We need to have a discussion about how we’re going to host and run this site. Key questions:
- Why is the current server falling over?
- What are the specs needed?
- Bandwidth (peak MB per day?)
- Processing speed/time
- Memory
- Storage
- Who is willing to pay and by what means?
- Many have expressed reservations about paying with crypto
- If we’re not going to pay, we need a better free host. These look OK to me:
- https://www.infinityfree.net/
- https://byet.host/
- What concerns do we have a privacy on whatever server we use?
So WP is a bit shite. My pref would be a static site for the blog, and a separate forum added on.
Does anyone have a software company/consultancy. If not happy to do it.
I don’t want to manage the forum, because that is lots of work, but happy to own the site and cms etc
The ongoing costs of just running a simple static site and cms excluding forum will be pretty low.
Not sure what you mean by a static site. How do we have discussions on posts if it’s just an HTML page not backed by a database?
So the blog itself would be a static site like say Hugo or Gatsby. The cms would be something like Forestry or Dato cms and can be hosted on github or something similar.
For the forum, we could use a hosted solution, and just change the css so each story has a thread below it.
Just some basic ideas.
Do we even need a forum?
Looking on there, nobody has posted on it for a while. Most people spark conversation in the comments section even if it isn’t 100% on topic of the post. Plus the weekend links section always seems like a good place for people to put in their $0.02
The forum just sits there, mostly. In the very early days it was useful as a place to discuss stuff over a number of days….. more recently it’s quiet.
maybe if there are another couple of hundred members, there’d be enough activity there?
Oh by forum i meant comments on blog post pages. Essentially each page gets its own forum thread, but there is no specific ‘forum’ page per se. sorry for not being specific.
T, what is Hugo or Gatsby? Some links to some examples?
and forestry and dato?
Hugo and Gatsby are static site generators.
(1) Hugo Documentation | Hugo (gohugo.io)
(2) The Fastest Frontend Framework for Headless CMS’s | Gatsby (gatsbyjs.com)
The point is they are just html/css – there is no web server. So they are really fast and don’t need much bandwidth and a very cheap.
Pretend you had to go in and add html to each of the files on a website, that is the only way to edit them.
How well supported are they? There is no budget of time/money for sysops.Wordpress pretty much takes care of itself.
Very low level of support, they are open source. That being said, there is no web server, effectively the entire site is just cached at the nearest point to where you reach it from.
so actual sysops is minimal. it just lives in in cdn caches only.
[II]
Now for the editing, we use a headless cms like datocms or forestry.io. So when you go in and make a new blog post or whatever, all dato/forestry will do is save the blog post into the cms. Then you have to setup a trigger like github or netlify.
Its pretty simple if you have done it before. If you haven’t, it looks like magic. Let me know if you want me to put something together.
For the forum, discuss – https://gohugo.io/content-management/comments/#add-disqus – pretty simple to use.
Maybe check with Peachski. It’s they/thou/thems ugly baby.
Hopefully, Peachy will write back here.
I’m no egghead and I’m not across all the issues and background, but my attempted take on this stuff is this – fundamentally this site is trying to run with no censorship.
Therefore:
The alternative to all of the above is a site that:
as to whats broken – its hard to tell whether it’s a technical setup issue, capacity issue or attacks of some sort bringing the bitch down.
This can all be fixed with one word.
‘Subscribe!’
Ok, I’m fine with staying here, as long as I’m allowed to hate on the people that are destroying my people.
They tend to be dependent on each other.
The world is unfortunately not black and white.
Ughhhh… 😵💫
Yeah…nahh. You get fat because you eat too much. You eat too much because you are using food to distract your mind from whatever unpleasantness there is in your life. This makes it harder for you to act on the unpleasantness. You probably think you can’t deal with the unpleasantness which is why you started eating too much in the first place. So it is with all addictions.
It’s a metaphor for what bjw said,,,, I’m not actually a fattie!
A chubby then?
😉
Yeah i got that….I should have written one instead of you. I have a bee in my bonnet about addictions. Can’t help myself but attack recirculating myths. Also I am about 10kg overweight and haven’t been below 5 in 15 years!
“attacks of some sort bringing the bitch down.”
