developer news
*** dev blog october 14.th 2014***
[i]
"if next sunday wont prove me wrong..."[/i] was where I left off concerning the server (over-)load issue.
Lets take it up from there: As proposed, the "much less load many issues fixed" update I have been preparing went live a week ago, and some may have noticed the slight difference in navigation behavior (there were very few changes concerning functionality, its all "under the hood"-stuff that has been modified).
Well, to my disappointment, none of that has changed anything about the 1am-Berlin-Time issue, we are still experiencing a few minutes of very slow server reaction at that time.
I have contacted support again to find out what is going on, and again, the only reply I got was "you are causing too much load, please upgrade your server package."
Problem is: that is only partially true. What is true is:
wikiloops has a good 20% growth in visitors since august.
We do serve around 50 gigabyte of music around the world every DAY, and yes, that is a lot and its no surprise no hoster likes to do that on a cheap bill.
I do have very strong doubts that wikiloops is the real reason for the 1am nap time, simply because we have a lot more visitors on other times of the day.
Well, no use arguing that, and I dont want to bore anyone with the technical details I have been investigating -
it all comes down to:
[b]Yes, we need the server upgrade, the sooner, the better.[/b]
It had to come at some point, and there really is little reason outside of the budget needed to delay that.
If visitor growth continues as it does, its just a matter of a few months until we have no other option, and I'd feel a lot better to know I have some headroom for the development and growth.
Downside of this: monthly server cost will jump from around 25 to around 240 euros (that's 300 us-$ ).
If I stick to the idea to hire the tax advisor (which I'll have to), I'll have to calculate fixed monthly costs which are fifteen times higher than what we had until now.
Now, Nuno and Lutz have asked about the [b]"supporting membership"[/b] goings, and I do like to answer that as well.
Since the "supporting membership" has been introduced on august 25th,
- 26 members have donated amounts which equal the annual supporting membership, so we have 26 supporting members we can count on for some time to come
- 23 more members have become supporting members, but committed themselves for shorter periods of time (some of which have already run out again).
It is hard to estimate who will support again once a first term has run out, so it is indeed difficult to do a calculation on this short-term data.
- about thirty members have been assigned the "supporting membership" status for some time, because they donated earlier than august 25th, and I wanted to give some credit for this.
Again, one can only "guesstimate" the long term results of the supporting membership concept, for now I'd sum it up by saying that there is roundabout 60 supporters with a mid-term reliability so far - [b]which is a lot, and I am thankfull about every one of them![/b]
When thinking about the budget issues, its quite easy to do the 60 * 4 USD math, one has to take off a good 10% for paypal fees and currency conversion fees, and then you may have some idea where it's at right now, and what that means when looking at the cost of the server upgrade.
I promised to keep things transparent, so there you go :) Looks like there wont be any free coffees for Dick this year.
So, whats the next steps?
I have just invested three weeks of work in lowering server load.
With great effect, even tho it will not spare the need for another server.
OK then.
There are a few people waiting for me to get them started on their translation project, involving dutch, portoguese, chinese, russian and japanese, so thats what I'll be setting up next (sorry about the long delay!).
Once that is set up and running, I'll do another round of sponsor-spotting as I have been intending for some time now, and whenever we are on a new server and the perspective seems a little more settled, I'd love to get back to the wave-form-displaying player I have been working on quite a bit.
ending with todays stats:
17.386 members,
21.946 tracks by 804 members
average dayly visitors: 1400
[i]
"if next sunday wont prove me wrong..."[/i] was where I left off concerning the server (over-)load issue.
Lets take it up from there: As proposed, the "much less load many issues fixed" update I have been preparing went live a week ago, and some may have noticed the slight difference in navigation behavior (there were very few changes concerning functionality, its all "under the hood"-stuff that has been modified).
Well, to my disappointment, none of that has changed anything about the 1am-Berlin-Time issue, we are still experiencing a few minutes of very slow server reaction at that time.
I have contacted support again to find out what is going on, and again, the only reply I got was "you are causing too much load, please upgrade your server package."
Problem is: that is only partially true. What is true is:
wikiloops has a good 20% growth in visitors since august.
