The future for Boards.ie

DeVore

Ok, here's the skinny (get a coffee, this might be a long one)

Much has been happening with aul Boards.ie and in general (despite my occasional spa attack) we're very happy with whats happened. We're chuffed that people who started with us 5 years ago are still actively involved.

We have to plan for the future though and recent slowdowns, and impressive growth have made us aware that our current situation is not going to last indefinitely.

Rather then simply wait until the site collapses under its own weight, we are going to take some actions now that will cause some interruption but in the long run will benefit the whole community.

1. We're going to move to Ireland. Bye Bye US... It was necessary when we started that we locate in the US because even then our bandwidth usage was astounding and the US was the only place that bandwidth was unmetered.

To give you an example, today we pumped an AVERAGE of half a megabit of information out EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY.

We spike up to 8 Megabit a second which causes the pauses some of you have noticed.

And we are growing at a rate of 100 users a week. :eek:

We are in the process of talking to an Irish ISP to host here with an INEX connection that should improve connectivity and performance.

More then any of that we will have access to our own box. At the moment we cant so much as increase the Ram in the box because its in Atlanta. We want to increase from 128 megs to 1 Gig of Ram for example.


2. We're moving to BSD. We're currently on NT4 and while it has been stable (downtime is minimal as you well know), its not as flexible as I'd like. Plus, Open Source s/w makes sense for a guerilla operation like us.

We'll have to switch over every system we have to UNIX but we expect the system will run sweeter at the high loads.
Primarily we want to harness the people in the community who can assist us coding bits and pieces to improve the site itself.

3. We want to offer a mail server which seems best to do in Unix. We arent sure how we are going to deal with that just yet but it will probably be on a pay-to-setup basis so that we can grow our bandwidth with the number of users. It will be POP3 compliant but we'll insist that people's mailboxes remain clear.

4. We'll expand the HD from 9gig to about 100gig. This will allow us to expand the members hosting offering somewhat and make room for the mail boxes too.

5. We're going to increase the cpu from 450 to dual 1ghz chips.

6. The Ram will increase from 128mb to 1gig... this is critical.


As you can imagine, this is not going to be cheap. We're going to look at getting a leased deal from a server vendor and currently it looks like £1500 IEP for the server. After that we'll have to put the machine in and start to transfer everything over. That will take time. We'll need to test and test and alter ip settings etc.
We'll need to run in parallel for a while to test too, doubling our hosting costs.

When is this going to happen?
The process started today when the admins had a meeting online and discussed it. We're exploring the cash situation to make sure we can afford it (remember, this is coming out of our pockets!) but it looks good.

We're going to set up a shop for people to support us and also I'm looking into some other ways for anyone out there who wants to contribute to do so. At the moment tho, the issue isnt money so much as TIME.

We're all extremely busy both in Spin and in Cloud Internet. So it will happen slowly enough. We are hoping to move things over some time in the new year.

How can you help?
Well in the immortal words of Sergeant Apone, "I dunno, is there anything you can do?"

Need a 1u kickass server for 1500 or less. We need cash to pay for the operation. Advertising is slow and we'd like to find a different model if we could. If you can think of anything mail me or post it here.

More then anything I guess we need your patience and understanding.

I thoroughly believe boards.ie is succeeding because its a joint effort of regular joe's and not backed by some greedy corporate entity. We need to make this move to secure everything we've achieved and to create a base from which to grow again.

We'll post more solid calls for help as and when we know whats going on.

We've heard the reports from you guys about performance, and we're listening to them (even if we dont respond so fast!). This is the right thing to do for us now.

This is the biggest move we've ever made in the history of Boards.ie. Yeah, I know... we're scared too

More info as we get it.

DeVore and the Boards.ie team.

amp

Jaysus, 128 megs of ram, wow.

Well I'm no coder or beardy linux man, but I can get parts cheap, and can donate things like netcards, hdd's etc.

Plus I have a sturdy van.

P.s It's a brave decision and I'd hardly call you or Cloud or the rest of the boards.ie backoffice crew as regular joe's, you're the folks who make the magic happen

SheroN

nice one..good luck...if there's anything i can do to help give us a shout!
-sHer!

Cake Fiend

GOE TEAM!!

(i.e. I endorse this product and/or service)

SantaHoe

Hmph, didn't even know the boards were hosted in the US!
GL, hope all goes well.



Um...

Can I go now?