Given the random times of the early morning that I have had the 500 error, I would say that it looks to be a sustained DDOS attack
the number of times that turns out to be “typical user load” rather than the 2 concurrent users they actually tested the system for…
😂
5am Sydney time would not have much user load such that it would give a 500 error, for it to be out of resources at that time of our day makes me thing that it is intentional attack
Depends on how resources are calculated. If it’s a daily limit that resets at 6am then it makes sense. The internet is also global and there is no guarantee that the load is all from australia. 5am sydney is middle of the day on the other side of the world.
But accepting your assumption that ezfka is purely australian and it is a DDOS why are they trying to kill it when no one is looking instead of when people are using it during the day?
The finest computer engineers of Eastern Bangladesh have been called into action to try to sort this out.
….so don’t hold your breath…
Remembering that Islam is a set of insane socio-political beliefs masquerading as a religion, not an ethnicity.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
WordPress is fine and configured correctly and can run quite well – it’s the most commonly used CMS online for a reason – even news.com.au is wordpress.
Forget free hosting; if people are serious about running a real site, you need a server. My suggestion is a High-Frequency Vultr server through Cloudways
https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php#vultr
It’s $13 per month for a basic server.
Surely we can get 12 members to cough up $13 – $156 a year (I’m happy to do so)
Looks there’s an even a 30% the first 3 months here as well https://www.cloudways.com/en/promo-code.php
I suspect that traffic is potentially the issue. You’d want to actually check current traffic before switching. Quite possibly the traffic is already well beyond a basic server level.
A lot of links have been posted pointed at the satire articles.
Good point; hard to tell without knowing that number.
From my experience, I have multiple sites sharing a basic server running over 20,000 sessions a month, and the server handles it well
Having said that, another site is 60k+ a month and I use the next size up solely for that site.
These sites have resource needs with a lot more photos and plugins to serve.
Perhaps @Peachy could let us know the average sessions per month.
Apparently there’s 50,000-80,000 hits on a quiet month.
Well over 100,000+ when there is stuff/scandals going on which are getting an airing and/or Timbo and Sinister are really cooking.
Wow that seems a lot
how many different IP addresses ?
I was thinking the same thing – “A Hit refers to the number of files downloaded on your site” – https://www.tendenci.com/help-files/meaning-of-hits-visits-page-views-and-traffic-sources-web-analytics-definitions/
“To give you an example – Using the average statistics listed above, 1 Visit to an average web site will generate 3 Page Views and 45 Hits.”
I’d imagine sessions/visits would be a lot lower
If those are the definitions, then the above numbers would seem to be “page views”.
and visitors 1/3 of that, so 20,000-40,000
wow thats an insanely high number
i literally thought it was just a couple dozen
I will absolutely not donate in that case, since I would be funding 40,000 free loaders
Just put some ads.
It will be absolutely hilarious: dick pills, philipino bride matchmakers etc
This ^^ – at an average RPM of $30, you’d be making $600-1200 a month – that would afford you amazing hosting
Maybe ads + pay to remove ads?
I’d think most of the frequent posters here are using an adblocker
Yes I am one that uses a adblocker, however I would be more than happy to donate to keep the site alive, just don’t have crypto, but happy to paypal or give some cash
I’m happy to donate aswell. Ideally we can have a bit of an idea on costs and then if everybody donates $x amount then we can get something good going for a year and so on. Happy to donate with crypto if need be.
I think that the cost of upgrading the hosting would be a few hundy per year.
We could easily get that. Maybe start a poll?
At a guess given the page views mentioned I’d say most viewers are not posters but merely people following a link from social media to a specific article.(guess which ones)
Coming,
Look at it this way. Donating will probably will not be a huge number. With the current visitors to the site, I’d imagine we’ll be able to collect the funds relatively quickly. If all we are talking about is site hosting and server rental, it is not a huge number.
Remember, MB site has to fund a lifestyle of a few writers, this adds a chunk of change to the annual bill.
By running this site steadily on a volunteer basis, it enables you to create a pull of view from a wider viewership, some of whom will also donate. Diversity is our strength, in this case, diversity of ideas, opinions and analysis.
Just imagine: EZFKA – the largest diversity of opinion site in the Southern Hemisphere.
Gentlemen, in a few years we will be larger than
US SteelZerohedge.@Peachy, Where are you getting the numbers? Google analytics/ AWStats?
presumably some stats logged by host/wordpress?
