what happened to the forum?

[nouvellechef]

Melvan, you won for August and it ran thru Sept! Your in OT now girl! I was waiting to hear what MP wanted to do before another BPOTM.

Shortbus, those numbers are way less than the $250 a month currently. You mean $160 one time fee??

 

[ShOrTbUs]

Melvan, you won for August and it ran thru Sept! Your in OT now girl! I was waiting to hear what MP wanted to do before another BPOTM.

Shortbus, those numbers are way less than the $250 a month currently. You mean $160 one time fee??

i actually just re visited their website yesterday. the new vbulletin 5 suite looks really nice. we're currently running version 3.4.5. vB 5 is 250$, and $210 if your upgrading a previous version.

you guys are paying 250$ a month? all of the $250 goes towards hosting? i'm trying to think of other monthly expenses that a forum could possibly have.

 

[Melvan]

I don't care about the pic, I was just making a joke that I shouldn't win anything here, it's bad luck when I do, lol

 

[ShOrTbUs]

i've been doing some research. at 250$ monthly its safe i can assume your running VPS or dedicated hosting. which at this point in time this forum really does NOT need. we only average 5k page views a day. and an avg 1.7 page views per unique visitor. so about 2k unique visitors a day.

from what i've seen. virtual or dedicated hosting is just NOT necessary for our forum. there are sites that hit 50k page views and 25k unique visitors a day. and they run on $10/month shared hosting.

ohh and for people wondering. the avg monthly revenue from the nirvana advertisement is about 16$/month. which will more then cover a sufficient shared hosting plan

 

[ShOrTbUs]

see i haven't been here for that long like most of you. from what i've seen written. this place used to be booming with people(before the forum crashed). BUT now our community is small, and has been small for some time.

i vote for a downgrade in hosting services. and a donations link to go up to purchase the new vBulletin 5. vB5 looks awesome.


hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h8JJRH_UgI

 

[ColoradoLady]

Money in my bank account for ALL the help I've had the last few years also. Look at all the money I've saved just by not making all the mistakes I would have made had I not asked here for advice. My favorite: someone recognizing bee **** on my plant. I couldn't figure it out.

 

[Locked]

I see the new ads but I am confused as to why they say registering will remove them. I am a registered user and still see them. Sounds like Shortbus knows his stuff and can help. I hope his suggestions don't fall on deaf ears.

 

[7greeneyes]

^^^^^pretty much that^^^^^

:joint4:

 

[MarPassion]

We get between 4 and 5000 visitors a day and around 10.000 page views. We use to have more then that, up to 30.000 page views a day. It's not the members that walked away, it's Google sending less traffic. And Google sends most traffic, at this moment, to the Archive page actually. around 3000 unique visitors a day. So, the main forum gets a lot less then before, because of Google. It's been slowly dying, and still going down every month.

Traffic wise we could do with a shared server maybe. But at times the forum gets a bit on heavy load, not sure if they allow that on a shared server. Besides this, the biggest problem is data space, the amount of pictures hosted is more then 100 gig. You cannot have 100 gig on a shared server. So, I need to delete most of the images. I have been thinking about it actually, and came up with another idea, host the images on an amazon server, they sell cheap hosting space, but then again, not sure if the members like that option to have their pics on a US server.

I upgraded to VB 4 before, the server crashed, somehow it never did run very smooth. I'm not a IT specialist so I hired someone before which cost me $800, plus the VB suite that time was $350. All in all a lot of time and money and ended up still with a bad running server. Made me tired, I asked advice everywhere with no help. This server should have been good to handle to load.

VB 5 is a buck-load of money, they have a Mobile suite now also, I think it's a good option because this forum is really bad on your phone. Well all in all it takes money and time. Which is what I don't both have too much.

Going to a cheaper hosting means more cost, and deleting most of the attachments. New contract, moving the data etc.

Sorry if this all sounds negative, but I feel this way about it at this moment.

 

[MarPassion]

I see the new ads but I am confused as to why they say registering will remove them. I am a registered user and still see them. Sounds like Shortbus knows his stuff and can help. I hope his suggestions don't fall on deaf ears.

I activated the advert plugin, it's been a long time that i did that. So, it's an old message. We use to run only ads for visitors not for registered members.

Maybe we can do a paid option for people that don't like to see the ads. Sorry guys but I need to cover the hosting costs.

 

[7greeneyes]

No prob MArp you're entitled to your opinion.

I know ppl around here as well as I understand financial hardships/binds. Do what you can, bud. We'll be here to help out whenever/however possible.

eace:

 

[MarPassion]

you guys are paying 250$ a month? all of the $250 goes towards hosting? i'm trying to think of other monthly expenses that a forum could possibly have.

Yes, all for hosting. I pay 181 Euro a month

 

[MarPassion]

I forgot to tell about that before we can update to the new VB software, the server needs to be updated to the latest PHP and MySQL version. The version it's running now is too low. Can't even install Wordpress on the server.

 

[CatFish]

Hay you do what you have too. But if needed we would chip in just let us. You have done so much and put up the cost we just play and learn here.

 

[lovbnstoned]

looks ok to me