Message Board Outage 10/26-27

[Rambler63]

The message board reached a file limit on October 26, and was inoperable from Sunday morning to early afternoon on Monday, October 27. The site has been upgraded (thanks to donations) and should be operating normally from now on.

[GoRamblers]

Should we do another fundraising push?

[Rambler63]

The funds raised thus far should probably cover the additional costs through the end of the basketball season.

Because I didn't personally make the transition to WordPress on the blog/content side, I didn't realize that there were about 15000-20000 files added to the site to support WordPress. This put the total site files over the limit allowed on the mid-level hosting plan, and shut down the ability to write new files on the message board side. Bumping up the file limit by 50,000 makes the monthly hosting cost approximately $25. By maintaining minimal ads, the ad revenue is averaging about $10 a month (more during basketball season, less during the rest of the year)-- leaving a deficit of about $150 a year just for hosting services alone, never mind domain name registration, paid subscriptions and memberships, etc.

I suppose there's probably a fix to reduce the number of files-- stopping commenting on WordPress articles perhaps? deleting cached files every month or so?-- but I'm not all the way up to speed with WordPress to figure it out yet. In backing up the site on my local computer, I've realized that WordPress keeps writing new files in their own individual subdirectories. If I could get the number of files back down to a reasonable level and stop WordPress from writing all these new files and subdirectories, I could save the additional $9.95 a month on the higher file limit.

I don't want to blame it all on WordPress. The message board keeps getting waves of spammers every once in a while, all of them trying to get around account creation procedures. Suggestions would be appreciated if anyone has good ideas.

[swellafelon]

One solution to reducing the number of files on Ramblermania is to restrict GoRamblers to posting only when he has something intelligent to say.

[GoRamblers]

One solution to reducing the number of files on Ramblermania is to restrict GoRamblers to posting only when he has something intelligent to say.

Then I'd never be posting!

You know, ahunte and I were talking about the outage. We hoped that it would spur you to join twitter. I related you to that SNL skit, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. Fancy technology scares you!

[ahunte1]

I don't want to blame it all on WordPress. The message board keeps getting waves of spammers every once in a while, all of them trying to get around account creation procedures. Suggestions would be appreciated if anyone has good ideas.

New content created in WordPress like stories/posts, comments, pages, etc. doesn't create any new files at all. (Same goes for the forum posts and users.)All of that is stored in the database except for files that you upload to the site, like images. The only other new files on the server are for the WordPress software itself, the theme, and plugins, just like with the forum software.

EDIT: Although, the caching probably does create extra files. They help speed up the site, but we could do without, if needed.

Bumping up the file limit by 50,000 makes the monthly hosting cost approximately $25.

$25 per month is a little pricey. Hosts like Dreamhost have unlimited storage and bandwidth for $10 per month and I'm pretty sure you get free domain name registration with that, too.

[GoRamblers]

Bumping up the file limit by 50,000 makes the monthly hosting cost approximately $25.

$25 per month is a little pricey. Hosts like Dreamhost have unlimited storage and bandwidth for $10 per month and I'm pretty sure you get free domain name registration with that, too.

I use Bluehost for my sites. I've been very happy with them. They are pretty affordable too.