Ping: Ben, Sammage and Zinto

[Aston]

What's the size of the database? (ballpark)

Is that the issue, or is it the accesses to the database resulting from the various parts of the site that use it (it seems like pages are dynamically generated from the database). In the case of the latter, would accessing significantly smaller parts of the database help, or is the resource load dependent only on the overall database size? I'm talking about just having weekly posts of scores and schedules, no links to box scores.

Not asking you to do to the coding by the way - just wondering, in theory, to what degree that changes things.

[Guest]

What's the size of the database? (ballpark)

Is that the issue, or is it the accesses to the database resulting from the various parts of the site that use it (it seems like pages are dynamically generated from the database). In the case of the latter, would accessing significantly smaller parts of the database help, or is the resource load dependent only on the overall database size? I'm talking about just having weekly posts of scores and schedules, no links to box scores.

Not asking you to do to the coding by the way - just wondering, in theory, to what degree that changes things.

I don't think the issue is directly related to either. If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, it's pretty simple, really. (Note that most of this is conjecture/educated guessing.)

18 months or so ago, I was among the early adapters on a new hosting package to go to the server that I'm currently on. At that time, everything ran very well. Really no significant problems for a year or more.

But over time, my hosting provider has added more customers to this particular plan, and they've stuffed them on this server, and it's not really any one person, but the cumulative effect. [NON-CONJECTURE]When my site was down entirely for a few hours one day last month, I called tech support about it. The support tech told me that "hundreds" of web sites were on that server and were all down and they were working on it as fast as possible so that everyone would be back up.[/NON-CONJECTURE]

So, my guess here is that with 13 rather large databases, I'm an "easy target" for them to free up some space and make more money. 18 months ago, my 25 Gigs of web space usage and 2-3 Gigs of databases weren't a problem at all. But today, my only somewhat larger 32 Gigs of web space usage and 4-5 Gigs of databases could free up room for a whole bunch of little web sites at $10 a month. The easiest way to free up space is to get the power users out of there and nickel and just add more people using 100M or less. In short, they could make more money by having 5 guys on the $10 a month package using .01% of the space I use. Do that to what I suspect is the small handful of users paying the top price and using up lots of space, and they've sped up the server for everyone *and* made more money. *shurg*

Again, that's mostly semi-educated guessing and conjecture, but it makes perfect economic sense.

[nouvelle_vague]

I'm more than willing to cough up the dough to get it running, especially if it get upgraded

[Guest]

In case you haven't noticed, there have been significant slowdown issues for everything hosted at younglifenorthdekalb.com for the past couple of months or so, including your stats site. I've filed multiple support tickets, made over a dozen phone calls, and it hasn't gotten better for any extended time. The bottom line is that we're on a shared server, and there's too much stuff (not the other FOF leagues....there are *hundreds* of other web sites on the server). It's time to make a move. Here's where I am on this:

1. From talking to some true experts on the subject--especially Simms--I've come to the conclusion that I need to do what he has done for his personal site + FOBL + FOFL + IHOF--move to private hosting, rather than shared hosting.
2. I've tested a move to a VPS server, and I like the results I've gotten.
3. The move would be an increase of ~$25 per month in hosting fees.
4. Between the leagues fully hosted on my server (CCFL and USFL), and the leagues that use it for a database (FFL, IFL, OSFL, HFL, PFL, CyFL,) I'd like to feel like I can count on the owners to cover that increase with a once-per-year donation campaign. In short, I want to raise $300 every late June/early July at a minimum to keep this thing going.
5. Given that 95-99% of my bandwidth usage is for FOF MP, and a fair bit of it for leagues I'm not in, it'd be nice if the community could more or less cover my hosting costs if possible. That said, the $35 per month I'm currently paying has been in my budget for a while now, so no huge deal if not.

So, I'm moving, and I'm doing the first once-per-year campaign to cover the cost. Ideally, I'd hope to see it break down like this:

<b>TO COVER ALL HOSTING COSTS</b>
<i>ideal amount</i>
CCFL: $180
USFL: $180
OSFL: $60
FFL: $60
IFL: $60
HFL: $60
PFL: $60
CyFL: $60


<b>TO COVER THE INCREASE</b>
<i>(want this much at a minimum)</i>
CCFL: $75
USFL: $75
OSFL: $25
FFL: $25
IFL: $25
HFL: $25
PFL: $25
CyFL: $25

<b>BENEFITS</b>
1. Much faster load times.
2. Better customer service when things do go bad.
3. Leagues I'm not in should have direct access to their league's PhpMyAdmin, which means that they can update their owner info and player ratings without going through me.
4. PFL BENEFIT ONLY--I'll do a fairly significant feature upgrade for this league once the move gets settled in. I can't do everything I do at CCFL, due to vbulletin vs. phpbb, but I can upgrade the site quite a bit.


<b>RISK</b>
Very little. I've been researching this for a few weeks, and had narrowed it down to two plans. I posted an FOFC thread last night, and nothing that has been posted there has changed my thinking. If I go with Simms's company, we have the demonstrated usage at FOBL/FOFL/IHOF and my own tests on that VPS. If I go with the other plan, I have a 30-day guarantee to run similar tests and then move to the Simms plan if there's something about this other plan that we're both missing. Simms himself has said that the other plan has what we need, and looks better than what he has, so that's the #1 option right now.

TO DONATE AND HAVE IT EARMARKED FOR OSFL----> https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...=ZMLEL99SVVN6J

Thanks in advance for your help/attention to this, and sorry for the recent inconvenience of the slowdown.

--Ben

[Guest]

Under no force or obligation by this league I went ahead and sent some money.

[nouvelle_vague]

Under no force or obligation by this league I went ahead and sent some money.

+1

[Guest]

hmmm so if port city wins a bunch of games.....welll.....then...ummm yeah its just cause they are good

good on ya guys i will try and do my part soon,, just had to pay on my bit torrent site and got a birthday coming up

[Aston]

Ben, is there a way to check the current running total? I figure that's important for any donation drive with a stated goal. Wouldn't want people to be overshooting.

[Guest]

UPDATE:

I've received enough to move forward with this, though not the full amount I was hoping for. Now I'm in the process of moving leagues. I'll do it in the order of the amount donated as of when I sit down to do a new league. I'll be moving a league tomorrow (Saturday) morning, and maybe one Saturday afternoon/evening. The next time after that will probably be the next weekend. Right now the order is:

HFL
IFL
PFL
OSFL
FFL
CyFL