Upgrading server to super duper dedicated, need opinions

[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.