Well, after 15 years the time has come to do a bit of changing. Major changing. If you are a forum user only, then this means nothing will change at all, really. But as for the site as a whole, things have been drastically downgraded.
What do I mean by downgraded? Well, there is no front page any longer. I had it to where you couldn't get to it anyway unless you had direct links, but over 10 years of articles and their database are now gone. I have it all backed up just in case, but for now, that is all history. Why? Well it's simple, this site is costing me money on a monthly basis that I really need to be going to other things. So, instead of just turning off the lights, I figured I could at least keep the forums going.
The problem with that is there is no need to pay for a dedicated server just to host a forum. So that means I need to go to a shared or cloud based solution... but 15 years of data makes for a very large site. So I have pared everything down to just the forums... and I may still need to prune them a bit. Maybe prune all posts over 5 years old or something. Not sure on that quite yet.
The only issue I have now is that our monthly bandwidth does not put me in the price range I want. We currently do over 130GB of data bandwidth a month. Which is nothing compared to what it used to be, but still higher than the shared tier I'd like to be at. I am currently talking to Nexcess on how to proceed, but there may be a slight chance that the site may be down for a few days if we do not get it figured out by the 23rd or 25th.
The absolute worst case scenario is if there is no choice but to go to one of the higher tier shared solutions. I am not sure what I will do as the site just doesn't make that kind of money anymore. The only reason why it is even still up is for those of you who still visit it. At this point, the Bold subscriptions is all we are using for income at this point. I de-activated the Patreon page days ago as it was geared for front page people and,we haven't had that in over a year.
If I can get the $90 a month tier I want by having Nexcess increase the bandwidth a tad, we are good. If not, well then I will re-evaluate. I'm willing to pay for one more month at a loss, just to see if we are able to get enough $$$, but that's it. I'll let you know what is going on as I continue discussions with Nexcess.
What do I mean by downgraded? Well, there is no front page any longer. I had it to where you couldn't get to it anyway unless you had direct links, but over 10 years of articles and their database are now gone. I have it all backed up just in case, but for now, that is all history. Why? Well it's simple, this site is costing me money on a monthly basis that I really need to be going to other things. So, instead of just turning off the lights, I figured I could at least keep the forums going.
The problem with that is there is no need to pay for a dedicated server just to host a forum. So that means I need to go to a shared or cloud based solution... but 15 years of data makes for a very large site. So I have pared everything down to just the forums... and I may still need to prune them a bit. Maybe prune all posts over 5 years old or something. Not sure on that quite yet.
The only issue I have now is that our monthly bandwidth does not put me in the price range I want. We currently do over 130GB of data bandwidth a month. Which is nothing compared to what it used to be, but still higher than the shared tier I'd like to be at. I am currently talking to Nexcess on how to proceed, but there may be a slight chance that the site may be down for a few days if we do not get it figured out by the 23rd or 25th.
The absolute worst case scenario is if there is no choice but to go to one of the higher tier shared solutions. I am not sure what I will do as the site just doesn't make that kind of money anymore. The only reason why it is even still up is for those of you who still visit it. At this point, the Bold subscriptions is all we are using for income at this point. I de-activated the Patreon page days ago as it was geared for front page people and,we haven't had that in over a year.
If I can get the $90 a month tier I want by having Nexcess increase the bandwidth a tad, we are good. If not, well then I will re-evaluate. I'm willing to pay for one more month at a loss, just to see if we are able to get enough $$$, but that's it. I'll let you know what is going on as I continue discussions with Nexcess.
