Upgrading server to super duper dedicated, need opinions

[Ellay]

Alright so obviously it's been frustrating with the site down so much after hitting the headlines, and it's bound to happen again with the awesomeness that is our community. I've been talking to my hosting and explained the situation.. wasn't too hard to see :)
The traffic was way way too insane, so I asked if I switched to a dedicated server would that help... and pretty much just laughed at the situation saying that wouldn't even solve the problem, need a higher grade dedicated.

So.. I'm going to be placing up adsense at the top (no gold ads), if you don't like it / hate it just filter it out and we'll see how that goes. This weekend was insanely stressful and this is an easy remedy to the situation. If you have any gripes/complaints let me know :P I'm all ears. I just want to be as open with the community as possible :)

[Bot]

as far as im concerned ads do not detract at all. you gotta do what you gotta do to keep this thing going. heck id probably still show up even if there was 4 inches of ads on all sides. also imho dont stress out too much in the tough times its not like we're gonna die if we cant view the forum(at least dont think we will) so take 'er easy i think we all understand.

[Vunpac]

rofl I'm with bot on this one

[Mono]

Finally a worthwhile reason to play with Adblock and determine if it can be disabled on specific sites...

And yes, it can, but there are no ads yet.

I think dual-boxing.com is an amazing resource that has never cost me a cent. I will willingly endure advertising in exchange for continued access to this site.

[Tasty]

What kinda cost would you be looking at to upgrade if you didn't go with the ads? I'm more curious than anything, they've never phased me that much.

[Schwarz]

will your hosting company take gold as payment?

[bodefeld]

Pop-ups or sliding in Ads? Pain.
Animated Ads? Bearable.
If you can make sure it doesn't randomly include gold sellers and the like (which we got on our guild forum once) -- whatever works is fine with me.

Thanks for your effort.

[Zseth]

Personally, my opinion is the same as it was a year ago, charge subscription fees to dedicated members to access the forums. Sure it might stop a few people from coming in, but anyone who really wants to box will stay subscribed.



Yes, I am an asshole, but that is my opinion.

[Tasty]

Personally, my opinion is the same as it was a year ago, charge subscription fees to dedicated members to access the forums. Sure it might stop a few people from coming in, but anyone who really wants to box will stay subscribed.



Yes, I am an asshole, but that is my opinion.

I gotta say I'm strongly against what you suggested. And no you aren't asshole for expressing your view :)

[not5150]

Ok, how much money are you spending for hosting now? I'm guessing you have a shared server account.

What was your max concurrent connections over the weekend? Were you throttled by the hoster or did the ram/cpu max out?

webhostingtalk.com is the forum you should be visiting now for hosting information, make an account and look under dedicated server offers in the forums.

Expect to pay approximately $100-$200 for decent dedicated servers.

I'm not familiar with Burning Board, but you should do a database export to prepare for the move (if you already haven't done so).

Oh, I forgot to add that you're going to have a lot more traffic in the next few days because another journalist is going to publish an article. :whistling:

[Naylix]

gief paypal link!!

I wouldn't mind setting up a 1-2$ monthly sub .... but make it voluntary, some people simply will not pay for websites.

We did this in our old guild, and it was set @ 3$ maximum. We had a dedicated hosting the month after, since every guildmember felt they could definately spare 3$ pr month.

And honestly, you can barely buy a soft drink for 1-2$, but this website getting 200ish voluntary donations = gold baby

[Mono]

Pop-ups or sliding in Ads? Pain.
Animated Ads? Bearable.
If you can make sure it doesn't randomly include gold sellers<SNIP>
So.. I'm going to be placing up adsense at the top (no gold ads)


Personally, my opinion is the same as it was a year ago, charge subscription fees to dedicated members to access the forums. Sure it might stop a few people from coming in, but anyone who really wants to box will stay subscribed.

Then people would make their own alternative sites that don't charge a fee, and with the community scattered amongst various other sites and it all goes downhill from there.

