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Originally Posted by infernal
I agree somewhat with what Future_Sniper said... and he has the right to express his opinion. So relax.
On another note if you paid over a grand for a server, you are mis-managing your money. A dual drive backup rack server on a linux platform will run you less than $700 shipped with PSU and you can get a battery backup for under $100. You're co-lo should provide most of this for you, so the server should be all you need (provided you have a co-lo). For that price, you are running just shy of a half a terrabyte on a 10mbit line.
Doesn't it seem kind of interesting to charge $40 for 250mb of webhosting with ftp access... espsecially if this site does run on a fast line (10mbit +)... with the amount of people that are contributing... you could see your hosting bills go through the roof.
For the person that said go reasearch, dedicated hosting is not that expensive. Burstable WiLan has come down alot over the past 24 months and is available at 5mb and 10mb burstable in your home for much less than t1 or greater. Most people that host via dedicated lines are running hundreds of other hosting contracts to make up for the costs, so its not a huge deal. It would be financial suicide and completely stupid to pay for a dedicated fiber line to run one single website. Instead, a more appropriate application of resources would be in the form of purchasing either dedicated or virtual rackspace from a someone like servermatrix. Your money is better spent there considering you have more than 14 mainframe connections routing your server.
Myself, I run 6 rack servers at q9 in calgary, so unfortunatly I actually know what I'm talking about. I do routing for 4,700 hotels all with 10mbit+ fiber connections worldwide.
Now I'm not saying I have anything against the donations... I feel they are great. I know the actual CODING of the site takes quite a bit of man hours. Hopefully enough gets raised that some really cool new features can be released, and we can start seing some forward moving development very soon.
I myself will probably contribute to the fund as I use this site quite a bit. Miles, you have done some great work on this site. Should you need any assistance in administration or coding the website, I would be glad to sponsor some of my time to your cause.
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This site runs only 2 websites that support its existence financially. AirsoftCanada and Airsoft-Innovations.
I purchased dedicated hosting, meaning they buy and install the hardware, because I don't have time to go shopping for servers. Would I like to setup a colo? Yes. But I'm not a network administrator, this is just a hobby, I'm not going to change my life just to run this site. The server is located at Ezzi in NY, I don't know why anyone thinks I'm running fiber to my house. I've had to pay for some tech time at the DC, too, because things go wrong now and then.
I don't resell the webspace and I really don't intend to. I consider it a major undertaking to handle someone else's data, and I will not do it unless I feel 100% capable of maintaining the services at a level I would expect from a host (and I have pretty high expectations).
I don't pirate any software on this website. The cost of running ASC includes the cost of purchasing legal software over the last 4 years. That alone has been a fair sum, and even there people have donated licenses (Zeus helped us get started on Vbulletin).
I'm not going to value my time over the last 4 years, but we've gone through 4 complete revisions of the site, as well as dealing with all the community related issues. That's alot of typing and late nights. Coding time over 4 years? I don't even want to think about what it adds up to. I don't care either, it's what we donated towards the airsoft community in Canada. And I didn't do it alone, dozens of people have helped over the years, from the previous admins, to people helping out with all sorts of work, never mind the whole mod staff that spends amazing amount of hours cleaning things up around here.
I purchased a setup that would give me enough bandwidth to keep ASC going for quite awhile. For 4 years we bounced from shared hosting to shared hosting as we got bigger and bigger. I made a long term investment in the site, so the hosting has alot of growth potential. Ideally this server will keep ASC happy for another 2 years, at least, but I won't cross my fingers.
In a perfect world, I would be a professional site admin, and I would value shop all my hosting decisions. But that isn't the case, I'm just an airsofter with a hobbyist approach to computers. Thank Midgetspy for helping get me moving on the Linux server. I know more than when I started, but still basically 0, but somehow ASC manages to keep chugging along, with no ads, no user fees, no subscriptions.