Awesome job on the server upgrade guys. It's speedy fast now. Thank you for all the time and effort spent running and maintaining this site. Great work! 8)~
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-A
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Speedy
- Thread starter Adam Black
- Start date
Re: Speedy
Adam,
Thanks, we've worked very hard on it!
For the peanut gallery, here's perspective on soundforums.net traffic in light of the new, faster speed:
I should clarify that a big chunk of the recent traffic spikes has been our fixing of sitemaps and Google's subsequent complete re-indexing of the site with the new rewrite rules. There's not been a sudden explosion in user base
The next move, if finances allow, will be mirrored VPS on two separate continents that are load balanced and split the traffic. This will improve redundancy and make worldwide performance more consistent.
-Phil (+David, Jeff, and Bennett)
Awesome job on the server upgrade guys. It's speedy fast now. Thank you for all the time and effort spent running and maintaining this site. Great work! 8)~
-A
Adam,
Thanks, we've worked very hard on it!
For the peanut gallery, here's perspective on soundforums.net traffic in light of the new, faster speed:
- Monday, Jan 30th, we served 2x the page views of the old servers' worst traffic day ever, which was last Friday.
- The site's traffic has increased in the last 30 days, and Monday's traffic was 6x the daily average from 2k11.
I should clarify that a big chunk of the recent traffic spikes has been our fixing of sitemaps and Google's subsequent complete re-indexing of the site with the new rewrite rules. There's not been a sudden explosion in user base
The next move, if finances allow, will be mirrored VPS on two separate continents that are load balanced and split the traffic. This will improve redundancy and make worldwide performance more consistent.
-Phil (+David, Jeff, and Bennett)
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Re: Speedy
I agree. You guys have done an awesome job! Faster page loads and no more dead time.
Thanks again for all the hard work, fellas'!!
Pat
I agree. You guys have done an awesome job! Faster page loads and no more dead time.
Thanks again for all the hard work, fellas'!!
Pat
Re: Speedy
I'll bet part of the increased traffic is the same users being able to move around more freely.
It was really slow before. MUCH better now!!!
I'll bet part of the increased traffic is the same users being able to move around more freely.
It was really slow before. MUCH better now!!!
Re: Speedy
Steve,
I suspect this is right. We've still got a few specific places (e.g. database configuration) were we can potentially provide additional performance improvements.
Steve,
I suspect this is right. We've still got a few specific places (e.g. database configuration) were we can potentially provide additional performance improvements.
Re: Speedy
Might I ask how much a lot of this is costing? Or even just like, a general idea of how it's all costed out?
I'd like to give, but I want to give an amount that makes a difference, not something that is a splash in ocean.
If that's uncouth of me to ask, please let me know.
Might I ask how much a lot of this is costing? Or even just like, a general idea of how it's all costed out?
I'd like to give, but I want to give an amount that makes a difference, not something that is a splash in ocean.
If that's uncouth of me to ask, please let me know.
Re: Donations, costs, and the future
John,
Its fine to ask about cost. Every dollar is a big deal to sfn right now, and something like $50 is a very meaningful donation.
Here's some background on costs, and how they will likely expand as the community expands:
Our current cost basis, which includes only the VPS and amortized software cost is under $100/month. We are cutting multiple corners to get there:
With over a dozen companies already interested in advertising on the site, adding a single, industry specific rotating advertising banner will provide SFN with enough revenue to insure that we can implement a sustainable SFN. As traffic grows, so does the point where bringing on advertisers will be appropriate.
Once SFN has the traffic base to start advertising, Bennett and I discussed the following:
A more inclusive, longer term cost basis that allows sustained growth would include the following things:
Hopefully that answers your question, and gives you an idea of what we have been thinking about for the next steps. Donations are very meaningful right now! Your donations sustain the community's growth towards a point where we can transition to the next phase.
-P, D, J, and B
John,
Its fine to ask about cost. Every dollar is a big deal to sfn right now, and something like $50 is a very meaningful donation.
Here's some background on costs, and how they will likely expand as the community expands:
Our current cost basis, which includes only the VPS and amortized software cost is under $100/month. We are cutting multiple corners to get there:
- We are using the limited, free variant of Cloudflare
- We are using the limited, free variant of Google Apps for MX services and document collaboration
- We are using the limited, free variant of Pingdom from uptime management
- We are donating the use of another VPS for backups
With over a dozen companies already interested in advertising on the site, adding a single, industry specific rotating advertising banner will provide SFN with enough revenue to insure that we can implement a sustainable SFN. As traffic grows, so does the point where bringing on advertisers will be appropriate.
Once SFN has the traffic base to start advertising, Bennett and I discussed the following:
- The community will generate more revenue than our infrastructure cost basis.
- The money generated won't be enough to pay for any employees, or pay myself, David, Jeff, or Bennett.
- We'll use the additional revenue to help support the expenses of an annual SFN user's meeting/tradeshow.