[Parsous]

You should try to get more details from the hosting company on what the problem was. If it was just a massive spike in traffic (e.g. "farked" or "penny-arcaded") there typically isn't much you can do about it outside of paying massive amounts to prevent that kind of problem.

If you're exceeding traffic limits or hitting their database server too hard then those can typically be solved by going to a dedicated server, since typically if you are hitting something too hard on a shared resource the provider will typically throttle you (Usually breaking something in the process).

[Sam DeathWalker]

I use these guys and its dirt cheap as says "unlimited traffic", I mean dosn't that mean they can handel heavy traffic?

http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.planBusinessPlus

I am sure these guys can handle any traffic:

http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.ourPromiseToYou

But ya put adds I mean no one can afford to be a charity organization in this economy.

[Ruodhaid]

gief paypal link!!



in the top if the site to the right the is a bottem named Donate press it

[glo]

I would at least try a paypal link for now. The worst that will happen is you get a few bucks to help with the upgrade costs.

[blast3r]

I would be willing to donate a monthly amount to help with the increase in cost. This is the backbone of my hobby and to me it would be well worth it.

[bizcotti4]

i would much rather pay a one time fee than see ads.

[Wilbur]

I'll see if I can pull some strings to put a hosting package together...

[Los]

How bout getting more hosts instead of just 1, cluster the website, isnt that possible somehow? I always wondered about stuff like that, im not so into the forum software you are using, but perhaps there is software that makes/lets you cluster it. You could setup one/two in europe, one/two in the us, make them sync between eachother.

[zanthor]

<sarcasm>Yea, teh paypal link would work so well... I'm sure of it... because the one you have had in the menubar for months must be rocking the cashbox... </sarcasm>

If you can swing it, and I don't know that the software supports it or that you would want to manage the overhead... I'd suggest a monthly subscription of a buck or three to bypass advertisements. Let me kick in a few bucks a month to NOT have adverts on the site and I'd gladdly do it... for those who insist the web should be free, let them look at advertisements... and for those who insist the web should be free and add free, let them look at adblocker or other software...

[zanthor]

How bout getting more hosts instead of just 1, cluster the website, isnt that possible somehow? I always wondered about stuff like that, im not so into the forum software you are using, but perhaps there is software that makes/lets you cluster it. You could setup one/two in europe, one/two in the us, make them sync between eachother.For this you are talking big bucks... huge bucks... as far as I know it's not even possible with a MySQL backend which is what most hosting companies offer...

Basically the next step is a dedicated host instead of a virtual host, I know that this site is getting more traffic on an average day than my sites ever did, and on those average days it holds up fine, but when it gets an extra 30K (more? I'd guess so) hits, it seems to buckle...

[shaeman]

Monetisation sucks.

Firstly adsense - If you take out the gold sellers and the character selling adverts your not going to be left with much. I've not done much adsense for a while now but it's filtering options used to suck. Also you are selling your traffic cheap, You would be better off signing up for the affiliate programs of the gold guides, and levelling guides and putting those up instead. However with wotlk round the corner would anyone be buying a how to make gold guide right now.

Have you considered pay per view or pay for access to multiboxing videos of multiboxed arena and such. obviously you can't host them on this site, that would just blow the bandwidth budget, but if there was a site that allows you to control access to your videos then you could potentially sell access to those. It needn't sell for much. Put cut down teasers on this site, on youtube etc and charge a couple of bucks for access to full videos.

Just a thought.

I know I love watching multiboxing in action.

Here's another thought. Arrange some deal where you pay for the rights to show other members videos and you will have content galore.

[Hachoo]

Also if it hasn't already been said, it doesn't hurt to open a paypal donation fund and put a link to donate at the top. Don't make it required or anything but honestly I'm sure plenty of people would periodically donate a couple dollars here and there since they get a lot of use out of the site. If nothing else it doesn't hurt at all to put it there and its not like you'd be requiring any sort of donation.

I know plenty of other forums that have a voluntary donation system and it pays the bills for them. A lot of people also prefer this to ads (I'd say go with the ads also for now as well).

