I got it working later by using an already approved AdSense account (from our company) and extending it to TASVideos.
However, I eventually gave it up because the amount gained from there was so miniscule and ever-shrinking (and for the other reason mentioned below).
Well, this is a terms of use violation, but I'm reporting here now the monetary statistics from adsense (as of before September 2008 when I quit it).
Average money gained daily for the entire duration: $1.08
Average money gained daily in the last 2 months: $0.38
Average money gained monthly in the last 6 months: $13.19
However, because of accounting reasons (this was our company's account, and moving money there into private pockets would have been legally a grand hassle, not to mention the aspects relating to currency exchanges at rates that change every day, and separating the portion relating to TASVideos from the entire money), I don't think I ever actually saw a penny of that money. Should bring that up with my employer some day.
Since September 2009 is the latest I have promised to run this site, I'll give September 2009 as the last deadline for the migration of all parts. If parts of the site still rely on servers of my provide'nce at that point forward, I will simply drop them from the net.
I will store backup archives as long as needed, though at most until January 2010.
I will also be rarely available at that point ― if someone needs my assistance setting the site up at that point, there may be long downtimes.
I am sorry for making such a blunt deadline, but unless I do this, nothing is going to happen.
When i asked to bisqwit on IRC about if the site could work on a non-dedicated server he sayd yes, so apparently its possible
Why paying 10$ per month for just some RAM, when for 4$ per month you get a unlimited hosting, bandwidth + disk space...
http://www.hostmonster.com/
The best thing of all is you can cut the site into 3/4 parts by reading what bisqwit posted
This mean shiny can take maybe the most "light" part, then nach another (without needing to upgrade) and a last one on a non-dedicated hosting
That been sayd, now if theres a particular reason to have a dedicated server, that fine, but i guess you can combine with shiny or others for thoses need, and let the rest on non-dedicated
Maybe also the charge on a non-dedi could be a problem, that something i cant tell, but well, 10$ a month for just some RAM is realy wasting money i think
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
arukAdo wrote:
When i asked to bisqwit on IRC about if the site could work on a non-dedicated server he sayd yes, so apparently its possible
Why paying 10$ per month for just some RAM, when for 4$ per month you get a unlimited hosting, bandwidth + disk space...
http://www.hostmonster.com/
You need to research hosting better than that. "Unlimited" doesn't mean much, the main thing to worry about is RAM and CPU usage. These so called unlimited hosting will most likely not let you install what you need, and even if you did, you'd be limited to 32MB total, or something almost as ridiculous, and your CPU share depending on the host can be almost non existent.
It may be great if you just want a small site, maybe a minimally dynamic site, but nothing compared to the needs of TASVideos.
arukAdo wrote:
The best thing of all is you can cut the site into 3/4 parts by reading what bisqwit posted
This mean shiny can take maybe the most "light" part, then nach another (without needing to upgrade) and a last one on a non-dedicated hosting
After talking more with Bisqwit, I doubt that'd work well.
arukAdo wrote:
That been sayd, now if theres a particular reason to have a dedicated server, that fine, but i guess you can combine with shiny or others for thoses need, and let the rest on non-dedicated
Maybe also the charge on a non-dedi could be a problem, that something i cant tell, but well, 10$ a month for just some RAM is realy wasting money i think
In fact, after getting a clearer picture from Bisqwit, I don't think $10 is quite right either.
To run everything, we need as follows:
A machine which provides root access, so we can setup EVERYTHING, since a lot of custom software is in use. We can't just default with whatever the hosting provider wants to give.
Bisqwit says 800MB of RAM is required, 512MB of RAM has ran things too slowly in the past.
Now I believe this number can be cut down if we try to do some things Bisqwit has not done in the past.
Namely, use a fully static cache for most of the main site, and only update it periodically. What this means however, that when a new run is published, it may appear on the forum, and also receive its own movie page, you won't notice it on frontpage/whatsnew/console till a few hours later. I'm not sure to what extent that'd be viewed as a bad thing. It may require modifying the code of the site though to make sure editors see the latest version when editing, but still have guests use the cached version whenever possible.
I also can't run things on my existing server, since the site apparently needs eAccelerator, which conflicts with other software I have installed.
The current design also requires more work than is necessary, since the images and page scripts for example don't have expires/caching enabled on them, so your browser has to grab them each time you view another page, putting more load on the server than is required, especially if you keep viewing the same pages over and over.
Based on an analysis performed on the current site, I think bandwidth requirements can get at least a 20% reduction, and memory usage can get anywhere from 10%-50% reduction depending on how much of the code is modified. If we consider most hits are from none members, and we can serve a separate tree to logged in and not logged in viewers, we can definitely see these improvements.
Looking at current hosting plans from respectable hosting companies that guarantee both RAM and to a certain extent CPU, and root and let you do what you want with the machine for the most part, best deals I know of that I can work with are as follows:
512MB RAM
16GB Storage
200GB Transfer
$30/month
640MB RAM
24GB Storage
300GB Transfer
$40/month
(I scaled back how much they actually give by a small % to reserve for OS install size, and management tools)
I believe that first setup with the right tweaking should be able to serve all our serving needs. However, if my estimates are a bit too idealistic, or we find that we are going over CPU limits due to the tremendous amount of processing we're doing, we may need the second option.
