Just to let you know what happened, and what the future has in store.
Firstly, the reason why our host shut us down was not due to bandwidth. We have planned well in advanced for that. The problem is that our popularity has hit us in a new way that we did not plan for, which is that our RAM and CPU usage has gone through the roof.
There are many reasons for this, and all of which are generally directed at the forum. Which is what the forum was the last thing to be restored. We have not solved the problem, but Daz has come up with a number of very cunning methods to get us back on-line and give us time to organise things.
So how did he reduce our load.... First up Daz cut away almost 180,000 posts from the database which will instantly reduce our load. While this is a lot of valuable content to cut away, it was done so in a way that it can be restored when we are on a new server.
Secondly, Daz and done some clever work to limit the likes of search engines from ripping through the forum indexing everything in sight. For example, last month Goggle generated over 400,000 requests from our server alone. That's quite a bit of searching through the forums, all of which used RAM and CPU. Goggle are also only one of many search engines who scan us.
Keeping them off the forum reduces the load, but it will effect peoples ability to find us and our recorded popularity status.
That said, all theses changes are only temporary solutions to a problem that will arise again, so the job at hand now is to go shopping and see if a Virtual Server or a Dedicated server is what we need for the future. At least we now have the time to do all this, and relay all this information back to you all.
Bottom line though is that since we run the forum for free, no matter what we do will require money to be raised in order to pay for everything we will need. So while no decision have been made just yet, we have thrown around a few ideas.
The first idea was to simply ask for donations. The problem with that though is only a small percentage of people will do that, and is that fair ?.
The second idea was to start up a small membership fee. Basically the forum would be free to anyone using the Korg Family Section (where support on keyboards is given) and outside that, the rest would be membership access only. With some changes to the content, it could be made quite interesting. While this would require a considerable amount of work, it is however an option.
And finally the third option is to quite simply allow advertisements on the forums. We have been asked in the past by respected music stores to allow them to place a banner on the forum, but we have always prided ourselves on being advertisement free. Quite honestly, I have no problem in swallowing some of that pride to secure the future of the forum though.
So as it stands, those are our options and in time we will move on one of those. So for the moment all I can say is.... Enjoy Everyone. !!!! We are back on-line
Kind Regards.
Sharp.
