While I’m asking about merchandising, I’ll mention this as well. 
In earlier times we had advertising banners on other pages, not sure why they stopped doing that. I’ll ask Jerry.
your humble TubaDiva
They need to give you a commision now. I just ordered the Coffe Mug and 2 books. I think my daughter will enjoy “Know It All”
Thank you very much; this is the kind of support that helps keep things ticking along and it is very much appreciated.
While of course the collected Canon of Straight Dope books are great reading (though mostly for adults), Ed’s “Know It All” is an excellent introduction for kids to the Wide World of Knowledge. I have a copy myself; athough I am not a kid, it is rumored I was one, once. Ed even autographed it for me; it says: “I hope you paid full retail for this book. Ed Zotti.”
your humble TubaDiva
PS I have been told that “Triumph of the Straight Dope” has been sold out for a little bit, but will be back in stock at the Reader online store in about 2 weeks.
While I have no idea of the cost of running SDMB, your $200/month estimate is way off.
No, Rackspace is obscenely overpriced.
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=dedicated+servers&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
Do some shopping around. Note the context of that thread was “mission critical” e-c-ommerce sites and such. If someone is running an e-commerce business with $10,000+ in sales a day, they will likely be willing to pay extra for top reliabilty. The SDMB is just a simple bulletin board system. Occasional downtime isn’t a major disaster. And as it is the SDMB often is near unusable because of the inadequacy of the server. Why on Earth pay premium prices AND have poor service? If Rackspace was delivering excellent quality, nobody here would even question finding another host.
Obviously you have never lived through one of our outages; even a 4-hour maintenance downtime has been known to give Dopers the shakes. It’s the worst kind of jonesin’.
And actually, the service is not so poor, considering what we’ve had before, which was much worse, much worse. It’s just not up to YOUR standards.
your humble TubaDiva
How are the SDMB and the Straightdope page represented to anybody in charge? (Precisely, i.e. is there a specific person who tells them what the situation is? Are they given a few graphs and a few balance sheets?)
FWIW, I was using the boards for over a year before I discovered that a link to the so-called front page even existed down there in the bottom corner. And I know I’m far from alone in happening upon the boards first and the ‘front page’ second.
Actually, the service is poor. It just doesn’t seem that way to you since you are comparing what it is like today to when it was “absolutely atrocious” years ago. I’ll have to assume you aren’t familiar with using web based forums run on decent servers.
BTW, exactly what are the specs of the box this board is running on?
Well, there’s no point in getting into a discussion about the quality of service providers, but obviously you not quite up to speed here. ‘The SDMB is just a simple bulletin board system’ ?? Running a board is one of the most resource-intensive services in the non-commercial web sphere. And we’re not talking about any board, we’re talking about SDMB. When you’re running a board of this size you’re not paying $50, $200 or even $500, unless you go down the teenage resellers route.
Rackspace is still regarded as the company. To many they set the standard for realiable quality high-end web services. To say that they don’t aim for excellent quality is nonsense. But you get the cpu + bandwidth you can pay for of course.
I’m believe someone mentioned the amount bandwidth/month when the board went subscription, but I can’t find it right now.
Are you serious?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6499954&postcount=25
Bandwidth is not going to be a material issue for this board. These are simple HTML files with minimal graphics.
I absolutely agree. Referring to ‘how it used to be’ is an appalling attitude, and it especially suggests that nobody has considered the need to attract new subscribers. Telling them ‘this is better than it’s ever been’ will have them rolling in the aisles.
This question has been asked MANY MANY times, and never to my knowledge has any response been given.
As I indicated, I need bandwidth/month + peak users to be able to make a cost estimate. Another question is how you are able to make a dead-sure prediction of $200/month without these figures??
Btw, I’m sure Kaotic’s last sentence, the 486 thing, was meant as a joke. Just saying.
He-he. I would have to ask for a cite for the board = html files thing.
I’m sure he was joking about this board literally running on a 486. The point was this board is running a server that is quite obsolete by today’s standards.
??? Do you even understand what an HTML file is? Just check out the source code for this page. Other than HTML, it calls just a few small .gif files.
