Topic: URGENT: Call For Help

[Mike Bobbitt]

Hi all,

I was hit today with a $237 bill from my ISP, who complained that I was far over my monthly traffic limit.

What does this mean for the site?

Well, I'm not sure yet. I definitely can't afford this kind of a monthly bill, so I can't keep things as they are. I really don't want to kill the site, but I can't afford this type of a bill to support a hobby.

In the mean time, I'm open to suggestions.

[matt_rogers]

GET A NEW ISP!!

Plenty of resonable ones out there.

My host is pretty good - california.com.

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks Matt, I'm checking out some options. In the interim, I may need to temporarily shut down the forums for a bit to keep the usage down.

Sigh...

[matt_rogers]

That sucks!  

[cerberos76]

Mike,
what kind of bandwidth do you use? there are pretty good ISPs out there that can offer excellent value deals with pretty high usage...

Anyway some reccomendations:
a) a possibility is to completly 'outsource the site'. You can do it for example releasing the code as open source in sourceforge. they offer you good servers and how much bandwidth you need for files, forums etc.

b) if you wish to keep all your files here, you might start turning off images, avatar and the like in the forums. This is the major bandwidth consumtion usually.

c) you might also consider removing the intenal demo gallery, and in extreme case also the downloads, leaving it to mirror sites or to sourceforge if you go open source (you might also keep your page as front in this case).

Just a few thought that  might give hints...

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks cerbreros. I've been looking into those exact possibilities. In fact, I'd moved album.pl completely over to sourceforge for a while, but it was lacking in a number of ways (most notably in their forums setup). I may still rely at least partly on sourceforge, as they've got a number of benefits.

I'm also checking out alternate ISPs and other options, and overall, things are coming together... I hope.

Anyway, thanks for the ideas, I'll run with them...

Cheers

[ps]

my suggestion is move the whole site over to tera-byte.com. I run one my from there and they have been great.

for $9.95US a month you get 200 megs space and 20 gigs of bandwidth. You get MySQL and php access and just about everything else you would need to run this site.

Now for that kind of dollars, if all the members on this board donated $10 you would be covered for at least a year

Hope it all works out

[Mike Bobbitt]

Heheh, thanks. That may be just the answer I'm looking for!

[Marcus]

Hey Mike!

I use 1-2-3 WebbMotell.

http://www.webbmotell.nu/indexen.html

I have unlimited bandwich
           unlimited Storage Space

It's a Monthly Fee on 5.50 euro
and yearly on 66.00 euro

The only thing that's quite bad is the uptime, but check it out!

Regards
/Mackan

[Dino]

Perhaps I can host you. Perhaps...

What's your current monthly bandwidth, and how large is your site (pics, forums, etc)?

I run a couple of bandwidth-intensive sites and hard drive-intensive sites and I'm almost to the limits with my server provider.

You also might want to check out my server provider: www.cihost.com. You can get a dedicated Linux server loaded for $99/month.

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks Dino! I've actually found a solution now that appears to be working out...

Glad to know there's support out there, but it looks like things have settled down...

I still have to capture more accurate usage statistics, but that'll come...

[Dino]

No problem. If you ever need anything, just let me know.

[Mike Bobbitt]

Ditto.

[johnypneumonic]

mike ,sory ive not been logged in for a while,ive been busy on various projects,.-anyhow - please have a look at the following urls , they have serious Bandwidth -the first gives 5 gb a day for $7 and 1gb space., the second gives  like 200mb space for $4 (canadian)and 3.5 gb bandwidth a month. : http://www.powweb.com/webhosting.html

http://www.company-hosting.net/ensimpro_hosting.htm

and if it realy gets serious and you have to close it down - well im buying 1gb of server space in a few days. i can help out with some space for you for free if need be.
happy new year mate.
Johny

[Stylle]

Check out NoMonthlyFees.com  Pretty cheap and you get anything you could ever need, plus 25GB of traffic.