Funding GRB

[AdmiralKird]

How much does it cost per month to run the site?

About $115 a month.

I'm confused how it runs this much to host GRB. Whats the monthly traffic in Terrabytes?

Generally less than 1TB a month, the bandwidth isn't the bottleneck.

It's storage and ram. The only cheaper hosting option offered by the current host doesn't have enough diskspace to downgrade (I tried and it failed). And the offered RAM (2GB) of the lower tier is less than some of the peaks we get (I'm assuming it's bot traffic), so downgrading would require purging the forum and could cause site timeouts.

So the mods and I have agreed that paying the difference between the cheaper host and our current one is worth the added stability.

The other option is to find another host, but I don't own the gatewayredbirds.com domain so it would take some coordination. My plan has been to convert to a xenforo build I started on when I took over the site. Getting off phpbb onto a more efficient forum should help with both the disk space and the bot problem. But I broke the beta forum a few months ago and haven't had time to reinstall it onto the server.

I love GRB and am willing to pay the portion of hosting I do to keep the site running. But if i'm going to invest time into updating the forum and adding some content specific features, I wanted to make sure we had content creators who would take advantage of that. We had some ideas for increasing content creation, then the pandemic put a damper on some of those ideas and i was re-orged at work in a role that has crazy hours, so most of my ideas for GRB have just stagnated.

I'm not super technically inclined with this, but couldn't you just put a $500 computer together, redirect the domain to it's address, and stick it in a closet to run GRB? The hosting stuff just sounds like a racket unless you are bandwidth heavy.

[heyzeus]

The mods are paying $25/month each to keep the site afloat. The Patreon helps, otherwise that number would be higher. It’s something we do out of love for you sunsabishes.

[TheoSqua]

How much does it cost per month to run the site?

About $115 a month.

I'm confused how it runs this much to host GRB. Whats the monthly traffic in Terrabytes?

Generally less than 1TB a month, the bandwidth isn't the bottleneck.

It's storage and ram. The only cheaper hosting option offered by the current host doesn't have enough diskspace to downgrade (I tried and it failed). And the offered RAM (2GB) of the lower tier is less than some of the peaks we get (I'm assuming it's bot traffic), so downgrading would require purging the forum and could cause site timeouts.

So the mods and I have agreed that paying the difference between the cheaper host and our current one is worth the added stability.

The other option is to find another host, but I don't own the gatewayredbirds.com domain so it would take some coordination. My plan has been to convert to a xenforo build I started on when I took over the site. Getting off phpbb onto a more efficient forum should help with both the disk space and the bot problem. But I broke the beta forum a few months ago and haven't had time to reinstall it onto the server.

I love GRB and am willing to pay the portion of hosting I do to keep the site running. But if i'm going to invest time into updating the forum and adding some content specific features, I wanted to make sure we had content creators who would take advantage of that. We had some ideas for increasing content creation, then the pandemic put a damper on some of those ideas and i was re-orged at work in a role that has crazy hours, so most of my ideas for GRB have just stagnated.

I'm not super technically inclined with this, but couldn't you just put a $500 computer together, redirect the domain to it's address, and stick it in a closet to run GRB? The hosting stuff just sounds like a racket unless you are bandwidth heavy.

I've thought about it. I have gigabit internet here at my house, so I'd probably have the bandwidth.

I'd have to build a computer and get a dedicated router to separate my personal home network from the one everyone would visit.

My biggest concern is this site has a considerable amount of bot traffic that has security implications and I'm not super knowledgeable on network security. Part of what you pay with web hosting is that the security and networking stuff is the web hosts problem. If I were to try to build my own web server that becomes my problem.

The other thing to consider is liability. The forum allows image uploads and private messages. If people were to use those tools to share illegal or copyrighted media, that illegal stuff would be on a hard drive in my closet. A big hosting company has technical and legal protections for those scenarios that I wouldn't as an individual.

[CardsofSTL]

The mods are paying $25/month each to keep the site afloat. The Patreon helps, otherwise that number would be higher. It’s something we do out of love for you sunsabishes.

You must have a sweeter deal than me because I've been paying $26.

[CardsofSTL]

Just wanted to say thanks to those who are continuing to support on the Patreon; we all know things are getting more expensive every where and every dollar donated helps the mod team with the monthly costs associated wtih the site.

Also thanks to everyone who participates in the discussion and makes the forum worthwhile.

Now all we need is a team that wins a few games in a row!

[sighyoung]

I just saw this about the Patreon site.

[heyzeus]

We (mods) really do appreciate the support anyone's able to kick in to keep the site running. You're the best. Yes, YOU.