State of the Strut
RAJ
tenacious local 7,782 Posts
So as many of you have noticed, this site has been having technical issues the past week or so. Bottom line is the server is overloaded and my host wants me to upgrade to a server class that is just not economically feasible. Let's face it, the ad revenues are not coming in, and if I were to upgrade the server, I would be losing about $300/month.
The biggest culprit, I'm guessing is the mix section (seeing the rest of the sections did not take off like I imagined it would). Bottom line is, I'm faced with an ultimatum to upgrade or severely scale back the site.
What are your thoughts on this, it would be a shame to rip down the rest of the site, but at this point, right here seems to be the bread and butter.
It's kind of sad, as I poured a lot of heart and soul and resources to big up the rest of the site vs. it just being a boring old forum. But at this point I can't be coming out of pocket like woah.
The biggest culprit, I'm guessing is the mix section (seeing the rest of the sections did not take off like I imagined it would). Bottom line is, I'm faced with an ultimatum to upgrade or severely scale back the site.
What are your thoughts on this, it would be a shame to rip down the rest of the site, but at this point, right here seems to be the bread and butter.
It's kind of sad, as I poured a lot of heart and soul and resources to big up the rest of the site vs. it just being a boring old forum. But at this point I can't be coming out of pocket like woah.
Comments
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Or have divshare or some other site host them for a meager fee.
We used to do that in the old days. Right now, I feel bad raising money for here when there are tsunamis and shit going on in the world.
expecting members that have been here for 10 yrs/10 months or 10 days to pay up might seema bit harsh, but its either that or they get less site...
of course donations arent sumthin you can guarantee either, but given the volume of dudes/dudettes on here expecting some dudes to hand over a fiver or a tener should be much to ask for...
edit - or on the t-shirt front, add $5 to every t-shirt to go towards server costs
and a quick question, as the site stands now, can I download the mixes, or just stream?
beyond that, i wonder if you couldn't get some of the designers around here to lay out a bunch of new shirts and stuff, and maybe limit access to the real heads forum to people who've contributed; either bought a shirt, or donated, or bought classifieds.
i got some peoples in philly who run a big screen printing operation. don't know what they charge, but lemme know if you want me to put you in touch.
and given the volume of mixes the time associated with uploading them all could take a long ass time as well...
i am still all for this:
i would add emphasis on the mix section as that would be the bulk of the bandwidth, that way all the mixes are still housed by the strut and people wouldnt turn to soundcloud for mixes..and there would be no need to "cut down or scale back" the site...donations could be made via CC/paypal or any other method that gives people the ability to help out.
With this in mind, I'm wondering if the Strut really needs to host the actual audio content. I know this solution would be far from ideal (with respect to dealing with the current mixes and having control of the collection moving forward), but could you simply manage the database (hosting related images and info as you do) and ask that contributors host the audio content on their own Soundcloud accounts? This site would still serve as the finding aid (I'm a librarian ... can't break away from library lingo) but the costs of storing the actual content would be distributed amongst the contributors.
As I said, it's far from ideal for several reasons ... but so is paying to store all of that content in one place. Just a thought.
I think I met you once in Philadelphia. You had a blond mullet and your name was Kyle?
the main reason i am all for the donation portion of it, is simply for the fact of not having the data lost and by keeping it the way it is now, you can rest assure thats not going to happen. having the cost distributed amongst the community by housing the audio on soundcloud wouldnt be much different then allowing Raj to accept donations, either way in the end the community is contributing and taking on some of the costs associated with maintaining the site.
the Strut doesnt really need to house all the audio, but it makes it better for everyone if it continues to keep all its ducks in a row so to speak.maybe the donation part might be a bit much and not a very sound "be all end all" option, but it would be a start, i dont have a paid for soundcloud account and a lot of people do take advantage of the fact that its free for that reason..
hell even if sumthin as small as a $5 a month donation is given, if 60 people donate thats the full cost covered, only reason i would suggest it is because, it is a great idea and SoulStrut has the user database to implement such a thing, and expecting people to pay a small amount to be able to use the side and isnt a lot to ask for, i have seen smaller communities have there complete costs covered just by donations..
sounds much better then being severely cutting back the site
Yeah, I do agree with what you're saying. I really only threw out that idea as a last resort. But, you're right, if we want this collection to serve as a relatively permanent archive of mixes, having them hosted in one secure place is the best option. There are examples of digital libraries (Library of Congress' American Memory being perhaps the largest and most established) that, for the most part, act as digital finding aids to collections housed elsewhere (by trusted institutions). It's an interesting solution to a common problem, but it does require putting a lot of faith in your contributors.
I'm getting a haircut this weekend. LET'S DO THIS.
Son I'll send you a clump of my mullet for half that.
PSSHHT. AIN'T NO ONE WANT YA RATTY-ASS MULLET CLIPPINGS DAWG.
There's so much music out there, is it so important to petrify this stuff?
The problem isn't really the total size of all the mixes being stored on the server. All together they're a decent size and growing with new submissions, but that's not really a problem yet. The problem is the bandwidth required to serve the number of requests the mix mp3s get. It eats up available bandwidth and makes other requests slow, so the entire site responds slower for everyone. (And mixes get a lot of requests.)
Pruning mixes probably wouldn't make too much of an impact unless you were really aggressive. As far as I can tell from the logs the requests tend to make a long tail, with the large majority of the requests being for new/recent mixes (and a few very popular older mixes). There's still a lot of listens for older mixes but they're not as big of a dent as the new/recent ones.
Ratty? Never that. I wash my shit in goats milk daily. In fact I hereby challenge you to a blind taste test amongst randomly chosen Soul Strut users to determine who, in fact has the best hair.
I think a mix forum would be great. The dj would be responsible for keeping their link active and I'm sure most of us would help out when we can.
This would also protect you more.
I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR LADY LACTATING ON YOUR LOCKS, DAWGSER. BUT IF SOULONE N' 'NEM WANT TO GO BEANIE BABY WITH YOUR GOAT CHEESE HAIR BALLS, I'M 'BOUT IT.
Does your hair have it's own Facebook page?
Game over.