Boston

i did up a priceing for a rig like the one you asked for about 4 months back and i couldnt get it under 2 grand.
i persume you will want all the trimings like unboard dual ethernet and scsi.

what are you going with atlon or inte, the tryn (or tyrn) dual MB is quiet excellent i could put you in contact with someone that has bult a system using it if you like.
one thing, buy dont lease.

Apart from that, im sure if you gave an address to mail donations to, you would get more then enough to cover you need. hell if everyone just sent off a fiver, there would be no money problems

Baz_

Apart from that, im sure if you gave an address to mail donations to, you would get more then enough to cover you need. hell if everyone just sent off a fiver, there would be no money problems

Thats not likely to happen unfortunately, not that I wouldn't like to see it happen but who is going to pay a fiver, you a few others and then what. The best way I can think of paying for this service is to do work for boards, I would be willing to give well over 50 pounds work of work, and possibly even 500, that way you could not only know that you contributed, you could see your contribution at work (get that page or site up soon explaining what you need done).

Next like I said in a previous post, I think open sourcing an email project would be a really good idea, not only would you have email for cheap, you would have a commercial product on your hands, you would also know the system inside and out, from working on it, now thats a big idea and a big project, but I dont think it would be too hard.

Having said that don't let it put you off paying them fivers.

Oh yeah when is the move, so as I'll know when to expect trouble.

Baz_

The Cigarette Smoking Man

I wouldn't even bother phoning Eircom.net, that box would cost £19,800 a year to host in their data centre (at 0.5Mbps).

As for servers, the Dell Poweredge 1550s are good, might cost more than £1500 though. Also there's a company called Encom that make custom servers - might be worth a look.

The $64,000 question is: Why'd you choose BSD over Linux?

DeadBankClerk

check out the section on donating money on www.mame.dk

main page

last donation
22nd Nov 14:20 GMT spindi donated 30.00 DEM - Deutsche Mark and wrote: "Danke!"

donations page

Donations
Donations are what makes the mame.dk wheels go round, we are not doing this for profit but for fun. If you like the site and the service we offer, then please consider a contribution to help keep it running. We have tried to make it possible for everyone to contribute, no donation is too small

Money: The best way to help mame.dk is to donate some money to keep the servers running. It is very easy, all you need is a creditcard. Read more about how this is done on our Creditcard donations page

Books: You can also donate someting for the mame.dk crew. Please feel free to make a donation to mame.dk using our amazon wishlist. Every item will be listed as well as the donator and the comment - a perfect way for you to make us happy and get your share of net.fame. See what we got so far


Roms: We also welcome donations of arcade rom dumps (that you think we might need sooner or later). Upload these using our upload facility

Help: English is not our natural language, this means that our grammar probably sux worse than our spelling, corrections are very much appreciated, please mail them.

Checks, cash, pcbs, gifts: If you have old PCB's or other stuff you would like to send then use the following address:

mame.dk
c/o Mejlgaard
Steenbergsvej 22
DK-2500 Valby
Denmark

Victor

I will support this product / service.

GoneShootin

good luck to you DeV, to think i only found out bout boards this july !! how did it escape me for so long

you want money ? you got it...

Lenny

Wow, thats excellant news

You guys should take as long as you want, hence you're paying for it yourself fs, I sure hope you get sorted out (money reasons)
I might be able to get some idea's in on how to make some extra £

adnans

sit back and enjoy the ride! excellent news.

i have an idea that can help boards.ie ... an idea so brilliant that if i knew what it was my head would explode. if i think of something you will hear from me. good luck

adnans

Typedef

:cool: BSD :cool:

Hey if you need the help, I used to do tech support for Gateway so my hardware skill is probably professional level, all so right now I am in the process of setting up (if I can) a FreeBSD 4.4 DHCP server, internet portal, file-share, and maybe even sql server( if I get this together). So if I can be of any assistance then don't hesitate to ask cout@eircom.net. Right now also if you need people to help with coding then I guess I could help out after 5pm weekdays and on the weekend here is a link http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gtklex/gtklex.tar.bz2 check out my stuff, if you desire coding help, cout@eircom.net or if you need tech support/someone to open up new server install nic's ram, hard-drives, drivers, operating systems, configure programs.

If you need some obselete hardware 386/486 etc then I might be able to wangle you one for say, a can of coke or maybe, a half eaten banana.

Che Lives!

Gordon

Devore once mentioned the ideas of shares.

