Need Reviews: A New And Very Promising Proxy Site!

[abhishekjha]

Ok friends,
I have launched a not just new but a very promising proxy site called free2hide.com. Its promising not just in the sense of having a great look.. but promising in in the sense of having some cool features, a user community and other things which other very very popular proxies lacked till date.

I know this forum dont allow me to copy/paste all the text in the feature list with descriptions due to SEO reasons,so i will just write the headlines and leave it upto you.

1>Easy to remember name- free2hide.com.. couldnt get simpler!

2>Dedicated Tier1 based Fast-Loading & Cross-Browser Compatible- so you dont waste time for pages to load and it doesnt appear broken or ugly on with things like text or images flying here and there on your browser.

3>128-Bit SSL powered with SSL Detector & State Switcher- so firstly your network packet-filtering stuff cant detect which sites you visit via free2hide.com and next you dont need to take the trouble of manually switching ssl on and off.

4>You don't need to pay up to use this- its free dude.

5>Family-Friendly Site & Ads- no adult content, no popups etc, no things which your mom or dad wont like so you can show this site to your mom and dad and it might be useful for them also to bypass filters at say their workplace. but remember if you or anybody else visits any adult or offensive site via free2hide.com proxy then its totally your own choice and your own fault and is not in our hands to block or monitor it coz our main mission is to provide unfiltered and uncensored internet browsing. but being responsible persons, we will always try to keep our ads, site and forum to remain family friendly in the first place.

6>On-Screen Keyboard- so any spyware or keylogger cant detect what website name u type on our url-box and visit which site online.

7>Panic Button- ya use this so that you dont get caught by your teacher

8>'Clear Cookies' Option- this is not your browser's cookies, its the cookies stored on our server and we allow you to delete it coz its your right to do so but many proxies dont allow you to do this and some of them may even hack your e-mail id and site a/c by storing your and re-using your cookies, but at free2hide.com you will be safer coz you can delete the cookies stored on our site after you finished browsing it.

9>Fixed Rendering Problems, Faster Rendering Speed & Comfort Of Draggable Url-Box On Proxified Page- from now you wont see google.com menu bar fly over your head... coz pages will appear properly and will appear fast. the url box will be draggable with your mouse so you can comfortably enjoy viewing any part of a page by removing url box from there without scrolling down like a moron does at other proxy sites

10>Ability To Advertise Your Own Stuff- its both free(by posting on our forum) and paid(for banner ad-spots on forum,main site and proxified page) coz as an advertiser or internet marketer, you may have some expectations from us

11>Stability & Development- ya we dont just make excuses like bandwidth exceeded so site is down and we dont just run things like autopilot and 'auto' sort of idiot things, we keep them updating from time to time so you feel safer an better

12>Where 'You' Matter, User Interaction & Updates- ya we dont take decisions on our own.. we take it with your help, you can suggest things, report bugs, vote on our polls and know other users at our community forum and stay updated of latest happenings of our service.

One more reason i dont mention in above is all features have a tutorial & help at hand at our community forum free2hide.com/talk

More reasons coming up as our development process still continues..

For the full information on the above headlines.. read this thread free2hide.com/talk/index.php?topic=4.0"

Thats it.. and dont forget to to visit our new site. free2hide.com & join our community forum at free2hide.com/talk for more info

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Ceres]

Proxy sites are obviously popular and many people use them. Hey, even I've had to use them on a few occasions (eg. when Estibot mistakenly banned my IP address! ). Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy using the proxy sites as I found them spammy and full of annoying banners and ads.

Ok so on to your site...

The panic button is a cool feature. I can see people making use of this.

When I tested out the site, it kept serving up annoying full-page ads. Just when I think I've gotten rid of it, it reappears a few seconds later. I found the experience frustrating. I realise you're trying to monetise your website but I think the ads are OTT. Perhaps you should try toning this down a bit? If I have to use proxy sites, I will stick with the ones that have the least amount of annoying ads!

I think the site's design could be improved upon, but I'm guessing this is probably in the works as I vaguely recall that you do web design.

Best of luck with the new website, Abhishek. Keep us updated as to its progress.

 

[abhishekjha]

hello ceres,
your tip was helpful.. i do wanted to monetize my site but not at the expense of loosing any first-time visitors. so i have removed full-page ads and they will not disturb you the next time you visit my site.

plus you had forgot to checkout features like "On-Screen Keyboard", "Draggable Url-Box" and also its "Community Forum" at free2hide.com/talk
i would like your views on how you think they are and if you have any difficulty in understanding the function or usage.

and since the full-page ads wont disturb you now, so you can now take out a bit more time and review the proxy site fully.

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Ceres]

Re onscreen keyboard:

Unless I'm doing something wrong, the urls under "free domains" don't resolve. Perhaps you need to remove the dot before each url? (ie instead of ".i.am" change to "i.am").

I don't know if it makes a difference or not, but all letters end up in caps. Although I had no problems, are there some address bars that are case-sensitive?

There are people out there who will likely benefit from this feature. Personally, I hope I don't ever have to use it as it would mean I'm trying to avoid spyware or keylogger.

Re draggable url-box:

For a proxy site, I found this to be a useful feature. I was able move the box around so that it was less intrusive and didn't block my view of the website.

