FFXIclopedia talk:Site support/2007

Rofl, lots of discussion here. Maybe you should just call it a day, the fundraiser is at 101 % as i am typing this. Congratulations on a successful Fundraising. Gisselle

5/5/2006 LoL! It's a good thing that there's no discussion, means people agree :P Tattersail

---

Donation that allows you access to the forum? That's called a fee. Donation is a nice word though... means you don't owe them anything if they want their money back if you don't hold up your end of the agreement. I posted an article on wiki simply because of how open and free it was. By having such things as forums so people could discuss the many projects here.

Also such arguements as "It's been on the forum for weeks" no longer stand.. as now there is a fee to get to the forum. Not to mention "We don't get any money for doing this" when now there is a fee to look at the forum.

How long is it before there is a fee to look at the main pages of this site?

P.S. Why 12k? Seems a huge amount for a simple server and bandwidth.--Drow 16:19, 6 February 2007 (EST)

Where did it say anything about a donation that allowed you to "access the forum"? It said a donation would grant you a forum rank. That means you would get a cute little thing under your name that said something like "FFXIclopedia supporter!" and a cute image. No extra privileges. Nothing different. Regarding your comment about 12k seeming steep for a simple server and bandwidth, note where it said two web servers and one database server. 2+1=3. $12k / 3 = $4k. So that's roughly $4k / server, which is a pretty reasonable estimate for how much a high powered server costs.--Divisortheory 17:29, 6 February 2007 (EST)

---

I am not going to delete the above, but please try not to spread any misinformation. This is a fundraiser so that the FFXIclopedia can remain intact, nothing more. This is not a subscription, does not grant or deny any access, and frankly doesn't change anything at all (except to keep the resource). If you give $1 you get a forum title/icon. Larger donations result in the mousepad/t-shirt. So just to be clear, there is no fee to get to the forums. There is no fee to get to the wiki. There is no fee to use the blogs. (Nor have we sold out to RMT owners/advertisers, nor to pop-up advertisers.) Based on all of that, and the tremendous growth, we need to raise money in some way - hence a fundraiser, which seeks donations only. This is a community project through and through. And as long as the community supports the site we will remain.

As for the costs, we have done a lot of price shopping and believe that the quotes we've been given are very reasonable. This site is truly enormous as far as storage, usage and bandwidth. It takes a lot of horsepower to maintain and run.

Finally, I think discussion on the fundraiser is best left to the forums. --Gahoo 18:40, 6 February 2007 (EST)

---

Apologies – I was not trying to spread any misinformation. Perhaps I misread something or something was edited since (3 times after my post). Anyway as far as servers go: I’ve known large companies to have smaller budget and have multiple web servers and backups and had their own MAN (Metropolitan Area Network). The software is all completely free it’s only the hardware and bandwidth that will cost.

A friend of mine worked in London and had a budget of £7k (US = 14k dollars) and ran multiple web servers and their backups.

Not to mention it’s not just 12k donation money but is also money from advertisement that is gained… so you can see why I don’t understand why the price is 12k.

Anyway anything further I'll post in the forums as suggested. Was just repling.--Drow 19:23, 6 February 2007 (EST)

It would not only have to do with the server's but the pipe they are on atm as well I'm guessing. If you're getting as much traffic as this site is getting now, and will be getting in the future, I'm pretty sure a standard coloc box in some backwater hosting company with a per/gb traffic pricing module is not going to be the best option for you.

If I read correctly 3 machines, now say each machine is $1500 to be spec'd out fairly nicely (the 1RU sitting in my room from a year ago cost me that and it's doing nothing.. stupid FFXI eat up all my time), there's $4500, leaving $7500 to pay for a fairly nice large fat pipe for it to sit on.

I know all about hosting and bandwidth costs, I cop them monthly, so when I saw that figure I knew what was going down. --Schultz 22:55, 6 February 2007 (EST)

There is also the advertisement money but that's an unknown atm, also I'm curious to know if it's server parts or whole new machines that are needed, or if only 2 new machines are needed and one web server will be the current old one. Regardless of what company you go through they often all use the same cables in the street, a lot of people are still dealing with the CAT5 (about 10 years behind the industry standard) instead of the CAT5E believe it or not. If the suppier for the bandwidth is the problem then you might be out of luck and might need to register yourself as a company in order to get a bigger bandwidth, or an academic one - which I doubt very much you guys can do. It will also depend on location.