I heartily endorse this product/service.

hmmm

Hows about adding a donations page, and give any user who donates some sort of icon next to their name. It'll put a bit of moral pressure on other users to also donate

dahamsta

Hi Tom,

3. We want to offer a mail server which seems best to do in Unix.

Everything sounds pretty cool but that. Unless you're bundling it with webspace that matches with people's handles, and you have a paid-for upgrade path that will at least cover costs, it's a waste of time and resources. No disrespect to the community, but seriously, don't do it.

Aside from that, it all sounds pretty cool, and I'm delighted to see The Biggest Online Community In Ireland[TM] continuing as community-driven. And if there's anything I can help with - Apache is my forté, but I'm not so bad with PHP and general admin either - I'd be delighted to do so.

adam

MiCr0

as for donating stuff:

i'm sure some equipment retailer might make you a wishlist page ala hobbes christmas list.
then ppl just order it and it goes to you.

Dr. Loon

I have the solution. In a years time we could have millions.......




Drugs. Yep, that's it we could set up a drug cartel.... actually no. It wouldn't work. Although it might! No... it wouldn't.

Ah well, good news, I hope it goes well, and if I come up with any ideas (which is unlikely) I'll mention it.

Maybe give the drugs a shot though... ye never know!!

azezil

OMG! i can't believe boards is running on a server of that spec! hell there's one just like that lying beside me on the ground ... seriously! we just use it a stand by machine now if a users pc needs some serious work....

But anyway i'll gladly donate a coupe of euros / punts

Gambler

I would also like to hearitly endorse this product\service

Seriously tho, any way I can help out, I will :rolleyes:

Evil Phil

I have the solution. In a years time we could have millions.......
Drugs. Yep, that's it we could set up a drug cartel.... actually no. It wouldn't work. Although it might! No... it wouldn't.
Ah well, good news, I hope it goes well, and if I come up with any ideas (which is unlikely) I'll mention it.
Maybe give the drugs a shot though... ye never know!!

We've been rumbled lads, leg it. *runs away*


I don't know freeBSD yet, but I can code and will gladly help.

jaarius

get eircom to sponsor you! *awaits certain doom*

just kidding.

im still a baby as far as all that coding stuff goes, BUT I'LL GET THERE.

i do however have an idea for fund raising.. pay-in LAN PARTIES. get folk to give a lil extra and the money can go to boards.ie

that mail service could be a pay-for service! like that 5 squids folk were talking about. then there might be more of a chance folk giving money if they are getting stuff in return. not that boards.ie isnt enough:D

i also like that idea of the special icon... (trap all those post count chasers)

more as brain does its thing

jaz?

p.s. drugs cartel. i thuroughly endorse this product/service;)

nesf

Hmmm, maybe you could organise a few nights out. I'm sure ppl wouldn't mind paying to go on a pub crawl/dinner evening type thingy, esp if proceeds went to the boards. Anyone agree/disagree?


I've just got this mental image in my head, a "Boards.ie" Ball at UCD.....

Gavin

I've been using this sytem from the very start.. a long time ago, when everyone played QW and GI were the clan to respect

So, I've gotten a lot of usage out of it, bought a lot of things, learned a lot of things.

I'm very busy with college at the moment, but come february, I will have the time to help out with some php coding ( the avantgo stuff ). I doubt if you need any help as regards looking after the server itself.

Also, I would be interested in donating money. As someone said a fiver, or buying stuff from the shop. a nice boards.ie-mod T-shirt would go down well Better yet, the idea of the shares.

Gav

Boston

with shares, we could set them up to make a loss, that way you get tax credit. it wouldnt be hard either since this is a non progit organization, and you guys sure dont make money from this place.

it would be something like give 10 (or buy 10 pounds worth of shares) and get 3 pounds tax credit on any other shares you buy from another company which make a profit.
Because the goveremnt allows you to write of one loss against another profit to a certain amount.
Big companies like eircom do this all the time.

gandalf

Yeah shares would be a good idea. I'd buy some, but only if Dev gives me user banning privilages on the humanities and sports boards :P

Gandalf.

azezil

Custom t-shirts, I'd imagine makeing up t-shirts would be cheep enough... could print the persons user name and status on the back n a boards logo on the the front... kinda like a jersy job. charge about £30 each.

And as previously mentioned, lan nights, pub crawels etc. its all good

po0k

Burning a disc full of game-related movies i just downlaoded.....lots of uake stuff...
anyways.
Provide me with an A/c number and a sort code and I'll provide you with £10.
Not every one has access to a credit card.
(Why pay interest on money you have?)

