a gallery along with the covers too. I make these to try to save people the hassle of clicking dozens of images. You can view the July 2024 gallery. You can’t buy them from that page, but just keep a list of catalog numbers you want and search for them later (or keep the updates page up).

July 2024 is still an extremely tough month, but i’m trying everything I can to keep the site going for months and months. Right now i’m still at the point of getting a part time job on Monday if a miracle doesn’t happen. It’s only to help the site out and keep the bills paid. There is only a 1 in a million chance of the site every closing. Sales in May and June were about 75% of what they are on a normal month. Basically that puts me into panic mode daily.

I keep hoping that it’s some weird technical issue causing problems that is now fixed, but this is not likely.

Since 2002 i’ve had some difficult times running the site and got past them. This latest one is the worst by far. It’s like everything i’ve done to recover from poor sales hasn’t helped. 9 out of 10 times it’s a random Google algorithm update that causes the poor sales and eventually whatever they did is fixed. I hope this is the cause. It is also very strange considering we added a record number of new DVDs in May and June, yet terrible sales. Prices are also great IMO. I also think the site is easy to use and looks good (IMO).

If customers give me a second chance for the site and I don’t need to get a part time job, i’ve set some goals for the site. My plan is to turn the site around completely. Make sure orders get out super fast and work up to 16 hours a day if needed. I want to keep running the site full time for years! One reason for poor sales is due to me often not getting out orders fast enough. If I can get out orders lightning fast then i’d get more orders. The biggest problem the site faces really is it being run by one person. It’s incredibly difficult.

One fault of mine too is never planning for having to deal with 15,000+ DVDs. It was never a problem when I had 10,000. It’s very very hard to find discs in a collection of 18,000. I’ve been sorting them out slowly and organzing them, but it takes time.

The absolute biggest time sink when processing orders is finding discs. 75% of the time spent on order processing goes into that. This is probably hard to believe. Once I get all those discs sorted, this part is solved once and for all and i’ve getting back to normal FAST I think.

I’ve got a strategy in place to find single discs now in minutes instead of it taking an eternity. I just never imagined that one of the sites biggest challenges was finding single discs quickly!

What am I doing about that?

I put them all in long cardboard boxes and put those on a shelf. They store about 500 discs each.

Each disc is in a paper sleeve and gets a single number. Example A1, A2046, A5678.

The discs are put in numerical order so I can easily flip to the right disc.

I make a printed index and write the catalog numbers down and give each one a number.

I can now scan through a list of thousands of discs and find what I need super fast!

Eventually I will enter these index lists into my computer and search even faster.

I also upgraded the site with a new server. I’ve switched from Nginx/Apache to OpenLiteSpeed. One thing I have to say is that it’s a major pain in the butt to configure. The documentation is incredibly poor. The control panel they give you is also not user friendly at all. One reason I switched to a new server is that Plesk was going to no longer be free (it’s a web server admin control panel). Plesk is a super great software, but it is nowhere near worth the $25/month price they were asking. Especially not for one domain.

I used to never use a control panel for a web server. When I got older I just loved the convenience of using Plesk and not having to deal with using the Linux command line for everything.

The site runs on a dual core CPU with 4gb of ram and an NVME drive. I don’t think i’ve ever seen the server hit more than 10% CPU usage ever. It’s a VPS and not a shared or dedicated server.

BTW it’s possible the lack of sales lately is due to less people using physical media. I don’t believe this to be the case in my situation. Why? Sales were amazing in February! There are always going to be those like me that love and prefer physical media. I even refuse to buy video game systems that are digital only.

June 19th 2024 @ 11:30pm: I’ve added back ALL the picture gallery links for the GOKKUN genre. Over 500 previews are back!

June 19th 2024 @ 11pm: I’ve added a Gallery Links CSV file for collectors. It will give links to the OLD picture preview gallery pages.

Only less than 20% of them are on the new site so far.

Since there is 6,000+ of them it would be impossible to manually add them all back quickly.

If you use Notepad++ (it’s free) to view the file you can double click the links to see the picture previews in a browser.

You can use CTRL+F in Notepad and Notepad++ to search. Make sure to try it without the dash first (-) then with.

When we moved to our new site in November 2023 we had to automatically add all products to the new site. There was no way to transfer actress names, reviews and screenshots. This is because we had been using HTML5 only and there was no database.

We actually added all the products to the new site based on catalog numbers taken from JPG images! This is why many titles are listed without the dash (-) in the catalog number.

If you need to see previews for these old titles you can do any of the following:

1. Visit the OLD SITE. It’s an info only site and the search and cart functions are disabled.
2. You can guess the name of a preview. Type https://www.japansm.com/old-site/gallery/ into your browser and just added the catalog number at the end without the dash (can try with it too).
3. Download the CSV file above if you’re on a desktop PC. In Notepad++ you can just double click the links to go right to the preview.

