Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

Well yesterday I was informed by the CTO of my webserver, that the site is just simply getting to large, and is causing problems. Even though we did upgrade the yabb forum software, it seems that its still causing problems. I have a few options right now, that I am still undecided what to do. It seems that the forum/chat section of the board has got very popular, and I would hate to see it go.

option:

1. Remove forums & Run the basic site, like last year (35 Month)

2. Have TurboEF9 host our forums through a subdomain and I will host the rest of the site through another server (35 Month) That means New forum software too though, (start from scratch)

3. Run a dedicated server from my home, this means building a server and upgrading our DSL line to more like a small business line. (550 for server/100 a month for dsl)

I have 1 week to figure it out.. :(

Jeff

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

first i wanna say thanx for all you and this site have helped me out. Also i was wondering, havent people been sending you money? Well what you should do is charge $1 a month, or more if needed, to run the site like you said in the third option. That should be enough money to keep the site goin. I know id be willing to pay $1 a month to keep this site going.

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

you could try setting up an ezboard (http://www.ezboard.com) - or maybe its time to see if anyone else who visits this site wants to help sponsor? :)

Work something out... I might have something for you to advertise in return for some cash.

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Try to find a cheap forum..30 sounds kinda high.

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This site has helped me out alot (and still is, and still will Im sure ;D ). Whatever you decide keep us informed.

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Jeff-

What if you and beau started to sell some stuff to the HMT guys to fund the site? For example all the supplies that are needed to build manifolds and things like that. Put together oil line kits and stuff. Sell if for a small mark up as a fund raiser. Then in support for the site everyone can get the stuff from you guys. I have a pretty good supplier for all my metal. If you guys are interested lets talk and we can work out some details. To save on shipping you can just work through me. Everyone from here can let me know who they are and then I will send any profit from them to you for funding the forum.

Tell ya what.. Right now I have a bunch of d series and zc flanges. I need to unload them. If anyone is interested I'll sell them for $15 plus shipping and send $5 to Jeff for eveyone I sell. I think I paid close to $20 for each. Just doing my part to help.


Todd

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

Todd, we have thought about that.. But I want the site just to be able to pay for itself, without me shipping crap to people. I would have done that along time ago, but I'm not in this to make money, and it seems like I'm really going to have to start getting some funds to keep this site alive. I have had about 160 bucks in donations (thanks) But that would be just 1 1/2 months of dsl, heh. and of course all my friends and family are like "you should make everyone pay blah blah" thats not what this site is about.. I will never make it like that at all. I think this site has helped alot of people in saving tons of money and that was my objective.. Now it has just turned into more of a pain in my ass than anything >:(

I dont know whats going to happen right now, because I'm broke, and I would rather finish my race car than build a server and pay 100 a month to keep these forums alive.

Jeff frank

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

First I would like to thank Jeff for the site and trying everything he can do to keep the forums alive and free. It's great there are still people out there on the internet trying to help and not just make a buck. I have learned so much and saved a lot of money because of this site. Having a place I can go to ask questions and opinions from people who really know what their doing is awsome. I would hate to see the forums go, but if there's no way to keep the forums how about just having chat rooms or an instant message type program. Something we can all download and run on our computers so the load on the server would be minimal. Just another idea...

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Well, the chatroom now is alive and kickin'.

It gets a little slow during the day, but there are ALWAYS people in there..

At night there is normally 15+ people in there all chatting..

We need to see the support to know what direction we're going to take.

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i know its more work, but how about t-shirts or some ---- like that? if you found someone to make em cheap i'm sure you could make a bunch of money, but again, thats sort of a pain in the ass. i would be down to donate some more money, i seriously love reading here. i dont understand why less than 20 people or whatever donated, when there are hundreds of people here, but thats ok.....if i were you i would want to get my racecar done too......good luck man, whatever you decide will have to do.

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I havent asked all my questions yet! :P

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That ------ sucks Jeff. There are so many people on this site you'd think everyone could DONATE atleast 12 bucks. The Forums are awesome, it gives the site a whole other dimension to it besides all the other priceless info Beau and Jeff and everyone else has posted on the site (plus its hella cool). It just sucks that it has to come down to that. Hate to see the forums go but...what do you do?