That box isn't "terribly" bad, just on it's last legs.

Also, downlaod NeoTrace and lookup www.boards.ie

The box is to the north-east of Atlanta.
Just in case ye want to bring it home yourselves

The idea of having icons beside the names of those who've contibuted donations is one Idea I can't agree with.
It could appear to any new users that there is a onus on them to contribute cash which could and probably would turn people away, hence countering growth and making the work put in seem wasted.
I know a year ago if I'd thought I had to give cash to these lads I wouldn't have been overly-enthralled at the idea.
How many members are there now? Kayos mentioned 5500 about, but taking out all the inactive duplicate names (where the only difference is a bit of character decoration) that's probably about 4500-4800 ???
Multiply that by £0.80 average per person.
Nice bit of cash to get (re)started.

And let those who donated feel good in themselves for ensuring the continuity and growth of their commuinities.

Getting all Born-again Boards here.....

Disc is almost finished now. Missing a C lecture to type this.
Adieu mes copains

po0k

Originally posted by azezil
Custom t-shirts, I'd imagine makeing up t-shirts would be cheep enough... could print the persons user name and status on the back n a boards logo on the the front... kinda like a jersy job. charge about £30 each.

And as previously mentioned, lan nights, pub crawels etc. its all good

Yes, Yess - Good, Good to the pub crawls and Lan parties

Jerseys would be cool too, but how do you mean status?
Would this be like a commemorative thing? A once off? A One-night stand?

We could get our Avatars blown up a bit, or download a template and add in the personal details or something.
Get our own Avatar Images.....

seamus

I read this first last nite, and was gonna send an email offering help, but obviously there is plenty of it, and from ppl with wwaaaayy more experience than me. Totally appreciate the fact youse are willing to fork out from your own pockets, but, loaded as you may be , I think we shouldn't let you pay for it. I havent been here long, but have taken so much and given....nothing(except my enlightened opinions ) [FCA]SyxPak's idea is good, I'd happily transfer some funds into an account (just make sure it's legit ), and you can buy a server that is far more powerful than you need. I mean 250 people at a tenner each would buy you a damn nice server, but 1000(the minimum who would fork out imo) would buy you a fúck off server, and pay for a big-ass relaunch party, for ourselves, and paid for by ourselves. And remember, lots of us are students, and yet we're offering you money . You must be doin something right.

azezil

Originally posted by [FCA]SyxPak
Yes, Yess - Good, Good to the pub crawls and Lan parties

Jerseys would be cool too, but how do you mean status?

Well like, moderator, admin, community moderator, cool newbie etc.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

What can be said that already hasn't.
Let us all champion your commitment and dedication to what is a free service to the public. Gluck & God Bless in the imminent future of upheaval and improvement.

As for the financial situation....
I personally would have no problem making a donation to the cause, were such a procedure in place. This is an online community and thus we as "Netizens" should contribute in whatever manner we can:)

With regard to shares... This can be very beneficial for tax purposes in terms of decreasing your tax liability against profits. But, AFAIK Boards.ie is LTD company which means shareholder numbers cannot exceed 50 persons! There are though other ways of getting around that such as trusts etc. But I'm sure the Boards crew dont want to have to take that on board as well, not to mention the costs involved.

The "Shop" idea has been touted and I would back that too. Boards merchandise would be a HIT, IMO. Of course w/ the caveat that shipping costs are an instant turnoff (if they are equivelant the cost of the good) as in a previous attempt to sell merchandise.

Overall, Well pld & G'Luck:)

seamus

Originally posted by 80project

The "Shop" idea has been touted and I would back that too. Boards merchandise would be a HIT, IMO. Of course w/ the caveat that shipping costs are an instant turnoff (if they are equivelant the cost of the good) as in a previous attempt to sell merchandise.

ooh ooh Source in Dublin and we could take large orders and just set a place for collection, e.g. we get a list of all orders for ppl in UCD, I'll happily go an collect them(for free) and bring them back out here. Idea?

Bard

Well done - ambitious plans perhaps, but not impossible.

Those T-Shirt ideas you were talking to me about on Grafton Street last week were good, DeV... especially the idea of using Hobbes' Cloud Gathering playing cards... that would be ... *ahem* L33T.

What you're proposing certainly won't be an easy task, - so I wish you guys the very best of luck with it.