Thoughts?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
For €40 a month, one could get an AMD Athlon LE 1660 with 2.8GHz with 2 Gigs of RAM and a 250GB HDD.
As said before, I'd love to keep this site alive, but I'm not going to pay it all by myself. Sadly, though, the EUR/USD exchange rate is pretty bad (for USD people), so I'd understand if people didn't want to join or not chip as much. adelikat already said he'd like to do so, but I don't know much actually. Nach, what's your thought on that?
/fake edit: alden's $20 would be very welcome as well, I'd say.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
ShinyDoofy wrote:
For €40 a month, one could get an AMD Athlon LE 1660 with 2.8GHz with 2 Gigs of RAM and a 250GB HDD.
Do you mean buy? Or rent at a server farm / management facility somewhere?
Does that include hosting bills for Internet access?
ShinyDoofy wrote:
As said before, I'd love to keep this site alive, but I'm not going to pay it all by myself. Sadly, though, the EUR/USD exchange rate is pretty bad (for USD people), so I'd understand if people didn't want to join or not chip as much. adelikat already said he'd like to do so, but I don't know much actually. Nach, what's your thought on that?
Well, if we can get a certain amount of users willing to donate a consistent fee, then we should have no problem.
Some of these sites also offer discount if you order 1 or 2 years in advance.
For example, we could get the second option I posted for 2 years for ~$850 if we were willing to pay in advance.
Question is, can we raise that amount of money? Can we re-raise it over the course of every 2 years?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
You should check out this italian hosting company: http://hosting.aruba.it/?lang=EN.
They have a very interesting range of services, from simple hosting to virtual servers and dedicated servers, both for rent and for purchase. I've had a few websites hosted over there and I can tell you they're reliable and efficient. Not sure how they compare to other offers, though, but I thought to show you anyway to have one more option.
I'm still not in favor or regular web hosting because of all the limitations and the speed we'd most likely get. Am I blind or is there no English site for their dedicated servers? What about English speaking support? With the little Latin I still remember, their prices aren't the best (don't forget about the VAT we'd still have to pay), especially not when you consider the offered bandwidth (if we're going 1 Mbit guaranteed, I can also run the site from my laptop at home).
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
I'm sure that finding users to donate a consistent fee shouldn't be too difficult. I'd like to keep this site alive and would be happy to make monthly donations.
For the sake of furthering the conversation you can sign me up for up to $20 per month for a year (and most likely a year beyond, yet I can't say for sure now what my financial situation will be). Hopefully more people join in to donate so the sum paid by each person decreases.
I didn't want to advertise anyone. I just threw another option on the table, stating in advance my ignorance about this topic. I've had good experiences with their servers, then again tasvideos' needs might be different than my ones. Ignore my link if it's not appropriate.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
In addition to the main site, it could be a useful idea to get a cheaper host with a decent capacity (100GB?), combine it with a CDN, and then we could offer URL seeds within torrents. It could also be an easy way to provide a link to those without bit torrent clients.
Essentially, instead of creating and uploading a .torrent, and the encoder running a torrent client, the encoder via FTP can upload his encode to his account on a special server, and then a torrent link appears on the main site, which operates much faster than we've had it operate previously. It would also avoid the issue of a user running into a video which lacked seeders.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
While I like the idea, wouldn't it be easier to have the encodes on said second server and have btfriend kick in? I think most users would simply grab the encode from http instead of getting it via torrent (speed issues, poor seeder count, possibly clogging your uplink and so on). At least that's what I myself would think.
As archive.org didn't (doesn't?) like Zer0 uploading mkv files, I'd already most (all?) my encodes on my current server for rsync'ing it over.
4$/month hosting and alike are generaly unlimited space/bandwidth, so it should fit right for videos (i picked up hostmonster just for making an exemple, doesnt mean its the "good" one to take)
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
ShinyDoofy wrote:
While I like the idea, wouldn't it be easier to have the encodes on said second server and have btfriend kick in?
No, as that means the storage server needs to run a constant program, and it can't take advantage of a CDN.
ShinyDoofy wrote:
I think most users would simply grab the encode from http instead of getting it via torrent
You really think someone is going to download the torrent, then rip it apart just to get the URL seed?
ShinyDoofy wrote:
(speed issues, poor seeder count, possibly clogging your uplink and so on). At least that's what I myself would think.
That's what I specifically said to use a CDN.
ShinyDoofy wrote:
As archive.org didn't (doesn't?) like Zer0 uploading mkv files, I'd already most (all?) my encodes on my current server for rsync'ing it over.
What archive.org likes or doesn't like is irrelevant to us.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Meh, guess I misunderstood what you proposed. "easy way to provide a link to those without bit torrent clients" threw me off course.
Sure we shouldn't care about archive.org's file preferences, I was just referring to having them rsync'd in a matter hours as supposed to uploading them manually from home (dunno about your upstream's bandwidth, but still).
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
You wouldn't have to upload them manually. It's quite easy to create an FTP script or copy a whole directory.
rsync really only helps when you plan on constantly syncing, which isn't really relevant.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Just to clarify, those willing to donate? What methods are you willing to donate by?
Paypal?
Credit Card?
Bank Transfer?
Western Union?
Mailing a check?
Something else?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
