[ADMIN] ILX Hosting 2016

It's that time again, unfortunately. Since late 2013 we've been pretty much self-funding thanks to ads, but the income is down and the pot is just about empty. So I'm asking for the costs to cover a full year's hosting, and will use whatever else comes in from ads to stretch that out as long as possible.

(If we live to see another year, would be interesting to talk to some of our SEO/Google-aware folks about what we can do about the ads. I think we were hit quite hard by the changes that also hit sites like Metafilter -- eg we look like some 1997-era content farm, and have non-existent mobile support and confusing pagination, so we're consequently getting hit in search results. Time for a shiny new skin and avatars, I guess)

Awesome! Let's see how fast we can get this done.

When do you need this money and how much of this money do you need? Things might be tight for me over the next couple of months but I'll happily scrape together what I can if the need is urgent.

You really pay 1450 pounds a year for hosting? Maybe you'd better find a new host first...

xp: In previous fundraisers we managed to raise the funds in only a few hours, so if you've got a couple bucks you think you can contribute, now is the time.

hey ArchCarrier, what host do you use for your messageboard? would be good to look at an alternative, i imagine stet went into the hosting store and bought the first product they offered him

Link pls

stop giving excuses and click on the widget

ArchCarrier: it's £600 a year for the AWS instance size we need (lots of memory) and ~£70 a month for running and particularly bandwidth costs.

There's probably cheaper hosts, but nothing that offers the equivalent level of service and convenience (backups and spinning up instances etc) and I'm not going back to tin after the last box died on us. Did look into this in 2013, if we don't make the target I'll gladly take another look.

Did not realize there was a widget as my work is apparently blocking it.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ilxor-2016--2#/

zing tithe paid, thanks Stet!

Thanks very much. A few pounds contributed.

yay! i missed the last fundraiser so very happy to contribute to this one. i am on ILX more than every other site combined, probably. well maybe not. but i bet it's close. thanks for everything you and others do to keep this going strong.

i never paid before, ever, but i just did. does this mean that i'm old?

Ditto. So, yes, we're old.

Thirded! Call me the Ancient One.

I don't know how the backend is set up, but for a text-only messageboard those server costs seem pretty high. Anyway, I donated a few pounds to the good cause.

finally I get to contribute to this before it hits the goal

^ yeah I usually miss it. not that I can afford much at the moment

the donation is less a sign of how much i value ilx than the fact that i endured the living nightmare of updating my paypal information.

happily chipped in

xp yeah OTM for NEW MONEY or whatever their god-awful marketing campaign might claim they really make it painful to transfer £5

I didn't have to see Verified By Visa = a big win, go with god.

how long are these emoji deals good for?

Ask Morbshttps://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/aacc/sites/utsc.utoronto.ca.aacc/files/u5/gold-star4.png

*Mordy

can we buy them for other people? get that little grinning lady that looks like Hillary Clinton for Morbs

Paid. Thanks, as always.

Ooh let's say six months or until I remember to take it off again

Can we in all good conscience take money from "Garu G's Gran's Flange"?

It's a better use than they would put it to themselves.

That's the first place to take it from!

There's always money in Garu G's Gran's Flange!

this place was built on garu g's gran's flange tbf

Paid, with thanks guys.

Can't afford to put in much but this is the first time I've got in before it's all been raised. Wanted to put 77p on the end but it seemed to only like round pounds. And no, I couldn't afford £77.

Paid. Not sure if this means I can complain more or less about ILX. No complaints about hosting tho, thanks!

77.8023p would be possible if it allowed you to contribute exactly 1 euro

hmmm, i'm not sure i'm willing to commit to this website enough to contribute money to it yet. i'm gonna give it a few more months....

ArchCarrier: I think we get a lot for the money. Our page load times are sub-400ms in a lot of cases, pingdom rates us faster than 98% of websites, and I don't know of any forum faster than that. There's nothing outlandish about the backend: Java app, via Tomcat, MySQL DB, Apache. The performance comes from big caches (hence memory needs) and the database is pretty big (because we go back over a decade and every thread is still "live").

Always happy to look at better ways, but I think this is pretty tuned and don't know of obvious ways we could save cash without affecting performance or reliability. A few hundred quid seems reasonable to me to never see the Poxy Fule days again.

every piece of software that's programmed/hosted could always be better, but imo it's worth an additional few hundred bucks here or there to run something at speed than to refactor everything and blow all your time programming. time has a cost.

Paid! Maybe for the first time in twelve years, but I seem to recall donating at some point in the distant past.

At any rate, thank you for maintaining a safe space for me to create a succession of increasingly off-putting display names. In sincerity, I do appreciate this place.