Re forum:

Is it supposed to be a general forum? – I can't quite figure out the forum's angle. In any event, forums can be fun however it's hard work to maintain/promote/monetise them!

All in all, my second attempt to test out your proxy site went much better. The removal of the full-page ads made a big difference. I think it's great that you're adding a bunch of different features as it will probably set you apart from a lot of other proxy sites out there.

 

[abhishekjha]

hello Ceres,
i want to thank you for your time and review of free2hide.com.

the problem you had with on-screen keyboard here are the answers to it:
1>i had purposely made all letters LOOK AS CAPITALS as I thought that capital letters are more visible/readable & easy to find on the keyboard because there are many fonts online which make letters small L 'l' and capital i 'I' look almost same.
2>the free domains dont resolve because of the dot before their names, but similarly you see the .com, .net etc also dont resolve in real life even if you remove the dot before them. actually i wanted to help the users "take the pain out of typing the domain extensions" like say they want to visit "http://abhishek.i.am" then they will just need to press "clearurlbox" button once on the keyboard, then manage to carefully type the 8 characters "abhishek" and lastly just press the ".i.am" button on the keyboard to fully write the url, its just like you type "http://", then "inforum" and then press ".in" so that you dont waste time typing the domain's TLD/extention, it will come automatically at the press of a button.
TIP: if you had visited a website say "http://www.inforum.in" once via the keyboard, then the next time you use free2hide.com, then its url-box will be able to re-call whatever websites you had visited(only if you dont clear your firefox's "Form & Search History") and this time you wont even need to take the pain to type "http://www.inforum.in" from the On-Screen keyboard as it will automatically appear in a drop down selection box.. (just once you press "clearurlbox" on the OSkeyboard and type the letter "i" from your pc keyboard after the letter "http://" on free2hide.com's url box), there you can click and select "http://www.inforum.in" from the dropdown-list and visit inforum without typing the whole website address again on the url-box. this is another cool thing is missing in many other OSkeyboard makers projects, but present at free2hide.com's url box.

i would definitely also like any more reviews and comments from other inforum members too, specially jeff.. he maybe angry coz i invented a proxy for inforum
but i can also put one button also for "inforum.in" on the on-screen keyboard just where you see buttons of facebook.com, bebo.com etc, but for that you need to contact me jeff as i dont do things without approval from the authorities... as im a nice & responsible guy.

 

[Jeff]

I like it very much! It has got to be one of the best proxies I've ever seen. Adding the keyboard is a nice touch. And unlike a lot of proxies, I was able to log into various account I have on different websites without a problem. It didn't really slow my browsing down either, which was very nice.

 

[Ceres]

2>actually i wanted to help the users "take the pain out of typing the domain extensions"

@Abhishek, I misunderstood "free domains" on the onscreen keyboard. I realise now it's a shortcut to typing a free domain extension, and not a shortcut to obtaining a free domain.

 

[abhishekjha]

@jeff;@ceres
actually i want to thank you for taking your time out and finding atleast some time to review this proxy site i made.

In case you get any problem, bugs, errors with the same then you can report it officially on Free2Hide.com our community forum where i will be tracking bugs and responding to all user queries.

Plus you can checkout the tutorial threads(threads with a LAMP & Thumbs Up icons) over here free2hide.com/talk/index.php?board=7.0" in case you want to know how to use any particular feature in more details.

i would also definitely like if other inforum members could take out some of their time off and review this site once.. maybe they could also make a different type of/any uncovered point and help me make it even more better as i still believe that there is more room for improvement but that im not able to figure out what without any end-user feedback. so i really need more feedbacks and reviews!

 

[Jeff]

What happened to it?

 

[abhishekjha]

Actually i had shut down the site because:
1>i spent a lot on making it(hosting & promotion) even though i spent my many days and nights time and custom-coded it myself to save some bucks.. and it got alexa 9k in iran.. but since majority of visitors arent from us/uk and ad-networks dont pay much for other visitors from countries so.. it didnt seem to make up my spend soon and i got discouraged to extend it any more.
2>its a holiday season and any amount of advertising wont get me christmas or new year shoppers to my site.. i have to let them enjoy the holidays
3>i think i should start my site again if some people are ready to pay $1 per month membership fees to get a fully ad-free 20 times faster user-interface based proxy site.. but for that i need atleast 10 to 15 people to join as paid members or get some sponsors to start it again. let me know if anybody is interested in this idea.

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Ceres]

@Abhishek, too bad you've shut down the site so soon after launching it. It seemed like a decent proxy site.

 

[shonmaster]

The concept and article is good and i even find it unique . However opting for it , I need to give a thought

 

[abhishekjha]

The concept and article is good and i even find it unique . However opting for it , I need to give a thought

dude,
its not an article.. its a description of a proxy site that i had started 5 months back, run it for 3 months and shut it down.. you can still have a look at how it looked in the past.. in image at NuWiz Web Design Solutions

see at that page.. scroll down to the bottom.. you will see the text-link free2hide.com and an image above it.. that is that preview of free2hide.com in the past and i still have all those files with me whenever i want to start it again.

regards,
Abhishek