- The expenditures for the event would clear out the books and insure that SFN has no tax burden.
- People's ongoing donations would come back to the community in a clear, defined way every year.
A more inclusive, longer term cost basis that allows sustained growth would include the following things:
- Two mirrored servers on two continents, each with two cpus and two memory blocks
- Pay for Google, Pingdom, Cloudflare
- Pay Clicky, a Cloudflare partner, for real-time analytics services
- Pay for a Vbulletin accelerator
- Pay for a Vbulletin ad-placement platform
- Pay Amazon S3 or Rackspace to store our backup history in their cloud
- Pay mailchimp to allow us a branded email newsletter
- Setup an LLC for SFN, and pay a registered agent service to support it
- Pay lessaccounting.com (or similar) to have some book-keeping ability
- Setup worldwide payment taking services with Paypal, Braintree, or Saasy (The only 3 options, currently)
- Purchase time from a virtual assistant to handle booking new advertisements and tracking money.
Hopefully that answers your question, and gives you an idea of what we have been thinking about for the next steps. Donations are very meaningful right now! Your donations sustain the community's growth towards a point where we can transition to the next phase.
-P, D, J, and B
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Re: Speedy
John, Phil gave the long story about where we are and where we might go if we get significantly bigger. Right now the site is run lean because we don't want to run it like a business, if we start having too much cash (oh no!) or too many expenses we may have to start doing so and that will add a bunch of cost. Fortunately, with the back end changes Dave, Phil, and Jeff implemented over the last week we shouldn't have problems unless we double our traffic, at least. At our current rate of growth that won't be a concern for the immediate future.
The short story is, $50 is a very big donation for us. That will almost keep the lights on for a month. That is about $15 more than it cost us to run the place before all these changes. Obviously we keep the place pretty lean, there is no reason to spend money where we don't need to and we are fortunate that there are tools available, and folks that know how to use them, that allow us to get so much out of so little. Historically we have had enough donations to cover our monthly costs, plus enough left over that when we need to pay for something else up front (like the $150 software package we bought to optimize URL redirects for the changeover) we can. Right now we have enough of a war chest to run for more than eight months.
I only put forth the $50 figure because you asked about making a significant donation. Most people give $10-20, which is extremely generous and adds up quickly. So, really, the folks who donate $10-20 keep the lights on, and the occasional $50+ blows us away and keeps money in the bank. We are all just humbled that this site has managed to not only survive, but thrive, based only on the continuing support of our community. $20 is a lot of money to take out of my wallet, and yet even with a relatively small user base we get five or six people a month who are happy to shell it out for no immediate or direct benefit... some of whom who have done it for months in a row. That means a lot to me, and we're going to do everything we can to keep the site true to its intent, discussions and information for us, by us, without a bunch of crap.
John, Phil gave the long story about where we are and where we might go if we get significantly bigger. Right now the site is run lean because we don't want to run it like a business, if we start having too much cash (oh no!) or too many expenses we may have to start doing so and that will add a bunch of cost. Fortunately, with the back end changes Dave, Phil, and Jeff implemented over the last week we shouldn't have problems unless we double our traffic, at least. At our current rate of growth that won't be a concern for the immediate future.
The short story is, $50 is a very big donation for us. That will almost keep the lights on for a month. That is about $15 more than it cost us to run the place before all these changes. Obviously we keep the place pretty lean, there is no reason to spend money where we don't need to and we are fortunate that there are tools available, and folks that know how to use them, that allow us to get so much out of so little. Historically we have had enough donations to cover our monthly costs, plus enough left over that when we need to pay for something else up front (like the $150 software package we bought to optimize URL redirects for the changeover) we can. Right now we have enough of a war chest to run for more than eight months.
I only put forth the $50 figure because you asked about making a significant donation. Most people give $10-20, which is extremely generous and adds up quickly. So, really, the folks who donate $10-20 keep the lights on, and the occasional $50+ blows us away and keeps money in the bank. We are all just humbled that this site has managed to not only survive, but thrive, based only on the continuing support of our community. $20 is a lot of money to take out of my wallet, and yet even with a relatively small user base we get five or six people a month who are happy to shell it out for no immediate or direct benefit... some of whom who have done it for months in a row. That means a lot to me, and we're going to do everything we can to keep the site true to its intent, discussions and information for us, by us, without a bunch of crap.
Re: Speedy
And the "subscription" model was one I pitched to PSW a long time ago. I guess EHP would rather be indebted to their advertisers than their users... Electronic Home Publishing screwed the pooch and demonstrated that they didn't really know their user base *at all*. Their loss has been our gain, as SFN only needs to answer to it's users and the 2 guys that put it up in response to the utter cluelessness that Electronic Home exhibited.
And the "subscription" model was one I pitched to PSW a long time ago. I guess EHP would rather be indebted to their advertisers than their users... Electronic Home Publishing screwed the pooch and demonstrated that they didn't really know their user base *at all*. Their loss has been our gain, as SFN only needs to answer to it's users and the 2 guys that put it up in response to the utter cluelessness that Electronic Home exhibited.
