[thelist] bigger hosting - a trend? (fwd)

Seb seb at members.evolt.org
Tue Jan 8 16:45:02 CST 2002


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>While the conversation that got generated is interesting, it's not quite 
>what I expected. I guess I should have given details on the sort of sites 
>and hosting I was talking about.
>
>First case:
>http://dmeb.net (a site now abandonned)
>After being up for 2 months on a 25$/month hosting plan, I got a call that 
>I had to upgrade my hosting and that it would cost *me* 500$/month to keep 
>hosting the site. I ended up splitting the site over a few servers to keep 
>costs down. Bandwidth was a problem, I had 40Gig bandwidth for the second 
>month.
>http://www.sithclan.net (in French)
>A site dedicated to Starwars for the French speaking fans.
>We went from a 20$/month hosting plan to a 35$/month, only to be kicked 
>off that plan because the load on the server was too high. The site is PHP 
>and mysql-based. We are now on a 50$/month plan, and hoping for the best 
>cause we can't pay more.  We're talking 2,000 unique visitors daily on 
>this site, about 10,000 page views daily.
>http://jessifanfic.net (I think that's the URL, may not be though)
>a fanfiction site about the show Roswell.  She's been quoted *today* for a 
>100$/month plan to host her site. Bandwidth is not high, just the load on 
>the server. All pages are static.
>I know of quite a few others in the same category, fanfic sites, or fan 
>sites in general.
>
>None of these sites sell anything, yet they are getting more and more 
>popular, and there's no hosting out there that can "take" them at a price 
>that an individual can pay. Self-publishing is now getting quite limited. 
>If you're good and successful, you're dead! Ad servers don't want to serve 
>them, the sites are just not quite big enough, and ad servers are having a 
>hard time as it is. Sithclan.net is having a tough time coming up with 
>50$US per month for its hosting.
>
>I think I'm discouraged. I see these requests for help about hosting just 
>a tad too often these days...


Nicole,

Wow, I have to say that I'm *amazed* you've gotten away with paying so 
little for the traffic that dmeb uses. I seem to remember quite a buzz in 
the community (not to mention publicity in the press in the UK) some time ago.

I also note you use pNews (and therefore phpBB) for sithclan. I've not been 
impressed with the performance scalability of pNews. If you're consistently 
having problems with application performance, you might look at exploring 
alternatives to such applications. 2000 visitors/day really shouldn't be 
thrashing a box so much that you get kicked off a hosting plan. (I also 
note that your page executes in between 1.4 and 0.3 seconds each time I hit 
it. DB and PHP config and performance tuning could do you a world of good 
here.)

Don't lose heart, a little tuning and pruning here and there looks like it 
could solve a lot of your problems.

Seb.


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