2021 fundraiser - new server

[Bratwurst]

I am very fond of this forum. Shmups.system11 forever.

[Marc]

Done, not much but every little and all that right?

[Vexorg]

Chipped in. Didn't realize how long I've actually been here...

[marus]

Done. I don't visit too much nowadays but there's a good community and a lot of good information here, and I appreciate all the time and money you've put in to keep it running

[BloodHawk]

Done, even though I just joined last year I had been frequently visiting for quite a long time beforehand. This is a great forum!

[bounav]

Done.

I agree with other comments, this forum is fantastic resource and must remain online!

It can be a bit overwhelming when comparing buying hardware VS renting in the cloud (regardless of the cloud provider). That said having the ability to just point and click to create virtualised resources is amazing compared to relying on hardware that may and will fail at some point IMHO.

Have you looked specifically at AWS Lightsail? I think it would be suited if all shmups needs is an compute instance for the web server and a database one https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/

PM me if you need help with cloud stuff, I'd be happy to help.

[h1ghju1ce]

happy to donate

[Wittischism]

This is a major hub and resource for the genre. Happy to help keep it around. Seeing how gamefaqs declined over the 20 years I've been frequenting that site, that would definitely be sad to see here. A message board format for information and communication definitely has it's advantages.

[vol.2]

Chipped. Yes, please everyone help out!

[minion]

Donations to this recipient aren't supported in this country

Let me know if you have any alternate donation method available (buy you an amazon gift card or something...)

[waiwainl]

Done! Keep up the good work

[muggsy]

I've just sent some money your way.. These forums are such a valuable resource for information and while I don't post a lot believe me, I read most of the threads.. keep up the good work

Sent from my SM-A217F using Tapatalk

[stuminator]

Done. Keep up the good work system11.

[BenoitRen]

A hosting bill of $1250 a year?! Is it because of it being on a dedicated server? A hosting plan for 1 year is usually less around $100, no? Am I missing something?

[Dochartaigh]

A hosting bill of $1250 a year?! Is it because of it being on a dedicated server? A hosting plan for 1 year is usually less around $100, no? Am I missing something?

There's a max of 1774 (per the boards stats) users on this forum at ONCE. That means a LOT of bandwidth is being used. Try that on a $100 Dreamhost/Bluehost/HostGator/etc.-type hosting plan and the board will get extremely slow if not seize... then they'll try to upgrade you to the next level plan which is a lot more.

[Elixir]

A hosting bill of $1250 a year?! Is it because of it being on a dedicated server? A hosting plan for 1 year is usually less around $100, no? Am I missing something?

There's a max of 1774 (per the boards stats) users on this forum at ONCE. That means a LOT of bandwidth is being used.

A user peak from 2014 is not an accurate way to determine website traffic.

[Dochartaigh]

A user peak from 2014 is not an accurate way to determine website traffic.

Not at all, but it's the only quick benchmark I have as I don't run the site (just ~20 other sites).

[ShootTheCore]

Donated

[CIT]

Donated. Thanks for all the work system11!

[system11]

Thanks everyone - I will add it all up soon. The messages have been nice to receive too honestly - rough couple of months.

I did look into AWS and asked a friend of mine who is an AWS professional services kind of guy but basically there was no way to do it cheaper than buying a server. It's the death by a thousand cuts aspect - a little bit extra to get usable RAM, a little bit extra for a core or two, a little bit of storage so there's actually disk space for backups. If you use Aurora instead of running the DB locally anything saved in RAM requirements is instantly absorbed by a potentially scary amount of chargeable IOPs.

Suddenly what looked really cheap isn't anymore - I see this at work with every single AWS project that gets spun up quickly to save money. I think the only saving might be wages as it does definitely take less time, but my time in this context is free.

[Ark]

Just Donated !!

I've watched this forum for a couple years, I would hate to see it go. Its one of the few places that's dedicated to the shmup genre.

[sscamaro2010]

Donated! Keep up the good work.

[gibbous]

Donated. Not on a lot, but I always enjoy being around here.

[dwn_013_crash_man]

This board has been of use to me and I would be really sad to see it go, the community feels much homier than something like on reddit (which stops commenting on a thread after 6 months...)
Donated what I could, thank you system11 for keeping the forum up and running!!

[Filuren]

Is it too late to donate some money?

[DirkSwizzler]

Is it too late to donate some money?

It's never too late.

it takes about $1250 a year in hosting bills against donations of about $24 a year.

(The yearly donation figure was later corrected to be $83 last year)

[charlizardon]

Made a $10 contribution towards this great community, happy to help out!

[system11]

A hosting bill of $1250 a year?! Is it because of it being on a dedicated server? A hosting plan for 1 year is usually less around $100, no? Am I missing something?

The bandwidth is fairly generous at the hosting company and we don't really come close to consuming the entry level amount. Text is cheap.

The bill is mostly electricity, not a lot of people know that It wasn't a huge saving but the monthlies went down last time the server was replaced because the new one used less power (certain models of Intel CPU are designated as low power draw), when a server is installed they measure it and that's the single biggest variable on the bill unless you're hosting video or something. Switching to hosted solutions just flips the equation and the bill starts to be about memory and CPU cores, unless they get dramatically scaled back which would impact performance. Mysql is eating 6gb alone for example, because almost nothing here ever gets deleted. There's a good reason for that of course, the longevity and organisation of information is an area where dedicated forums excel over other types of communication platform such as chat or IM.

[Guspaz]

I've got to be honest, a donation drive is a bit tough to swallow when racists are spamming threads and no amount of reporting posts ever seems to prompt moderator action. When was the last time anybody looked at the moderator report queue for the hardware forum? There's got to be a bit of give-and-take, if users have to come up with adblock filters to try to deal with the lack of moderators, donating to the site expenses is not the foremost thought on our minds. I'd be happy to contribute a bit if the moderators were playing a more active role in maintaining the site, but watching the site slowly slide into irrelevance as more and more technical experts give up on the toxic atmosphere is not the way to encourage users to contribute.

Please don't take this as an attack, please take this as a plea for you to help get things back on track, by enforcing your own forum rules if nothing else!

EDIT: In terms of costing things out, consider looking at Linode, as it's much cheaper than AWS as virtual server hosting goes. Yes, your bill scales by resources, but they're all fixed and built into the monthly price at a much lower cost than what Amazon charges.

[vol.2]

^^^^^

I already donated, and I'm happy I did so, but it's true that we really need some help with moderation in the Hardware section. Things have gotten really out of hand.