I’ve had to try to school myself on this stuff to even understand the question.
the “awstats” report is along the following lines for a sample month
Given the background magic that happens while a page is just sitting there open such as tracking new comments etc I’d imagine just leaving a page open generates a significant amount of traffic without opening any new pages or the user doing anything at all.
probably all from DLS’s …..
😀😃😄😁😆😅🤣😂
I’d hit the + but not available in incognito mode
Wow, that’s far more than I would have guessed.
You can add a PayPal donation link really easily. Try that before paid membership maybe?
Maybe a different platform than PayPal, but I agree. I’ll certainly chip in. I see this site’s value, as we are still able to discuss things fairly openly without the censorship, and have yet to turn into an echo chamber a la MB.
We don’t have enough progessives here. Where are flame wars?
If you build it, they will come? (c)
A SubscribeStar account might be a good alternative.
I’m banned from commenting on MB, despite paying a $200 current subscription.
Can anyone briefly paraphrase what bcnichs views were? I’m always seeing references to him/her on that garbage site, but can’t ask.
Was bcnichs banned too? Or just gave up arguing with woke idiots?
Fuck those cunts taking people’s money and then censoring people that don’t go along with their echo chamber narrative.
I’m glad I got to tell DLS how much of a cunt I thought he was before they went to subscriber only comment model lol
bcnich was the bear of all bears. His predictions were that housing was going to crash to the point they wouldn’t be able to give away apartments for free. Sharemarket and housing was going to crash >50% but the running joke was it was always coming in 12-18m time. When it didn’t eventuate they’d just shift their prediction another 18months time. He also used to make calls about the economy being tied to solar flares and astrological stuff but then said it was all a joke.
Yep bcnich was the ultimate bear. At one point he was so convinced the crash was just around the corner he was going to set up a soup van to provide cheap soup to all the people who were going to be left destitute by the economic collapse. I think he capitulated in the end, he mentioned in one post that if the economic collapse didn’t occur by the next quarter he wouldn’t bring it up again.
It’s great. A true modern classic.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/02/australia-faces-calamity/#comment-3652976
Yeah the soup van! I had a bunch of links to remind him of the big calls he’d made when the date rolled past but then they made it subscriber only. But I don’t have beef with him, good luck to him and some stuff he posted was good for a lol. Kind of ended up being the reusa opposite parody
MB and DLS on the other hand, probably cost a bunch of people $$ over a decade selling the housing crash dream.
Not just the housing crash dream, but also $20 iron ore. Also Afterpay and CBA being overpriced. All you have to do is use him as a new form of the Pascoemeter and bet against him. You would be far better off.
Also WES/COL spin off was called a dud…avoid at all costs…WES @ $32 when that statement was made…
be careful of any DXY talk too
Only the admins over there and bcnich know. The thing about being banned is you can’t tell anyone you are. And unsurprisingly accounts complaining about people being banned tend to get banned.
Adding cache-control headers to the site and then putting it behind a CDN like AWS Cloudfront or Akamai would drop traffic to the server around 99.9% and reduce costs massively as well. Work use Cloudfront and it drops traffic 99%+ and costs a few dollars a month
Wouldn’t that break the comments, and niceties such as automatically telling you when new comments are made. Or alternately not actually reduce traffic much at all given the majority of the content seems to be comments for most articles.
Hey guys, happy to support whatever. This site is the sarcastic voice of reason amongst the chorus of Sheepleton.
I’d be happy to kick in a few shekels one way or another. I like the uninhibited tone of this place.
What about 30 shekels?
fark yeah ..silver too…..
stoopid silver🤬
Alright so Peachy, I don’t want this site to keep falling over. What is the pricing structure on the server? I’m willing to buy and send some crypto. Bitcoin forks, LTC, ETH classic all have relatively low transaction fees. Can we send those?
I won’t do crypto but am happy to meetup and hand over some cash, if paypal is not a option.
#MeeTuu
My only concern is that some lefty or righty or centry or whatever Stalinist wokey will use the link to connect to my work persona in the Woke arena just because I spoiled it’s ointment.
If it was possible to cancel the cancel culture this would be no issue.
this post had addresses people could send to:
https://www.ezfka.com/2022/01/26/ezfka-day-ezfka-com-announces-third-funding-round/
Pricing of this stuff seems to be like a piece of string. The more you pay, the more you get.
But it seems to be running OK now, so query how much more is needed….
Shit, I may have jinxed it!