I'm not sure about the US but in the UK you can buy a company for say, about 50 pounds (roughly 100 dollars)... and get a grant to get that company up and running. Usually for the first 2 years the company deals fine but after that you need to make it on your own. You could do that with the site, use the grant money for the servers etc. That way you will only have to meet the bandwidth costs each year rather than all the hardware issues. Also any debt the company builds dies with the company, not you.

I've made some smaller networks for 2 companys so far but not personally on a large scale - few friends of mine have and with a lower budget so I was a little surprised with the cost. --Drow 11:08, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Companies in the US are granted no money for starting, they have to start up with their own money. Needless to say, after shopping around, the admins decided on a plan, and it will cost them $12,000 to implement. As far as ad money is concerned, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed (on a month to month basis). It's certainly nice, but no one is making a living off donations here. This site truly is run with support from viewers like you ;) --Chrisjander 12:25, 7 February 2007 (EST)

---

Drow, I don't think you realize the traffic that FFXIclopedia is experiencing. Here is the chart:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth*
Jan 2005	847	3207	38226	284750	1.61 GB
Feb 2005	594	2608	32264	216669	1.52 GB
Mar 2005	3137	6546	154879	446035	3.07 GB
Apr 2005	4506	9651	194588	585153	4.66 GB
May 2005	5819	12826	194196	596280	4.58 GB
Jun 2005	7867	16815	234881	810965	5.55 GB
Jul 2005	9804	21086	335487	995273	6.13 GB
Aug 2005	9906	22920	364031	1067150	6.98 GB
Sep 2005	8458	19674	389487	1041956	8.01 GB
Oct 2005	16470	36957	520786	1623367	11.58 GB
Nov 2005	14947	38865	545757	2035394	11.88 GB
Dec 2005	20292	60286	633837	3045203	14.03 GB
Jan 2006	25276	79873	923515	4225319	20.66 GB
‡Feb 2006	17721	55021	743244	2945850	14.54 GB
Mar 2006	33956	113108	1338284	5558782	30.33 GB
Apr 2006	43379	149151	1800866	6777262	43.85 GB
May 2006	64868	212755	3065397	10356431	74.96 GB
†June 2006
†July 2006
August 2006	116904	562484	11688695	31569491	245.91 GB

Last February we did a campaign to raise $900.00. The purpose was to raise money to move off of Gani's small server to another one which could handle a little more traffic. We were running at roughly 20-30 GB of bandwidth and the move gave us space up to about 100GB. Even 100 GB is more than any of the servers you've talked about. But this was just to rent space on an existing server. This included no hardware costs.

As you can see, by August, we were even double our original estimates of capacity and the wiki really started to slow. This thing has exploded faster and bigger than even we imagined. We have elected to move off of someone else's server and start our own. And the one we want to start needs to be big enough to handle the projected growth of the wiki. These servers need to be exponentially larger and more powerful than anything your friends may have set up. Those companies aren't geting over 30 million hits a month. That's why their servers are cheaper.

If you can't conceive of why these servers are so expensive, it's because you've never had experience with servers and sites that have as much traffic as the wiki experiences. And we can't just buy servers that equal current bandwidth limitations. We need to exceed those limitations so we're not running into the same problems 3 months down the road.

Trust me. This price tag is apropos. --Mierin 12:33, 7 February 2007 (EST)

As for the ad money ... it really is pennies. I think Gani may have received $200.00 total for like 2 years of use. --Mierin 12:34, 7 February 2007 (EST)

---

Drow, you have a beef with this web site. No one makes you use this site. No one is making you pay to use the forums. No one is making you pay to use the wiki. No one is making you do anything. You don't like it, then don't use the site. Simple as that. --Ganiman 13:09, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Oh yeah, Mierin's chart is outdated. We use well over 600gb of bandwidth a month now, and it still increases each month. I doubt anyone involved on this discussion page has any experience running a web site of that magnitude. Drow, don't act like we don't know what we're doing. I code and maintain a large insurance website for a living - I know what I'm doing --Ganiman 13:20, 7 February 2007 (EST)