That’s the output. Cite that SDMB is just html files stored on the server please.
www.vbulletin.com
Absolutely. A site consisting only of HTML files would be a static site, similar to the SD Front Page (although I suspect there is more going on there, too).
This message board has to run the VBulletin software and also maintain a fairly hefty database of threads, posts, members and a lot of other stuff. Every HTML page you see when browsing the boards is generated “on-the-fly” by VBulletin, since it changes every time a new post is added.
I would suggest that those who think they could do a better job of administring this board, without having a clue as to what is involved, butt out and let the professionals handle it, as they have been doing against long odds and lack of financial support by the sponsors.
That was a reply to what you quoted me above:
I was talking strictly about bandwidth. The output is dynamically generated. As for server requirements, Kaotic answered that with “600 users is not an issue with even a modest server.” These boards require neither a high power server nor large bandwidth/downloaded GBs available.
I see the problem. You completely misunderstand me. How would it “suit me” one way or the other? I’m not demanding change or complaining. I’m just saying it doesn’t quite make sense the way the Reader’s SDMB burden has been presented. Don’t worry, I’ll just vote with my dollars like everyone else. Not planning a revolution.
Though if you want a real criticism: not having a store link anywhere on the SDMB is whack.
Since nobody has mentioned it so far, and I haven’t seen it in any of the other SDMB discussions, allow me to give you all a run down on how the hosting business work. Please ignore if this is old news.
The essentials: The hosting business pretty much works the same way the cocaine business does. I’m not kidding. Take away the guns, the violence, the illegality, - and there you have it.
First, you have the fiber owners. They sell capacity to a company who builds a big building suited for computers. This company sell space in the building to many other companies who buys/owns computers they want to lease as servers to others from the building.
At this point the buyer is: a) an end user (like the Chicago Reader) leasing a dedicated computer (managed or unmanaged), or b) a reseller leasing computer(s) which s/he may or may not sell parts of to a second reseller who sells space/bandwidth for $5 - $25 to people who wants to host their websites. In the case of the latter, the concept of dilution kicks in quite heavily. Naturally, the number of customers per gigabyte bandwidth/space increases with each reseller. However, the pipeline is still the same, the equipment is, pretty much, the same, so the only way hosting providers can cut costs is on staff or crowding. Here is an ordinary discussion amongst resellers.
Actually, if you do a search on managed servers on google, many of the providers you find (the cheap ones) can be traced back to the big providers, like Rackspace. I kid you not. And though cheap doesn’t equal bad service, believe me, cheap & good service is damn hard to find.
While many in the hosting business are professionals, the majority are not. I know of hosting providers run by 13, 14, 15 year olds from the bedroom in their parent’s home. Remember that the server stilll is in the big building. The reseller is managing his/her leased server/space through a DSL connection from home, which could be on the other side of the planet. Here are some screenshots of the software (WHM) resellers use to manage accounts:
http://www.servepath.com/images/whmshot2.jpg
http://www.servepath.com/images/whmshot3.jpg
(from http://www.servepath.com/servers/cp_cpanel.htm)
In the case of Chicago Reader I gather that they haven’t actually bought a server. Instead they are leasing a computer with certain specs (cpu, ram, storage, bandwidth) from Rackspace. Rackspace is probably maintaing core webserver/database applications, while SDMB is in charge of additional layers (like the subscription scripts) and the content (the board itself).
The speed of SDMB boils down to what kind of server is leased, particularly the cpu/ram, and leased bandwidth. That is, if Chicago Reader only leases one computer. SDMB has over 300.000 threads, 6.4 million post, and has for a long time been listed amongst Top 50 on bigboards.com. vBullitin runs on php against a mysql database (php in itself requires quite a bit of resoures). Bandwidth-wise, running a board requires 3-5 times more bandwidth compared to a ‘regular’ website (a cite, bottom).
Well, you are wrong (see cite in my previous post). On a board users open, refresh and preview posts all the time, that’s why boards require more bandwidth than regular websites.
You still haven’t answer my question from before. How can you know that hosting SDMB costs $200/month when you don’t know how much bandwidth and how many page views the board is currently serving?
That cite isn’t at all credible. And the average website is more on the order of a simple personal homepage. I’m comparing against other sites on dedicated servers.