Website costs

[markem]

I was reading some of the messages about needing money and donating to keep the site up and going. I was wondering if anyone checked out iPage? (I'm sure someone has but just in case...)

I, like millions of other people, have a small website that mainly does nothing. But I also was running a forum (via SMF). Well, hackers broken in through a website I was working on and did some really nasty things to our home computers. It took months to fix everything (including just wiping everything and re-installing all of my software). So I went searching around for various ways to have everything online but keep my personal computers free of hackers. First I found PureVPN which I signed up with but have since canceled because it didn't protect us. Actually it made it easier for the hackers to hack us (which they did - cycle through restoring everything again....).

Then I came across iPage (and a couple of other such sites). The nice thing about iPage is that it is really dirt cheap to use (I got three years at $1.89 a month and right now it is something like $2.25 per month). You get unlimited disk space, unlimited usage, and even unlimited number of websites. I now have two up and running (my Fantasy Role Playing BBS where I ref a game and my static personal website) with more to come.

The thing is - if it is costing a lot of money to keep this site up and running - it would be a lot easier to move it to iPage and let them do all of the worrying about security. Just an idea. Not trying to make waves or cause any kind of a flame war here. Just wondering if anyone ever looked at this and thought that maybe it would be a way to cut costs.

And yes - iPage has a version of SMF on their site you can just use but I actually just uploaded the SMF on my server to iPage and am running that. I did so because I had made some mods to SMF and didn't want to lose those changes.

[Larb]

Isn't iPage just another webhost? I don't see how it would be any more secure than my current host - a lot of the responsibility is still on the owner of the site to keep it secure.

Anyway websites that get a lot of traffic (like this one) cost more. You can't get away with switching to a $30/year web host and expect the site to still function. =P

[markem]

Yes, it is "just another webhost" and yes, it is the responsibility of the owner to keep a site secure. Those were not what I was talking about. Those are a given.

According to the iPage people, when asked (because I did before going to them) - they said they do not care how much traffic you get. I'm hoping to put that to the test later. It is true they provide dedicated servers also and I'm thinking that once you get to a certain size the standard virtual server might get bogged down. (Which maybe how they get people to go to their dedicated servers.) So it probably depends upon how many are using this forum. I have seen majorgeeks.com go up to 60 people logged in at a time. This server doesn't provide that information as far as I know. (ie: Haven't seen anything that has this information.)

In any case - the thought was just : if money is tight - here is a way you might be able to cut costs.

If not - that's ok too. After all - I'm not the one paying the bills. :-) And as **** poor as I am it is unlikely I'll be able to donate more than $10.00. :-P So from my perspective it makes sense to go with something like iPage but from yours - it might not be. :-)

[Midgardsormr]

As I understand things, the load generated by this site means that it requires a dedicated server. The low-cost offerings are for shared resources. The webhost I use has prices similar to iPage, and I've been quite happy with them. A dedicated server there costs about $720 / month, which is commensurate with Robbie's yearly donations ask. iPage's price for such service would almost certainly be close to that number. I don't doubt there are a few other expenses in addition to hosting, as well, such as the vBulletin support contract and plug-ins like the search module.

As far as I am aware, we've not been in danger of missing the donations target so far (you'll notice that we're already a quarter of the way there, and we're not yet out of January), and the site does generate some amount of ad revenue, which offsets some of its costs. And in case you're wondering, donors receive no extra benefits. There is no donors-only hidden forum or other bonuses except for the "gracious donor" title.

[jbgibson]

iPage is rated as a pretty good host, but the 'unlimited' feature is always "except if you get all unreasonable & suck up the whole server's worth of capability". Robbie has CG on a dedicated server, not shared hosting. We no doubt use a gazilla bytes of disk storage and a kazongabyte per month of bandwidth.

Really the hosting cost is a minor part of running a big site. If we paid Robbie $10k/year for his trouble, he'd be grossly undercompensated - we're fortunate he likes (tolerates?) webmaster stuff as much as mapping. I bet the $750 target barely covers the hosting charges, and it's money well spent. Heh - and I do web stuff for a living AND have been volunteer webmaster -- the upheaval of migrating is a huge headache. Sticking with what ya got has massive benefits, unless/until the host's service degrades horribly.

Thanks for the recommendation markem - I hadn't heard of iPage and it's good to know a reputable/serviceworthy host. Like you need to know a good auto mechanic and a good plumber :-).