---

As above, the above chart has not slowed down. For example, last month vs August 2005:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth*
August 2006	116,904	562,484	11,688,695	31569491	245.91 GB
January 2007	233,035	1,660,589	17,183,354	???	~600GB

or better yet:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth*
Jan 2005	847	3,207	38,226	284,750	1.61 GB
Jan 2006	25,276	79,873	923,515	422,5319	20.66 GB
Jan 2007	233,035	1,660,589	17,183,354	???	~600GB

--Gahoo 13:25, 7 February 2007 (EST)

---

Ganiman If I truely did not like the website and had a beef with it I really wouldn't use it, you don't need to instruct me of my rights. As you are fully aware (as you have replied them) in the past I've given praise and expressed positive comments and feelings about both the management and community that is ffxiclopedia, on both the ffxiclopedia website, forums and other forums. Although it is true that there are several aspects of the website that I dislike and I have voiced equally as loud. Everyone is entitled to voice such things are they not? So please do not try to spread word on me trying to make you look bad.

Please do not misunderstand me - I'm not claiming anyone here does not know what they are doing. If I did I would simply come out and say it. I was however finding it hard to understand, in my and my friends experiences that the money needed was a fair bit higher than expected for the job. A good friend of mine has coded and managed whole rooms full of internet servers (let alone 3) for a living, made some good money, and is now doing the same course as I am so please don't think I know nothing of what large company servers require either.

Thanks for all your replies though. Many were very helpful.--Drow 15:46, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Just because a company is large, doesn't mean it gets lots of traffic on it's website. Northrup-Grumman (Alexa traffic rank 57,727) may be the largest government contractor, and Turner Broadcasting (Alexa traffic rank 53,254) may be one of the largest cable companies, but that doesn't mean they get 30 million hits a day on their website. FFXIclopedia's Traffic Rank is 15,492. Our point is that it doesn't matter how big the company is your friend has experience with, unless we're talking Google. Big company does not equal enormous web traffic. So the costs required by Northrup-Grumman and Turner Broadcasting to manage their website are a lot less than what we require because our traffic is so much greater.

In sum, when you say, "I was however finding it hard to understand, in my and my friends experiences that the money needed was a fair bit higher than expected for the job." Yours and your friend's experience, are not the same as ours. You find it hard to understand because you've never experienced web traffic numbers like we have. --Mierin 17:10, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying.--Drow 18:36, 7 February 2007 (EST)

---

I have to agree with Mierin. Regardless of the size of the company,it doesn't mean that they receive lots of traffic. I've worked with AT&T, Unisys, DRC, and lots of government agencies and other contracting agencies and it's the same thing as what Mierin said. I work currently in a NOC (network operations center) and I can see the traffic that comes and goes to the site at any given time. 600 GB of bandwidth is a lot of bandwidth even for large companies. Someone has to pay for it. This site has done nothing but grow in popularity since day one. It provides more up-to-date information than any of its rivals. People recognize that and they return to it and they tell others about it. It's better than any book would ever be.

Running servers and sites costs a lot of money. Running my own server will cost me $2,400 this year without a ton of traffic. What a lot of people do not understand is that bandwith costs money. I'm sure with the amount of data that is being changed on a daily basis, it is a lot of bandwidth. There is a basic economic principle: "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Even though we get this information for free, it is really at the expense of the ones who are hosting it. It could easily costs them $800 per month to run this site. Still and yet, someone has to pay for it and they are not forcing anyone to do that. Regardless of the figures, they are asking for a little assistance since it provides information to the community at large. This is no different than what Wikipedia does as well. I'm sure the numbers probably reflect what the expected growth will be like in the next few months and lets hope that there's not another relapse like last year when the bandwidth exceeded pages started popping up.

They're doing a good job keeping it up and running. It takes time and effort and the people who are running this site I'm sure have families, work and or school to deal with. I don't throw a lot of questions with regards to the cost because I know what it takes to run a site like this. They provided the statistics, let us start providing the cash. --amujaahideen 17:37, 7 February 2007 (EST)

---

Any chance we can see picutres of the mouse pad and tshirt? Could be the difference between $10 and $25 ;) --Thalandor46 18:18, 7 February 2007 (PST)