Matt

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We'll figure out something... ::)

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i would donate but someone banned me for an unknown reason ::)

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Why dont you het a cable modem and host the firum on that.. Does this forum eat that much bandwidth? Its php aint it..? I have a webserver on my firewall box that I could fire up. How much bandqwidth are we talking about? Why not put the pics on one server and the forum on another? Would that help?

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is yabb source code available unger a gnu? I'll download it and compile it on my linux webserver.. We could stress test this and see how bad it sucks ona cable modem?

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Welcome back Santa's hiz-oe. ;)

As far as the forums go, I'm moving soon, so [DriftKids] is going to be down for about a week. When I come back up, I'll discuss with my ISP the possibiliy of running a small business account. I have an abundance of machines here able to run the forums, *my* problem is bandwidth. So.. chances are, if I can get the bandwidth I need for you bandwidth mongers ( ;D) I'll host the forums, no prob.

So, bottom line, don't worry.. it'll get worked out.

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TurboEF9

hey, can't help you out on the bandwidth (yet), but if you need and parts, let me know. don't have gigahertz layig around, but i'm got some decent celerons and pIIIs, ram, etc. let me know. tryin' to talk the wife into cable at the new house in april (very good possiblity), if we get it, maybe we can split the site betwen two servers. i havde plenty of windows and linux boxes around here i could through a forum or two on and help break down the load. let me know. run dunamic dhcp and update it every few mins, never have more than a minute or two of out time if the cable dhcp swaps IPs. give my your thoughts.

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

Well, the hardware isn't really the problem..

I would have to upgrade to a small busniess account to get the speed we need to take on Jeff's MASSIVE picture archive. As far as the forums, I might be able to keep those going after they shut him down.. But, the forums won't be bale to be graphics heavy. If my ISP sees my server, without having a small business account, they'll kick my ass. :) So, we'll see..

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Do they really look at that stuff? I have run a half life serer on my cable modem for 3 years.. Litterally pounding the bandwidth for day's on end.. I have never heard from my isp about this.. I run an email server on there too. I dont think the forum will generate enough bandwith to matter.. I use a small program from dyndns.org to do the update on their dns server when my ip changes.. It instantly detects the ip change and makes the update.. Ive been running like this for years and never missed a beat.. I could host a forum quickly on my p3 linux "cable attached" .. I got a copy of yabb yesterday..

You want me to set one up so we could stress test the cable connection to see how it will do?

You know if we used a few linux boxes with a nfs connection and parralel the domain name in a round robin method we could create a few levels of redundancy in case any of the cable modems go down.

you can do realtime replication with nfs on linux.

Anyway Im willing to help with any of this stuff.

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Good God people.. it's a forum.

Wildman, not to mention NFS on Linux blows ass, is insecure and slow. "Dyn DNS" clients? Come on.. Authoritative name servers are going to be used, the lookups on the nameserver alone would be put a load on the bandwidth considering how many different hosts that access the site each day.

Bah.

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yeah i also wanna say thatnks alot man with all you have done with the site, i got a idea for everything sold on the site that goes through from one member to another i think you should get a little of the share of the sold items, or i would go with the 1$ a monthe deal but that might scare off people from comiong to the site and i know its only 1$ but people could still be all ify about joining because of the time it takes to transact the money but i dnon thats my 2 cents thanks alot man


SiR hatch ::)

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

Jeff, so what about the graphics! I dont come on this forum to see how damn pretty it looks. I come on here to ask questions and help ppl.. so ya! Loose the damn graphics! I wont miss them!

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Loose the graphics? you mean all the pictures I took over the years on how to build custom turbokits? and all the other peoples projects? No, those are definatly going to stay, Bandwith isnt the biggest issue right now, its the forums.

Jeff

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

Sorry to offer a helping hand.. Iv'e been in the busness for 25 years.. I know what Im talking about. I manage a 5 mil per year datacenter.

Nfs rocks , but your intitled to your opinion!
Ive been around to see the downfall of token ring and currently am working on a gigibit fiber backbone here at work.. But you go right ahead and do things the hard / expensive way.

Im outta here! later

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check it out bro, i got a friend that runs a hosting company. if u want im sure i could get him to host these website. for minimal cash

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I just got the weirdest ------- thing that poped up...Also whos email is this?

Ran into problems sending Mail. Error: 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for h2rii@yahoo.com

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Yeah I got the same error but with a different addy????
what gives?

Re:Info: whats going to happen with the site?
 

Having some problems with PM's

not to sure yet guys....