Example for #2: https://www.japansm.com/old-site/gallery/mvsd067/

PLEASE NOTE: Titles added after 2022 usually got JPG previews and not the bloated full gallery HTML previews.

EVERY title from the old site is on the new one.

Want to buy a DVD listed on the old site? Just search for it on the new site as follows:

Enter the catalog number WITHOUT and WITH the dash.

If MVSD067 doesn’t work, try MVSD-067.

May 22nd 2024 – Blurry thumbnails fixed!!

I noticed a big problem with the site! All the thumbnail images (small box covers) were blurry! I didn’t notice this because I need new glasses and it’s hard for me to actually see them up close. It’s FIXED and they should look great now.

The issue was that they were set to a width of 400 pixels, but my theme was stretching them out from 300 pixels! Oops.

I’ve regenerated all the thumbnails.

The software i’m using for the site is still faily new to me and i’m still learning!

BTW I’m not  sure if people know this, but no credit card numbers are ever stored on our web server.

Even when you select “Save to Account”.

There is actually no need to save your card details or even make an account.

Doing that just saves you time at check-out.

I’m going on 4 days now with no sales. It’s a bit frustrating, but I am working hard to try to recover.

May 20th 2024:

Added thumbnail previews for 236 DVDs added in May. You can download a zip archive of May 2024 covers and previews.

It’s only suggested for collectors on a desktop PC. Right click the link and select “Save Link As”.

Here is a log of new additions for May. Nearly all of them were released in Japan in May.

None of them are older additions. Lots of variety as usual.

If you don’t see enough Lesbian titles for one update, please understand that they might have not released many in Japan in May (yet). That is our most popular genre most of the time.

UPDATE LOG:

Round 7 – May 21st: 28 DVDs

Round 6 – May 19th: 54 DVDs

Round 5 – May 15th: 80 DVDs

Round 4 – May 13th: 31 DVDs

Round 3 – May 10th: 71 DVDs

Round 2 – May 6th: 60 DVDs

Round 1 – May 1st: 129 DVDs

Again, if you’re currently waiting for an order, PLEASE don’t worry!

I am doing everything possible to get them all out ASAP.

I’ve faced some incredible hardships in keeping the site going in the past few months.

I am working as hard as I can. This is a one person business.

Thank You!!

We’ve had a temporary issue where when registering for an account it would not send an email to setup a password.

This is now fixed! Now you can create an account with a password without clicking an email link first.

An account is NEVER required to order.

Why create an account? It allows you to save time at check-out. Your mailing address will be filled out automatically!

If you have an open order, we are working as hard as possible to get them out ASAP.

Complete marathon sessions daily. Please don’t worry, I guarantee 1000% you’ll get it.

Thank You!

BTW one important thing about accounts on our website worth mentioning. We NEVER and will never store any credit card details on the web server.

Any card details are submitted securely with encryption to our payment gateway for approval.

106 new JAV DVDs just added to the site!

I’ve been on a roll adding tons of titles to the site. I bet you didn’t know that this is already the 4th routh of updates and it’s only the 10th!

Most of these came out very recently in Japan. Lots of variety in this update. Even some Lesbian titles, even the rare Bukkake new additions. As you may know, they don’t make those as much in Japan these days.

Here are some tips to navigate the site:

1. Click “Home” to see titles in EVERY genre. Previously you could click “Japan Video World”.
2. Click “Latest Updates” to see what we’ve added for each month. Or you can just click your favorite genre.
3. On the genre page you can sort by most recent titles or what is the most popular (goes by sales).
4. Want to see titles with your favorite actress? Be sure to click her “tag”. It allows you to see more of their DVDs.
5. If you want to see more previews for titles added before OCTOBER 2023 you can visit our old site.
6. Want to buy a title you’ve found on the old site? Search for it here, you may need to remove the dash (-) to find it.
7. 100% of ALL titles on the old site are available here. NOTHING has been removed!
8. We had to import all the old data and could not simply transfer over all the previews and actress info.
9. If anyone didn’t know, “All Sex” is our General or Main area. Most titles will go there.
10. If a DVD was added in the past 30 days it will now display a “NEW” label on the top right of the box cover.

I also found some technical issues that could have caused a few problems for people trying to order.

If you experienced that, please try it again!

Fingers crossed that was the issue, but maybe not.

It involved accidentally “caching” the check-out and cart contents pages. That’s FIXED.

I am hopeful I can continue the site for years. It’s going to happen!

I just need this update to be a huge success.

I am working so hard. Harder than ever before! It’s 3am and i’m still at it!

I have some huge plans for this site. I love my job so much and want to keep doing this as my full (and only) job.

I also want to assure everyone that if you have an open order, it’s 1000% going out and  ASAP. Don’t worry!

I’m working day and night.

Thank You!!