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Re: More on donations, costs, and the future
I would be very disappointed if the current server infrastructure and our software architecture had a problem at 2x the current user base, but the bottlenecks that creep up as pages served grows are sometimes very subtle and we need to be prepared.
For this transition we spent our money moving from Behringer-grade hosting to Clair Global-grade hosting. Already that has paid dividends. As a concrete example, there is a bug in how our distribution of Linux cleans up PHP old processes that would have crashed the server on Monday or Tuesday had it not been for the ability of our hosting to dynamically give us more CPU time when needed. We were spiking to almost 200% of allotted cpu usage every half hour when the errant process ran. This extra cpu headroom let us track down and fix the bug. Without features like this we would already have been down!
To give everyone a next tier of donations to shoot for, we really need to pay for Google, Cloudflare, and Pingdom. All three of these services are critical to how the site architecture is set up. Google makes our mail reliable, Cloudflare keeps the spam away while reducing server bandwidth, and Pingdom keeps our uptime high. An extra $90/month in donations would cover these three pieces, and solidify the ongoing core architecture.
Eat the elephant one bite at a time,
-Phil
I would be very disappointed if the current server infrastructure and our software architecture had a problem at 2x the current user base, but the bottlenecks that creep up as pages served grows are sometimes very subtle and we need to be prepared.
For this transition we spent our money moving from Behringer-grade hosting to Clair Global-grade hosting. Already that has paid dividends. As a concrete example, there is a bug in how our distribution of Linux cleans up PHP old processes that would have crashed the server on Monday or Tuesday had it not been for the ability of our hosting to dynamically give us more CPU time when needed. We were spiking to almost 200% of allotted cpu usage every half hour when the errant process ran. This extra cpu headroom let us track down and fix the bug. Without features like this we would already have been down!
To give everyone a next tier of donations to shoot for, we really need to pay for Google, Cloudflare, and Pingdom. All three of these services are critical to how the site architecture is set up. Google makes our mail reliable, Cloudflare keeps the spam away while reducing server bandwidth, and Pingdom keeps our uptime high. An extra $90/month in donations would cover these three pieces, and solidify the ongoing core architecture.
Eat the elephant one bite at a time,
-Phil
Re: Speedy
I think of my bimonthly contribution as a "subscription" on par with Netflix. I actually probably spend more time per month on SFN than netflix.
With that said, I would not mind appropriate advertising, as long as the advertising is not the underlying driving force. I think company representatives can fairly represent their products in an open forum when there is enough collective knowledge to call bullshit on claims that are over the top. I read the press releases posted on the front page, and if someone is willing to pay, I will look at appropriate advertising as well.
I would not be happy if the advertising ends up being 60-70% of what I see, like in places not mentioned. (Of course I find it hilarious that I constantly get the "exceed page load" error which kills the advertising anyways)
I think of my bimonthly contribution as a "subscription" on par with Netflix. I actually probably spend more time per month on SFN than netflix.
With that said, I would not mind appropriate advertising, as long as the advertising is not the underlying driving force. I think company representatives can fairly represent their products in an open forum when there is enough collective knowledge to call bullshit on claims that are over the top. I read the press releases posted on the front page, and if someone is willing to pay, I will look at appropriate advertising as well.
I would not be happy if the advertising ends up being 60-70% of what I see, like in places not mentioned. (Of course I find it hilarious that I constantly get the "exceed page load" error which kills the advertising anyways)
Re: Speedy
It is impossible to ignore the elephant in the room (comparisons to the old hang), and difficult to resist the temptation to make suggestions...
All I will say is good job so far...so keep doing what you're doing, and when in doubt do what's right...
JR
It is impossible to ignore the elephant in the room (comparisons to the old hang), and difficult to resist the temptation to make suggestions...
All I will say is good job so far...so keep doing what you're doing, and when in doubt do what's right...
JR
Re: Speedy
Jay,
First, thanks for your ongoing donations, its very very helpful.
Second, let me clearly articulate that the four of us see advertisement as a means to an end, and that end is the best overall experience for the community. Our goal is not to advertise, but rather to support the community and use ads as necessary to do so. Ads aren't necessary right now, so we don't have them, simple as that.
When/if the time for ads comes, this is what you can expect:
Jay,
First, thanks for your ongoing donations, its very very helpful.
Second, let me clearly articulate that the four of us see advertisement as a means to an end, and that end is the best overall experience for the community. Our goal is not to advertise, but rather to support the community and use ads as necessary to do so. Ads aren't necessary right now, so we don't have them, simple as that.
When/if the time for ads comes, this is what you can expect:
- The page won't be stuffed with ads.
- Ads will be specifically for the industry, and run on the site directly by SFN.
- We wont use an ad network, so no acai berry, refinancing, workout supplements, online colleges, or any of that nonsense
- The money from ads comes back into infrastructure and the community.