[Wilbur]

Also if it hasn't already been said, it doesn't hurt to open a paypal donation fund and put a link to donate at the top. Don't make it required or anything but honestly I'm sure plenty of people would periodically donate a couple dollars here and there since they get a lot of use out of the site. If nothing else it doesn't hurt at all to put it there and its not like you'd be requiring any sort of donation.

I know plenty of other forums that have a voluntary donation system and it pays the bills for them. A lot of people also prefer this to ads (I'd say go with the ads also for now as well).

You are fucking joking right?

You mean like the big smiley button thats been at the top of the forums for the last what... 6 months?

[not5150]

You don't need clustering for this forum. The error message I noticed was the MySQL would bomb out because lack of memory. So a dedicated server on a decent host should be able to handle the traffic.

Beware of hosting providers that offer unlimited/unmetered bandwidth. You're a forum - mostly text - so bandwidth isn't an issue. What you need is RAM, processing power and hard drive space.

[zanthor]

gief paypal link!!
in the top if the site to the right the is a bottem named Donate press it
I would at least try a paypal link for now. The worst that will happen is you get a few bucks to help with the upgrade costs.
<sarcasm>Yea, teh paypal link would work so well... I'm sure of it... because the one you have had in the menubar for months must be rocking the cashbox... </sarcasm>
Also if it hasn't already been said, it doesn't hurt to open a paypal donation fund and put a link to donate at the top. Don't make it required or anything but honestly I'm sure plenty of people would periodically donate a couple dollars here and there since they get a lot of use out of the site. If nothing else it doesn't hurt at all to put it there and its not like you'd be requiring any sort of donation.
You are fucking joking right?

You mean like the big smiley button thats been at the top of the forums for the last what... 6 months? Can we get another bigger, shinier, obvious donate button?

I dunno, maybe a nice 1280x1024 boob that has "donate" tattoo'd into the nipple...

[suprafro]

Personally I would consider VPS hosting before dedicated as the bang for your buck is far, far, greater and you esentially have full controll over the virtual server. Additionally you have the power to gradually scale up your memory from a cheap VPS plan to a more expensive plan if your average load keeps increasing

I like

http://www.slicehost.com

excellent customer service and a great user community...i'm not getting endorsements here, they are just that awesome

No need to contract into a $100+ a month for dedicated when a $20 month to month VPS will do the job just fine, I have no idea what kind of plan your on right now or what kind of load your getting...but if your currently on a bargain basement shared plan the $20 slicehost VPS probably has....oh, an allocated memory cap atleast 10 times higher. And hey...if it ends up being not enough, its very easy to scale it up gradually

my .02

[Hachoo]

Eh, no need to get pissy about it. Honestly I've never even looked at the bar at the top, even if I had why would I notice a plain little small donate button mixed in with all the rest. It should be very obvious, something with the paypal logo that sits at the top of every thread right above where you'd be put when you click a link so its right in the middle of the page, by itself, every time you refresh.

[Ellay]

Server will be upgraded within the next few hours with my current hosting until I find a permanent solution. It will have triple the current resources so no more issues on the community side.

[Tehtsuo]

I don't know about others' opinions, but it looks like you're looking for input, Ellay. Here's my .02

1) Adsense - Yes. This community needs to continue, and if generosity isn't footing the bill, use what does. A small minority of the community may be upset, but they'll still have a useful, and more reliable, resource to take advantage of, rather than one that's shut down or limited due to financial problems. However, if this comes to pass, I'd like the next suggestion to be implemented.