We do serve around 50 gigabyte of music around the world every DAY, and yes, that is a lot and its no surprise no hoster likes to do that on a cheap bill.
I do have very strong doubts that wikiloops is the real reason for the 1am nap time, simply because we have a lot more visitors on other times of the day.
Well, no use arguing that, and I dont want to bore anyone with the technical details I have been investigating -
it all comes down to:
[b]Yes, we need the server upgrade, the sooner, the better.[/b]
It had to come at some point, and there really is little reason outside of the budget needed to delay that.
If visitor growth continues as it does, its just a matter of a few months until we have no other option, and I'd feel a lot better to know I have some headroom for the development and growth.
Downside of this: monthly server cost will jump from around 25 to around 240 euros (that's 300 us-$ ).
If I stick to the idea to hire the tax advisor (which I'll have to), I'll have to calculate fixed monthly costs which are fifteen times higher than what we had until now.
Now, Nuno and Lutz have asked about the [b]"supporting membership"[/b] goings, and I do like to answer that as well.
Since the "supporting membership" has been introduced on august 25th,
- 26 members have donated amounts which equal the annual supporting membership, so we have 26 supporting members we can count on for some time to come
- 23 more members have become supporting members, but committed themselves for shorter periods of time (some of which have already run out again).
It is hard to estimate who will support again once a first term has run out, so it is indeed difficult to do a calculation on this short-term data.
- about thirty members have been assigned the "supporting membership" status for some time, because they donated earlier than august 25th, and I wanted to give some credit for this.
Again, one can only "guesstimate" the long term results of the supporting membership concept, for now I'd sum it up by saying that there is roundabout 60 supporters with a mid-term reliability so far - [b]which is a lot, and I am thankfull about every one of them![/b]
When thinking about the budget issues, its quite easy to do the 60 * 4 USD math, one has to take off a good 10% for paypal fees and currency conversion fees, and then you may have some idea where it's at right now, and what that means when looking at the cost of the server upgrade.
I promised to keep things transparent, so there you go :) Looks like there wont be any free coffees for Dick this year.
So, whats the next steps?
I have just invested three weeks of work in lowering server load.
With great effect, even tho it will not spare the need for another server.
OK then.
There are a few people waiting for me to get them started on their translation project, involving dutch, portoguese, chinese, russian and japanese, so thats what I'll be setting up next (sorry about the long delay!).
Once that is set up and running, I'll do another round of sponsor-spotting as I have been intending for some time now, and whenever we are on a new server and the perspective seems a little more settled, I'd love to get back to the wave-form-displaying player I have been working on quite a bit.
ending with todays stats:
17.386 members,
21.946 tracks by 804 members
average dayly visitors: 1400
Lutz
Mmmh, if I got it right, you say 60 supporting members x 4$ makes 240$ a month - that looks quite hopeless...
I was assuming, that many would spend a bit more than 4$. You will have to tell everybody that 4$ is really not enough!
First impression: We need another idea.
Quick shot: Charge automatically a tiny amount for every download via paypal (much less than 99 cent) but not by supporting members, which are those who contribute new tracks.
you told once that the number of downloads is quite high, from passive members, just interested in tracks.
:|
[b]The financial question of a self-supporting wikiloops should be the highest priority above all new improvements![/b] +0
I was assuming, that many would spend a bit more than 4$. You will have to tell everybody that 4$ is really not enough!
First impression: We need another idea.
Quick shot: Charge automatically a tiny amount for every download via paypal (much less than 99 cent) but not by supporting members, which are those who contribute new tracks.
you told once that the number of downloads is quite high, from passive members, just interested in tracks.
:|
[b]The financial question of a self-supporting wikiloops should be the highest priority above all new improvements![/b] +0
OliVBee
mmmmmkay ... like you wisely said : no need to argue about this so i'm trusting the 100% of you to make the right decision in whatever is good for the Loops ... i totally agree that there's very little future on the cheapest host solution ...
looks like i'm gonna have to adjust my own donation to match something more like what's needed ...
Tally Ho !!
OliV +0
looks like i'm gonna have to adjust my own donation to match something more like what's needed ...
Tally Ho !!
OliV +0
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