[Robbie]

Our current dedicated server cost is more than what we ask for in donations as a goal..I could (maybe should) raise the goal, but I don't want to be like wikipedia. The cost in hosting alone is about 1400 per year, and I just about break even most years with ad revenue. Add to that the before mentioned costs of domain renewals, software renewals, etc, and the funds needed get a little higher. Between donations and ad revenue, I get a few lunches out every year and I managed to save enough to get a cheap laptop last year to help me maintain things a little more modernly, but that was still sub 300 dollars. I've looked into other hosting options, but the problem for other dedicated hosting packages is always the kazongabyte of bandwidth we consume per month. That would cost a LOT more if dreamhost wasn't so free about their unlimited bandwidth for dedicated servers policy. One of these days I'm hoping to actually monetize the site by providing additional benefits to paid members and such, but that would require a lot more time than I have right now to implement...For now, I'm keeping the lights on

I definitely want to thank all the donors for keeping things afloat! If ad revenue were to decline, I'd probably raise the goal, but you guys usually go a little above and beyond each year anyways.

tl;dr kazongabyte of bandwidth used per month.

[Katto]

Robbie, you should definitely raise the goal to 1k per year. Perhaps an uplaod limit depending on the join date or donation level?
How can we motivate members to donate?

[Chick]

Robbie, you should definitely raise the goal to 1k per year. Perhaps an uplaod limit depending on the join date or donation level?
How can we motivate members to donate?

You could reset the "Gracious Donor" profile tag every Jan 1st

And yes, raise the donation goal. I would have donated last year, but the goal had been reached, so I never did. Perhaps I should have anyway, but I wonder how many others don't donate because it looks like you are getting more than your goal.

[markem]

Hmmmm. Food for thought. Makes me wonder if the people at iPage were totally honest with me. After all - they did say unlimited everything and I asked a few times over the course of a month to try to make sure they were being truthful. So now (with me) it is wait and see.

On donations: If this site is like the Dundjinni site (not that it crashes but all of the graphics) then why not have a limit to how much someone can download? Free is something like one graphic per hour. Donate allows for unlimited number of downloads. Maybe you could make it so they can see the thumbnail view but not the full sized view? Also, some might object, but you should (IMHO) be asking for three times what you need in order to run the site. In this way you can use the extra money (if raised) to upgrade the software or even get a faster server (if that is possible). Last, but not least, if disaster happens then you'd already have the money to make major changes as need be. (For instance - I used to work at a hosting company that got bought by a major corporation which jacked up the price of hosting to their customers to try to recoup the buyout price. Of course this mainly caused all of the customers to jump ship but the major corporation was really after one of their old customers who had jumped ship to the corporation I was working for. My company was Vericrest, Inc. which isn't even around anymore.) What I mean though - if you don't have the money in reserve then it would have to come out of your own pocket. If you weren't hosting somewhere then this would be the money you use to replace the computer that crashed or to buy backup drives, etc....

By the way - I am not trying to be an alarmist. I'm a realist. I'm also not advocating going out and forcing anyone to do anything. Even the raising of money for the site. I'm just saying that it is better to be safe than sorry. As I said - I'm really **** poor at the moment. I was making really good money (like $80K-$150K a year) but in six month contracts and a full time job came along with a company which is really (I know it sounds corny) nice. Since Thanksgiving I have been in the hospital, had some friends in accidents that I had to spend a few days helping them out, and my mom died (12/5/2014). Then my Phlebitis acted up and my left leg swelled up so I had to stay home. Through it all this company has stayed with me and they acted as if I was a part of their family and not just an employee. So I'm making less than half (to a third) of what I did as a contractor but I'm staying with this company because of the above. My bills are at the before amount and my salary is at the after amount. So I have maybe $100.00 left over from each paycheck but I'm happier than I have been in a long while. :-) Still, I may be able to give $10 or $20 to help out. Probably my next paycheck. So another week and a half. And please! This is not a "Pity me" thing. As I said - I'm a realist and this is just how things are right now.

Anyway, back to work. Later! :-)

[johnvanvliet]

you also have to be careful of the "cut rate" hosts
they save cash by not doing much in the way of security updates ( no staff to do them)

you REALLY DO NOT want to be running on a old unpatched RHEL 4.3 ( rhel4 is eol) or a unpatched RHEL 6.3 ( 6.6 is current )
or on a Debian 5 or 6 server when 7.8 and 8 are current

some providers like "go-daddy" are KNOWN for doing this

in the help forums there is really nothing we can offer for a go-daddy user on a ancient unpatched rhel4.0 server from 2005