2) Monthly fee - And no, I'm not saying a monthly fee for all access. I'm talking about a very small 'premium' fee, between $1 and $2 a month. This will supplement the income from ads, and would result in an ad-free environment for subscribers. However, I do not believe the reward for a premium account should only be the removal of ads; because the multiboxing crowd is reasonably computer-savvy, it would take very little time for most to enable an ad-blocker or blacklist proxy rather than pay a monthly fee. Additional benefits such as a limited amount of storage space to upload images and a special title for subscribers would make it worthwhile beyond removing ads. Another idea that might be a lot of work but would really shine - a multibox-focused signature generator for subscribers. I've often wished to use one of those custom signature generators, but I don't want to end up with a 5-image thick signature (And yes, I'd gladly link to dual-boxing.com from my generated signature if I could use it on other forums). With all that extra value, you'd likely see a pretty substantial amount of subscriber traffic, but still be pulling in a respectable amount of ad revenue from people visiting to learn about multiboxing - all without restricting any actual content from the public eye.

3) Aggressive ad filtering - As a former webmaster, I know it's a very tall order to block out gold-selling ads, but I believe the attempt should be made. I would not be happy to be sending people here for information, insisting that multiboxing is legit, and having them see ads for gold-sellers. ;(

[not5150]

If you pick a VPS with too little allocated RAM then you'll start swapping when load gets high. Then you're basically back to square one.

[suprafro]

If you pick a VPS with too little allocated RAM then you'll start swapping when load gets high. Then you're basically back to square one.

?

You can just upgrade to a VPS with more memory whenever you want, with most hosts it's an automated process that mabey takes an hour or two for your server to be rebuilt

[Xar]

Hmmm, interesting that some of you that box would complain about a small subscription fee.

I'd be happy to subscribe, I'd even pay a year in advance. Give subscribers a title under their name or something cool like that. ;)

There are no ads for me because I learned here about noscript and adblock to avoid keyloggers so they just aren't appearing and I never click on ads anyway.

[Sam DeathWalker]

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[not5150]

1-2 hours is way too long to deal with a Digg/Slashdot spike. Heck, our servers take 1-3 minutes for the cache to catch up and even that is too long to handle a traffic deluge.

We can take 1500 simultaneous users and we've spiked to 9000 users when serving from cache. With 256 MB of RAM, you are dead in the water after a few hundred people (especially on a mysql-based forum).

If it takes you 1 hour to recover from a spike, you will have lost thousands to tens of thousands of readers. You don't want to overbuild for this site, but you also don't want to cheap out and underbuild.

[Powerwar]

1 ) Put add sense
2 ) Open a special sponsored section in the forum where leveling and gold guides guys can post promo for their stuff.
3 ) Put AdBrite ads (banners mostly). Just make sure they are not very intrussive. They have flash gaming sites category, so you can put it and if a member wants to go and play some flash games while downloading the next big patch... then you get a coin and everyone is happy.
4 ) Contact blizzard about sponsor codes. People interested in multiboxing could register through them and you get some coin back.

5 ) Contact me and lets talk about business. I would be happy to sponsor this site if it has enough traffic and good audience.

[Urgas]

This site has been amazing to me as I was trying to get my 5-box setup. Thank you for making it the way it is. Adds won't bother me at all, and adds are most likely the easiest way to keep the site from being a major drain on you while still being available to everyone who wants to see it. I am not a big fan of adds, but I am less of a fan of monthly fees for websites. In the end its your website, so do what you got to do.

[Skuggomann]

:thumbsup:

[Zite83]

If you place ads on the site, I will click them every day , its like donating to the site, but I don't have to spend the money I don't have.

When I worked on my old Asheron's Calls guild site www.minnietheminx.net which has been down for a long time now, the site had 1000+ members and many more guest. When the guest started becoming a problem and had to upgrade the host to a better package. I used ads which brought in about a whopping $3.00 - $10.00 a month didn't have google ads at the time. The ads never annoyed anyone because I made a hack for the CMS (XOOPS) based on group/member status and post status.

Logic of the hack was
if user id_postcount > ### (adblock = 0)
if user_group id < # (adblock = 1)

Worked great.. brought in money from the guest, while the vetern members never even noticed I placed ads on the site

[hardcoded]

Why do I get ads for drug rehab centers?

Are they saying I'm an addict?! I can quit anytime I want. ;-P