(Is this going to continue for a month or just until the goal is met? Because if it's the former, I may be able to contribute more later.)

Former would be good, I get tomorrow

Get PAID

Our page load times are sub-400ms in a lot of cases, pingdom rates us faster than 98% of websites

hence why i always use ILX as a test to see if my internet connection is down, or, the web based service i am trying to use is on the go-slow.

haha, face into a heart

It's set to close when the target's reached, though thanks!

Happy to contribute a bit, hooray for ilx and its keepers!

Re close at target vs keep it open for the duration: would there be a way to close at a multiple, say 2x or 3x, of the target? I'm just thinking there would be a buffer, and if everything was converted into iPod pies, not *too* much would be lost.

(Oh now I see I misread you stet, I thought you meant you feared indiegogo funds might be automatically converted into pie bonus points or something. Sorry, no insinuation as to your integrity intended.)

Too cheap for the emoji. But £1190 irritated my OCD.

Then you're really gonna hate my non-zero ending contribution

I contributed £3.14 to the stet pie fund.

Cheers stet, as always

Our page load times are sub-400ms in a lot of cases, pingdom rates us faster than 98% of websites, and I don't know of any forum faster than that. There's nothing outlandish about the backend: Java app, via Tomcat, MySQL DB, Apache. The performance comes from big caches (hence memory needs) and the database is pretty big (because we go back over a decade and every thread is still "live").

Yeah I rule.

How much to get it to turn off?

Cheers Keith too for that matter

every piece of software that's programmed/hosted could always be better, but imo it's worth an additional few hundred bucks here or there to run something at speed than to refactor everything and blow all your time programming. time has a cost.

― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 27 April 2016 17:25 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This one couldn't be better programmed.

I couldn't donated 4.90 so I rounded up to 5

Keith, has anyone ever asked you for the site code, for money or for free, to do their own borad?

hooray i kicked some cash into the can -- keep on ILXor!

Yeah Dub Dob Dee (you know who I mean) did once, so I set one up (not really the code, per se; just an instance of it), but he didn't really get round to using it. Best laid plans and all that. Would still sort out again if he wanted it.

Certainly not for cash though.

Also, there is another.

if you just guess the right domain name in zing touch?

Hey Tom, I mean someone else asked at some point years ago, but I can't remember who it was, so I made it into a "Star Wars" joke.

paid and thank you! Decent hosting standards: because you're worth it.

£1,470 GBP raised in 12 hours
101% funded

well that was quick

damn, i now have money and would have given this time around. well there is next time.

you could still give and further put off the need for next time

Eleven years and my first contribution. Not proud!

^^^

stet, thanks for keeping this open. I missed the last fundraising drive because it completed so quickly!

(If we live to see another year, would be interesting to talk to some of our SEO/Google-aware folks about what we can do about the ads. I think we were hit quite hard by the changes that also hit sites like Metafilter -- eg we look like some 1997-era content farm, and have non-existent mobile support and confusing pagination, so we're consequently getting hit in search results. Time for a shiny new skin and avatars, I guess)

Would be into having a separate thread about this. Goddamnit, I finally have to give in to middle age and admit that I have some old-fashioned perspectives.

Superb stuff, thanks everybody. I don't indiegogo are set up for campaigns that do their stuff so quickly, so now I need to figure out how to turn it off!

*think

more pies for stet.

thank you stet and keith <3

dibs on 🙈

Would definitely have liked poop emoji under all my posts but sadly too expensive for me.

Don't thank me: I haven't done anything for years...

thanking you for your years ago work

Oh okay, sorry - carry on.

Totally missed this, would have gladly chipped in.

Looks like it's still open

Awesome, will pay!

Hey, look, it's Paypal, that's easy. Nm, all done and donated!

stet, would it be possible to dump the code to GitHub? I can PayPal you money for a private account if you want to avoid snooping eyes.

it was on Google's source hosting a few years back, not sure if it's out there now. I wouldn't mind a peek again, either.

Hint: If you pay in a different currency than the english pound do not take the paypal exchange rate as it is pretty bad. For the euro it was 0,75 but it should be around 0,78.

I got a bit hosed on that but whatever it was $5

Just sent you an email re the emoji, stet -- please let me know if there are any difficulties.

Paypal locked down my account on suspicion that this was fraud. Now re-opened, but payment did not go through. So weird. Just tried again.

ditto re: emoji

welcome to emoji club Eisbaer

what's the first rule of emoji club

Thanks both, am on it.

Allen: can you email me at s✧✧✧@il✧✧✧.c✧✧ please? ILXMail is bouncing

guess my email go on

starbaby✧✧✧@ilovepri✧✧✧.c✧✧

starbabyima@iloveprince . com