If I can help in any way, I will... - have you any use for an award-winning web developer and accomplished bartender? (bwahahahahahahahhh!!)

The Cigarette Smoking Man

You could set up an account with Paypal (or equivalent) to let people make donations.

www.paypal.com

Also I've been looking for a hosting company for the last while and haven't come across anything worth mentioning. Considering most of your traffic is destined for Ireland you might be able to swing a bit of hosting out of HEA. They have loads of bandwidth and a big pipe into the Inex.

ecksor

Originally posted by dahamsta
Unless you're bundling it with webspace that matches with people's handles, and you have a paid-for upgrade path that will at least cover costs, it's a waste of time and resources. No disrespect to the community, but seriously, don't do it.

I love the way you back up your point with plenty of detail and a well reasoned argument.

Draco

Originally posted by The Cigarette Smoking Man
Considering most of your traffic is destined for Ireland you might be able to swing a bit of hosting out of HEA. They have loads of bandwidth and a big pipe into the Inex.

AFAIK you have to be an educational instution to get hosting with them.

DeVore

XOR, no trolling


He's right, we'd like to do free mail boxes but the risk of abuse is unreal even for peopler as far out on a limb as we are.

It would have to be hand set up so we can simply refuse people who are acting the dick and setting up untraceable hotmail style addresses.

The shares thing was something that just crossed my mind but its damn near unworkable. Let me think about it.

Thinking more clearly on this topic then the muddled thinking of last night, its really clear that there isnt a huge amount people can do to help.

Many suggestions have great merit and its terrific to see people really stick on their thinking caps. We have to understand the scale of what is going on. We need to look at covering 6K a year next year. A pub crawl or the profits (ha!) from a lan event arent going to make much impact on that and they take a lot of our precious time to organise.

I think the workable solutions are things like:
1. T-shirts.
2. Direct donations of small amounts of cash from people. (say a tenner a year)
3. Cash for stupid things like "changing the tag line of someone else"
4. Donations of equipment
5. Possible membership cash, ie: members get to not see ads and access to a mail box etc...

I think in the end of the day, we'll be fine... a lot of people give their time and energy to boards unselfishly and I know if I posted saying "I need an XYZ asap!" I'd have 5 of them inside an hour...
More then anything, I'd like to keep that about boards.

Anyway, Freak (god bless his little twisted mind) drew an idea I had for a t-shirt.

I have to say, he blew my idea into orbit with his usual talent and the result is one of the fúcking best t-shirts I've seen.
Those of you who know Freaks work know the quality of his art, but this is just outrageous. Its going to be our first t-shirt and I think its going to be my favourite

DeV.

Asuka

Nice one!

A

dahamsta

I love the way you back up your point with plenty of detail and a well reasoned argument.

I leave all that stuff to jmcc.

adam

[forgot the smiley]

po0k

Any chance of seeing a scan of that?

Sounds damn interesting, the way you hyped it up and stuff
And seeing as how I don't recall any of freak's work...

Did he/she/misc. do a skinny CG fellah witha tea cosy-style hat against a lime green room background yoke??

On with the posting and the hurting and the screaming and the rofling.....

DeVore

Yup, I asked Freak and I've started a new thread about it here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35964

Also, I'm trying to recruit people from the Art board to help us with t-shirt designs.

DeV.

amp

See those people holding dem signs at the first page of boards.ie? Thems the Freak_brother's

Victor

.

dahamsta

Hey amp, does the 'amp test' thing ever get on your nerves?

GoneShootin

and who started it nehoo ?

Baz_

Originally posted by dahamsta
Hey amp, does the 'amp test' thing ever get on your nerves?

Nothing gets on amps nerves, he has none, he's a sarcasm bot didn't ye know that;)

layke

I buy and sell cheap Hardware. if you need it cheap let me know. I'll give it to you really cheap. Sorry I can't donate it though but Is Trade good enough? :)

sutty

if your setting up a mail server.....use MIMESWEEPER. you can run it off a crap PC. it will cut down on the amount of bandwidth used. IE: blocking worms, Files over a certan size, and different stuff like that.

As for the 1U server, I'll have a look for any prices lower than the one you stated. Although as its been said above, and as you already know, its cheaper to build your self. I'd do it my self if it ment I could help out. The company your getting it from, are the offering on site support as well?

mayhem#

OK, give's a more exact spec on the server and any other hardware you might need and I'll see what I can come up with...